some of you may have seen or heard about
that classic film called The Graduate
starring Dustin Hoffman and as a young
graduate was advised by the crusty
businessman the future and my boy his
plastics think 1960s when plastics in
our society were just beginning to
become a part of our lives
in a serious way now synthetic materials
go way back and bakelite is one of the
early forms of synthetic materials that
entered our life go back too early in
the 20th century but from Dustin Hoffman
and the Graduate to the present time
just imagine how much plastic has become
central to our lives so when you think
about it we should not be so surprised
that this has happened because like
every other creature on the planet we
use the natural world to foster our
prosperity birds break off twigs to make
their nests you think about those big
muddy nests that flamingoes make all
creatures modify the world around them
use materials but no creature has been
more successful that transforming the
nature of earth to foster what we
imagined to be her prosperity than
humankind but imagine this that wherever
you want to begin our origins he might
start maybe ten thousand years ago when
civilization really first began to get
up and running and them significantly
somehow we did not
to rely on plastics to carry things
around somehow a thousand years ago we
managed to exist without plastics I’m
not sure how we did that but a hundred
years ago during all preceding history
and yet today it seems that we are
increasingly reliant on these miracle
materials that do not exist in nature
except of course in their basic
ingredients it’s when we really began to
discover the magic magical properties of
petrochemicals not just for burning oil
and gas but for what we can make out of
those basic materials plastics so a lot
of people think the biggest problem with
the ocean is oil spills and for sure
that is a problem but we are seeing
another kind of oil spill it’s the oil
spill translated into those many
variations on the theme of things we
call plastics now or all plastics banned
or any plastics banned not the materials
themselves in theory we just saw that
little ROV that David Lange brought out
it’s mostly made of plastic but for sure
that’s not going to wind up in a
landfill or dumped out on the ocean
somewhere but how is it that we have
become accustomed to the concept of used
something once throw it away I think
it’s a business model that seemed like a
good idea at the time to have something
that will always have a market always
have a market use it once throw it away
use it once throw it away whether it’s a
cup made of paper or a cup made of
plastic it’s still that mentality
somehow it’s convenient but now we’re
seeing the major inconvenience of that
illusion that that what we throw away
does not go away
here’s the thing in all of human history
never has there been a better time to be
alive to solve this problem this this
idea that we are the masters of the
universe we now know what we could not
know when I first began exploring the
ocean before plastics were there before
we had lost so much of what we had taken
out of the ocean as well as what we put
into the ocean armed with knowledge for
the first time we can see that there are
limits you know elephants can’t notice
dolphins and whales as smart as they are
can’t see what ten-year-old kids of
today what no humans in the past could
know either about what earth looks like
from afar and to be able to gather the
knowledge and use the knowledge that we
now have at our disposal this truly is
the most important time in history we
have a choice to use the knowledge we
have to really find an enduring place
for ourselves within the natural systems
that keep us alive to try to solve the
problems now that we know that we’ve got
them so glad to be here with you
explorers to solve the problems going
few on into the future and you’re about
to hear some from some real champions
how about another massive round of
so while we are setting the stage for a
new crop of panelists I want to take a
moment to introduce the one who will be
introducing the panel she’s the deputy
to the chief scientist and the vice
president of operating programs for
National Geographic Society so let’s all
give a very very warm welcome to Valerie
Craig
[Applause]
[Music]
so as Silvia just so clearly described
our planet is in trouble and we’re
reaching a crisis point when it comes to
plastic pollution it’s a problem that’s
global it’s visible and it’s harmful but
it’s also solvable about a month ago
National Geographic launched a first of
its kind initiative to grab the public’s
attention to raise awareness and to
meaningfully engage people to take
action to address one of the greatest
threats to the planet today planet or
plastic is truly a one brand initiative
for National Geographic we will harness
the full power of our media platforms
and our international reach and we’re
going to launch scientific expeditions
to fill gaps and knowledge to engage
communities and to accelerate innovation
the for absolutely incredible women that
are you going to join me on stage today
are helping us get there they’re
demonstrating the true power of science
and storytelling to address this huge
problem and to accelerate change and
have lasting impact so please help me
welcome them to the stage dr. Jenna
jam-pack image is NASA Lilly gold said
it got
I am so psyched to be with this kick-ass
team of women it’s amazing I think we’re
the all-female panel so we’re gonna kick
it off with Jenna Jenna Jam Beck may be
