It might seem like a good idea to clean up the ocean. The oceans make up 70% of our planet and we have trashed them. Each year, the world dumps over 8 billion pounds of plastic into the ocean.
The plastic in the ocean is so visible that there is a lot of focus on cleaning it up. Some experts argue that we are too focused on removing all the trash from the ocean and not working enough to stop production of the stuff.
The amount of plastic trash dumped in the oceans could triple over the next few decades because of increased plastic production. As the world prepares for Black Friday shopping and Cyber Monday, it is more important than ever to think about how to end this cycle, even if the solutions are more complicated than simply cleaning up the mess already there.
I called up a professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland who is a leading scholar of plastic pollution. The interview has been edited and rearranged.
The cultural hold on the idea of taking all the trash out of the sea seems to be due to the fact that we think cleaning up the oceans is a net good. What is complicated about that premise?
One of the things that is important to understand is that cleaning up the oceans is fundamentally different from cleaning up litter on the street. Scale problems are the main reason for that. The ocean is the biggest thing in the world, so the stuff we know at the scale of being a human does not make it to the ocean.
There is a scale problem where you can't clean up the ocean at a rate that is proportional to the amount of plastic going into it. Microplastics are the smallest things in the world. They are one of the biggest things in the world because they are smaller than a grain of rice.
Pollution science is different from litter science and we teach people that it is a stock-and-flow problem. You walk into your bathroom and your bathtub is full. Do you turn off the tap or get a mop? If you don't turn off the tap before you start mopping up, you will never catch up to the water spilling out and you will never be able to do both. That is a great model for job security, but a bad model for dealing with pollution.
There is a campaign on the internet that has a stated goal of raising $30 million to clean up 30 million pounds of trash from the ocean. It seems like 30 million pounds may seem like a lot to us, but it isn't in the grand scheme of things.
It isn't. I can find you 30 million pounds, just outside of town, with washed up fishing gear.
Earther: Really?
Liboiron: Absolutely. Newfoundland is a fishing province. What is a single gill net?
Earther: Are you serious?
I can get that in a minute. There are some serious scale problems.
Earther: Is it possible that cleaning up the stuff in there would have some benefit? Is it possible to have models that show the tradeoffs of letting the ocean keep hanging out and not trying to clean it up?
There are a couple of reasons that any math on that would be suspect. The main numerical problem we would be trying to model is: What do you mean by harm from plastic?
My specialty is animals that eat plastic. Your average animal will eat and poop out plastic just fine, because it's also eating bones, and squid which have super hard squid beaks that you can cut yourself on. There are problems like that. Is there more from fishing gear? It is hard to measure because no one is watching ghost fishing.
The question isn't "is cleaning up worth it compared to turning off the tap?" It's better to turn off the tap. Full stop.
There are better and worse ways to clean up. Shoreline clean up? Awesome. Trash wheels in bays put things at the end of sewage outfalls. Absolutely. Those are great ways to clean up. There are many places in the world where those things are essential, because if you have blocked sewer drains and you have a wet season, there is a clusterfuck. Cleanup is essential in a lot of places.
Even if you end up with some plastic chemicals and slag, those two last longer than species.
I read a piece you wrote a couple of years ago and it was really interesting about how plastic is made in a way that is outside of what we can understand.
Yes, Liboiron. There are plastic in geological time.
Earther: What does that mean?
It is opposed to species time. People talk about different eras in the past. Dinosaurs were some of the longest-lived species. It is not because we are doomed. That is how species roll. Plastic lasts longer than that. The plastic is longer than eras.
Earther: That is crazy.
If you want to get to the bottom of it, you need to include both the plastic itself and some of the chemicals that are associated with it. If you end up with plastic chemicals and slag, they last longer than species. Even if you burn them or chop them up. Send worms after them. They are a slightly different form than the species.
Earther: I don't think people understand that.
It is almost like inventing plastic was a bad idea.
Let's say you've collected this plastic. What are you going to do with it? You can never recycle marine plastic because they are not really recyclable. They are fucked up in the ocean. Even if you get them into a landfill, they are there for another 400 years to 1,000 years. It's fine. Climate change will cause the landfill to get covered with water, or it will cause planets to come back up again and go back to the ocean. You just deferred the problem while you shuffled the plastic.
That is the reason why turning off the tap is so important. If you go back to the mopping analogy, eventually the water will rise over the level of the bucket that you are mopping and it will just go back in with all the other water.
Turn off the tap. That is what we do. The person is keeping the tap running. Coca-Cola. ExxonMobil. We have their phone numbers.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it almost feels like we created another compound on Earth. That is hanging out for a long time.
I forget what the group is called. The worldwide association of people who name eras is called the International Stratigraphic Commission. The new species era is characterized by human activity. The big argument amongst the geologists is what signal are we going to use to mark this era? Nuclear or plastic waste from atomic bombs are the two possibilities.
Earther: Oh shit.
Those will last forever in the geological record.
Earther: That is very sad.
It is a fascinating discussion.
People who think that we can solve the problem of plastic in the ocean might find this conversation a big deal. What do you tell people who want to find a solution?
I have been telling people to turn off the tap the whole time. Turn off the tap. That is what we do. The person is keeping the tap running. Coca-Cola. ExxonMobil. We have their phone numbers.
Climate change and renewable energy are threatening the growth of oil. monoliths are shifting their efforts into plastic. That is the good news, because it can shift again. The climate change playbook is what we have. It is similar to the climate change playbook, even some of the same actors.
If you compare it to climate change, some people say we should grab carbon out of the air. We do a bit of that. No one thinks that that will solve the climate change problem. It is the same as plastic.
Earther: What do you say to people who are concerned about the impact of plastic on our food and marine life? There is a big spectrum of what is bad about plastic and what is just un-studied, something we could live with.
There are two ways to think about the harms of animals eating plastic. One is moral or ethical, where you say, "that's messed up." That is not correct. That should never happen. Yes. Absolutely agree that it is fucked up. It doesn't matter if it harms the animal or not. That is 100% fucked up. The second way to think about it is scientific. Consuming plastic does not harm animals.
The example is a dog. Domestic dogs eat a lot of plastic because they are eating stuffing or something else they find. They eat all of the things that are plastic. Sometimes dogs have to go to the vet because they have a problem and if they don't deal with it, they will die. Is that a lot of dogs? No. Is that a problem for the dogs? No. Is that bad for a few dogs? Absolutely.
Earther: What is your biggest concern?
The power of the industry is my biggest concern. Canada is about to stop subsidizing oil. That is more important than any form of cleaning up plastic pollution.