new to the National Geographic family
but she’s been studying solid waste for
about 20 years and her seminal paper
published in science in 2015 brought
global awareness to the role that rivers
play as conduits for conveying plastic
waste from the land to the ocean so
people are always asking her about the
role of waste in rivers and waste in the
ocean but amazingly she’s a lot more at
home in a landfill and she even tells me
that she fell in love in a landfill so I
hope you’re gonna tell us a little bit
more about that why don’t you tell us a
bit about your work thank you alright so
when I was 40 years old I kissed my
husband that I did meet true story at
the landfill and my two young sons
goodbye and set off on a 28-day
expedition sailing across the ocean with
13 other amazing women to promote women
and underrepresented disciplines like
science technology engineering that I’m
in and math as well as spread awareness
and sample plastic in the ocean in the
middle of the Atlantic the ocean looks
like this blue pristine and beautiful
but when you pull the plankton net or
the manta trawl that was described
earlier through it it tells a very
different story
Micra plastic plastic that’s about the
size of a pencil eraser or smaller is
what we found in that net plastic does
not biodegrade over time
it’s simply fragments into these smaller
and smaller pieces and for all practical
purposes it exists on our planet forever
so before we went on this sailing trip
we went to this Beach this most amazing
gorgeous Beach to do a beach cleanup
and I walked to the ocean’s edge as I
often do I can’t go to a beach without
saying hi to the ocean and so I walked
in and the waves are are lapping up on
my legs and I’m looking out and then I
looked down and I was shocked and
saddened there was microplastic this
microplastic was washing up on the shore
with every single wave it was a really
significant moment for me I was like our
oceans are literally spitting this
material back at us saying this doesn’t
belong here so we’ve heard about the
animals that are impacted by plastic
recently we heard about a whale in
Thailand it died and had 80 plastic bags
in its belly we hear about the
albatrosses feeding plastic to their
chicks we hear about the turtles eating
plastic bags and the turtle with the
straw stuck in its nose we know that
seals play with large plastic debris
like derelict fishing year we know that
the smallest animals in our food web are
consuming plastic when I heard about our
trash ending up in the ocean it was
actually way back in 2001 and because
I’m an environmental engineer who
studies waste management I immediately
connected it to our activities on land I
thought if our trash is ending up in the
ocean we must be doing something wrong
here for that to happen so I wanted to
research it for my PhD I met with some
marine scientists and I said I really
want to work on this issue and he
replied nobody cares about that I was
totally taken aback not expecting that
answer and I said why and he said well
maybe if you’re in Alaska where derelict
fishing gear is an issue or if you’re in
Hawaii where the plastic washes up on
the shore but I was in Florida and he
said nobody cares about that little Dino
he lit a big fire under me I couldn’t do
the research for my PhD I had to do
something more relevant to my discipline
but I started doing this research on the
side and 10 years later that paid off
when I was invited to be a part of an
international working group where we did
get to start to answer some of those
questions that I really wanted to
address so we now know that globally we
have produced a
three billion metric tons of plastic
since 1950 that’s equal to 80 million
blue whales because much of this plastic
is used for packaging and single-use
items we’ve already produced 6.3 billion
metric tons of plastic waste
we’ve only recycled on average nine
percent of that globally we’ve
incinerated 12% and that means 79% has
ended up in our landfills or in our open
environment in 2015 we also estimated
the quantity of plastic entering our
oceans globally from 192 countries
around the world from mismanaged waste
our mid estimate was 8 million metric
tons these numbers are hard to imagine
so let me describe it for you imagine us
standing hand to hand covering the
entire coastline of the world we take up
about a foot of space in front of each
and every one of us would be five
grocery sized bags filled with plastic
and that’s what’s going into the ocean
every single year how does this plastic
get there when we know that I can be
blown or washed directly into the ocean
or it can be blown or washed into a
conduit a river a waterway like this one
and also reach the ocean and finally
thinking about or researching the
influencing factors why was this
happening why were we seeing this
leakage of plastic well where we saw was
these middle-income countries with
really rapidly developing economies
where the solid waste management
infrastructure just could not keep up
with the increase in waste generation
and increase in plastic use that comes
with this economic growth also there’s
millions of people’s around the world
participating in informal none document
we’ve managed meant that try to
contribute to helping this issue and
then finally in high-income countries we
see even though we have a robust waste
management infrastructure because we
produce over double the amount of waste
per person as people in many of these
Southeast Asian countries even a small
bit of mismanaged ways through littering
and a large coastline means we
significantly impact this issue as well
so I’m happy
say I prove that naysayer wrong I think
people do care about this issue and so
what are we going to do about it well
you’re gonna hear some amazing stories
and solutions here in a minute but when
I think about this I think about an
integrated approach so all the way
upstream there’s choices that you and I
can make every day those of us that have
the luxury of these choices not
everybody has access to clean water but
if you do a reusable water bottle a
cloth bag saying no to plastic straws
these choices sound boring but honestly
our research shows that taken
collectively and over time these choices
make a difference we need to think about
redesigning our products looking at
material substitution can we actually
meet people’s needs and increase
livelihood without producing waste
decoupling that waste generation rate
from economic growth and finally we need
culturally appropriate and
context-sensitive safe and sound
waste management around the world so we
all have a role to play our government
our industry our private companies
academia citizens you and I collectively
we hold the solution to this in the palm
of our hand we can make a difference
we won’t let you get too depressed
there’s always a silver lining in each
of these talks so a couple of months ago
Imogen Napper became one of the first
Skye Ocean rescue scholars which was a
collaboration between National
Geographic and sky media so you just
heard Jenna talk about how plastics can
break down into small bits over time
into a form that becomes really
difficult to remove from the environment
but what about the trillions of bits of
plastic microscopic bits of plastic that
start out that small what about those
where do they come from well in about
five minutes I think all of you might be
questioning your clothing choices
that’ll be just a little clue so in
addition to studying micro plastics
Imogen is also a reserves officer in the
Royal Navy yes they are truly a kick-ass
team of women up here and she’s just two
weeks away from getting her PhDs this is
I’ve always had a really strong
connection with the ocean I’m from a
really small seaside town called
Clevedon which is near Bristol in the
United Kingdom it’s known for its fish
and chips it’s really long old Victorian
pier and we look over s3 to our
neighboring country of Wales
I’m also connected to the ocean in a
variety of different ways as said I’m an
officer in the war Navy Reserves and I
specialized in mine warfare and I’m also
a really keen surfer and I’m really
lucky to live near coal which is the
California of the UK but how am I here
at the explorers festival as a marine
scientist and it’s quite interesting to
look back and connect the dots I had no
idea what I wanted to do after school
really no clue I knew I really liked
research and I also really enjoyed
science I hadn’t had that passion I
didn’t know what I wanted to study
I remember flicking through a prospectus
of a universe
you wanted to go to and looking at all
the science topics and I picked
biomedical science so there I was but
during my undergraduate degree I got
really involved in surfing and Beach
cleans and as one Beach that has stayed
in my mind the beach that I regularly
surfed out as well so the eye the
surface looks really clean there are no
bottles there no bags but when we
started to dig through the sand we found
lots and lots of tiny micro plastic
pieces plastic less than five
millimeters in size and this really
shocked me it angered me it also gave me
a lot of curiosity where it’s all of
those tiny bits of plastic coming from
there on my beaches
so this fueled my passion and I guess
you could say this gave me my research
mojo skip forward another four years and
I’m at the end of my PhD really really
really close about two weeks away
hopefully and I’ve been able to research
just that the sources and fates of
plastic going into our oceans and ending
up on our beaches when I started my PhD
I was thinking well plastic must come
from landfills and from lissa but can
also come from a variety of different
sources that we wouldn’t necessarily
always think of one of those being
microbeads in facial scrubs my
creepiness and facial scrubs are tiny
bits of plastic that are used as
exfoliants to get the dead skin off but
they’re completely unnecessary because
they can be used instead with salt or
sugar we found that out that three
million tiny plastic pieces could be in
one bottle in one squirt of your hand
there could be more than 10,000 well
wash our faces we’ll wash our bodies and
these micro plastic pieces will go down
the sink into the drains potentially
through the sewage treatment works and
into our oceans making our oceans into a
big plastic soup this was my first
research piece and it was really
exciting to see the development and
courage of people banning these products
from their lives
now governments around the world are
banning the sale and production of
microbeads and that was all because of
this little bit of research the next bit
of research that I did was looking at
washing our clothes and most of you sat
here in the audience a day I’m sorry but
you’re wearing plastic this could be
polyester acrylic or polyester cotton
blend in the mechanical nature of the
washing machine where our clothes are
swishing and swirling around tiny fibers
can come off and like the microbeads go
into our wastewater potentially into our
seas we did some research that search
showed up to 700,000 fibers to come off
our clothes in one wash all of this
research gained a lot of media attention
and it was really exciting to see how
research can change industry government
and public perception and these were my
first to research pieces but my first
two pieces into the large jigsaw that is
solving marine litter but we still have
a really long way to go I’m now excited
to start the first bit of research after
my PhD which is looking again at washing
our clothes and this is in collaboration
with sky ocean rescue of which I’m one
of the scholars and National Geographic
where we’re going to be testing
different inventions that are used in
the washing machine to try and capture
these fibers so hold on because in the
future I can be telling you the future
lilly tzedakah is a Fulbright National
Geographic digital storyteller she’s
documenting Taiwan’s waste management
system and innovations in recycling
she’s working to transform the way
people see trash transforming from just
something we throw away to something
that has value she’s also a one-woman
demonstration of the power of an
individual to have change if you’ve seen
her walking around campus this week you
might have noticed that she walks around
with a little knapsack which I’ve
decided to think of as her plastic frigo
bag everything in it is what you would
need to have a full day plastic free
anywhere anytime the bowl that utensils
the bottle it really is that easy Lilly
tell us a little bit more about your
work I love Taiwanese milk tea when I
was 12 years old I discovered the first
tea house near my father’s old apartment
who walked through the glass doors
straight up to the counter ordered my
first milk tea and instantly fell in
love and for the next 10 years I became
a VIP at that tea house and every time I
ordered a that Bay shout bean fountain
in my cha which translates to a large
cup minimal sugar minimal iced milk tea
and when I graduated from college I went
back to that same tea house sat in that
same orange shared facing the same
window with my milk tea to ask that
post-graduation quintessential question
what the hell am I gonna do with my life
and as I reach from my milk tea and
brought it close to me I paused you see
prior to that moment all I did was drink
that sweet sugary goodness and threw it
in the trash can he was in a custom
habit I didn’t think much of it but it
was in that moment that I finally saw
the plastic cup and I finally saw the
plastic straw and I realized that every
single time I drink the drink that I
love I’m destroying the environment that
I love so this led me on a global
mission to Taiwan to understand our
global plastic supply chain a waste
management system and people’s
perceptions of plastic and what I came
to find is Taiwan is an incredible place
the island was formed by the collision
of the euro-asian of Philippine plates
2/3 of it is covered in mountain 90% of
the 23 point five million people live on
the rolling plains of the western coast
it has to import 98 percent of its
energy 70 percent of its food and in
fact it became one of the rising Asian
Tigers as a result of one primary
industry plastics Taiwan has one of the
most sophisticated plastics supply
chains in the world both upscale and
downscale and at the time before the
1980s they had no waste management
system whatsoever so there were lots of
claims with illegal dumping and lots of
chances of people throwing their trash
haphazardly on the floor well a group of
housewives were sick and tired having
their kids walk through trash to school
every single day so in the late 1980s
they formed an organization called the
United homemakers Foundation and they
charged the EPA with creating the modern
system that Taiwan has today today
Taiwanese now have to divide the trash
into three categories Berner bowls
recyclables which had 33 different
subcategories and kitchen waste which go
towards their farms as fertilizer and
for pig feed now this incredible system
is also coupled by an interesting
tension while plastics pervade their
society the idea of circular economy of
zero waste of reusing your resources is
on resurgence on the island
in fact there are many small and
medium-sized businesses that are
charging ahead one of which is these
team of two powerful women who started
an organization called for the turtles
which sells glass straws on the market
and they’re building an alliance with
eco-friendly cafes across the island to
revolutionize eco-friendly products
inside the food industry and then there
are folks like ta Wu who’s the CEO of
Spring pool glass and he takes your
discarded mobile phones and the LCD
glass to transform them into fireproof
lightweights bricks for construction so
while the technological solutions are
there I realized that the problem is not
technology it is the perception of
plastic in Taiwan and in Japan things
that are wrapped in plastic are
considered cleaner fresher of higher
quality and this is inextricably linked
to the fear of plastic in their supply
chains if they had better supply chains
than they could not rely on plastic but
they’ve had scares in the past what’s
happened to their food and to their
beverage so plastic has become the
solution and in the United States there
are also other ways and reasons why we
use plastic most of it is out of sight
out of mind you can use your thing and
you throw it away you don’t think about
the environmental impact well in order
to transform the ways that we think
about these things we use storytelling
so what I did is I filmed and recorded
sounds from Taipei city’s waste
management system transform them into a
track had Taipei’s dancers danced to it
recorded the waste management system in
that screen and the idea was you may not
be able to see your trash but you can’t
unhear it so we can transform the way
that we perceive waste we can transform
the way we interact with it but then we
also realized but a lot of folks don’t
know really basic things about how to
recycle or what is plastic or these
processes in fact when you go to
Starbucks you may see that recycling
sign on your Starbucks coffee cup but
the reality is you can’t recycle it
that’s because inside is a small layer
of
cheapy plastic filling and if you want
to recycle it you need to split the two
materials if there’s any sort of
beverage or food residual in that
recyclable when you throw it into that
bin it’s going straight to landfill so I
understand that we also live in a time
where it’s a to go culture we don’t have
much time to do anything you grab and
you go but our choices or what’s driving
this system so what I did I did a 12-day
zero plastic waste challenge and why
couldn’t get to zero the reality is
there are choices that we can make in
our day to day lives to make this change
as was stated earlier you can bring your
own cup you can bring your own utensils
you can bring your own straw you can
even bring an alpaca with you and have a
wonderful journey in your eco waste time
that’s what I do
her name is Anastasia ultimately it is
our choices that ignite change but our
choices are based upon our perceptions
so we can transform our perceptions of
waste then we have a solution for the
Heather called away is a kite surfer
with a soft spot for seahorses she’s
also a National Geographic fellow and
she’s head of marine and freshwater
conservation at the Zoological Society
of London small jobs this one as you saw
from the intro video to this session for
the last few years Heather’s been
working in small island communities the
people that are at the front lines of
plastic pollution working together with
these communities to develop innovative
approaches to tackling the problem and
back in London she and her team have
also been coming up with creative ways
to engage the public to transform the
way London approaches drinking water
Heather so I’m a marine biologist
passionate about sea horses and this
image summarizes my journey from sea
horses to plastic today if you’re a
marine biologist you come across plastic
whether you want to or not my journey
with sea horses about 20 years ago took
me to the Philippines one of the richest
areas of marine biodiversity on the
planet but it is where ocean population
poverty and plastic collide in
communities just like this the pressure
on marine resources has resulted in
overfishing which threatens low local
livelihoods of very poor people and that
leads to more and more fishing nets
catching fewer and fewer fish and those
nets are made of plastic
globally we estimate that six hundred
and forty thousand tons of discarded
fishing nets enter the ocean every year
where they degrade an hour left also
catching an entangling wildlife these
nets last anywhere between six hundred
and fifty years and forever it’s not
just nets these communities have no kind
of waste management system so we’re
dealing with all kinds of plastic
accumulating and entering the ocean we
took one kind of plastic these discarded
fishing nets
and developed an inclusive business
approach to dealing with it we looked at
collecting those discarded Nets out of
the ocean of cleaning those Nets and
gathering them off the beaches where
they were laying bailing the Nets using
innovative engineering based on a
winepress aggregating the Nets from
different communities transporting them
in efficient bales to be exported
because these nets are a very high grade
nylon that has significant value in the
recycling market an aquifer in Slovenia
recycle this to nylon yarn which is then
made into beautiful carpet tiles by
interface so here we have a system of
solving a problem it’s powered by
community banks our self-help means of
finance that brings much-needed
financial mechanisms to these
communities but also mechanism and
buying the soling the nets and
organizing that to happen the end result
of this work is cleaner beaches the nets
are now removed we know reduce
dependence on fishing and increased
well-being so we have an economic model
that works environmentally and socially
to date we’ve collected 167 thousand
tons of nets
sorry hundreds of tons of nets which is
enough to go around the world four times
as a functional fishing net sixty-four
thousand people have benefited from this
approach by having cleaner environments
and greater income and we’ve linked this
to bigger and better marine protected
areas so we actually have a lot more
fish and a lot less plastic but we only
have one ocean and as you’ve heard
plastic is everywhere we’ve tried to
think about this approach by taking the
single-use plastic water bottle as a
flagship species
for the ocean plastic issue and one city
Londoners use 1.2 billion single-use
plastic water bottles a year that’s a
hundred and seventy five per person it’s
slightly higher in the states and it’s
not just remote islands in developing
countries where we see piles are plastic
this is the River Thames in London we’re
looking at changing an entire system
from one dominated by a disposable
single use plastic culture a throwaway
society to one that’s dominated by
refill and we’ve developed a really
innovative collaboration with lots of
different skill sets to achieve that
we’ve had to look at everything from
behavior business case infrastructure
design policy and social norms this is
an issue for everybody not just greenie
tree huggers like me we’re making
amazing progress partly helped by the
great interest and attention on this
issue we’ve piloted drinking fountains
new solutions like a refill scheme
because it turns out that Brits will
carry a refillable bottle but are too
embarrassed to ask to have it refilled
so by putting a sticker and stores with
a refill scheme by a group called City
to see it breaks down that barrier to
make it okay to go and ask we’re doing
the science to make the change and
getting great traction with policy
commitments from the mayor in his
environment strategy and with surface
against sewage we now have commitment
for a plastic free Parliament what we do
with the plastic what we do with a
bottle it’s our choice and here we have
the luxury of choice we choose planet or
plastic and my choice is planet and I
this is great and since we have a team
who stuck to timing we’re gonna get a
good robust discussion going so I’m just
gonna start the conversation but I know
that this is a hot topic so I want to
turn it over to all of you very quickly
but I first want to step back from the
issue for a minute and take advantage of
the four of you being here women in
different stages of your careers doing
different kinds of work certainly having
faced different obstacles along the way
so I want to take a little bit of
advantage and dig into your backgrounds
a little bit so thinking about your
journey to today particularly in the
context of being women in male-dominated
fields or working in cultures or
communities were there unique challenges
for women and I’m going to start with
Jenna and Heather so think for a second
if you could go back to the beginning of
your career if you could go back and
talk to yourself at that point what
advice would you give to yourself maybe
I’ll start with you Heather well I feel
pretty lucky sitting here as National
Geographic fellow with an amazing group
of people around me so I wouldn’t say do
too much differently it was okay I think
possibly less angst about the need for a
career plan and making a lot of random
choices along the journey and I my PhD
is in the population genetics of Welsh
trout and I’m here as a National
Geographic expert fellow on plastic so
either they got it wrong or changed
along the way so I think it has been
that being open to different
opportunities I think looking for
support networks I think looking back at
time it’s been quite a lonely place and
actually finding your people in all
walks of life whether that’s at work or
outside work it’s finding a place where
you can vent or find support when things
are tough and possibly I was a bit too
independently charging ahead on my
and there are amazing support networks
wherever you look and sometimes it’s
so I didn’t I’m gonna go with the women
perspective of it and I didn’t see
myself as different than men and didn’t
think that you know I could do anything
they could do and but I think maybe
there was a bit naive and I would maybe
tell myself that bias is real implicit
bias is happens and to value myself and
even be a better advocate for myself
because once you sort of let that bar
slide it’s much harder to come back to
sort of prove equality later I guess and
if you’re not aware of that then you may
not work towards that from the first
place but I’m gonna say one more thing I
felt like I haven’t fit into very many
boxes but I feel like I fit in here with
explorers maybe a lot because nobody’s
in a box here so I’m really happy to be
here and I feel very welcomed so I think
hearing hearing from you in
conversations that we’ve had over the
last couple of weeks I I particularly
wanted to have this conversation hearing
that as a world-renowned scientist
you’re working in a department where you
might get an email that says gentlemen
here’s what’s happening in our
department that seems wholly
unacceptable and that that could still
be happening today so I think it’s still
a relevant conversation that we need to
keep having an image and you’re in a
really different place in your career
just kicking off but you’ve been working
in a research lab with very famous
people and I just want to get a little
bit of your perspective on what are you
where do you see great opportunity and
where might there still be some
challenges that you’re sensing I think
I’ve been really lucky that I’ve never
faced any obstacles and if I did then I
purposely do something to prove a point
that I could do it in my office there’s
some we have a really good support
network
you’re saying before and most of the PhD
people are women but we’re surrounded by
professors and all bar one and men so
looking to the future and seeing the
leadership within my own department is
quite difficult and also looking to the
future I know some of my colleagues are
worried that when they start having a
family is it going to be hard to get
back into research so I think there’s a
lot of unknowns in my career but I’m
excited for the future that’s great you
know I did a little bit of digging in
the last couple days and was really
surprised to learn that Taiwan ranks
incredibly high on measures of gender
equality and then I also found a lot of
people talking about you know we have
they have a female Prime Minister and
president and female leadership in the
country yet there is serious gender bias
that still exists in in Taiwan
culturally it’s embedded in the culture
and you’ve just spent nine months there
and women running around alone digging
into waste systems an interesting thing
so what what’s your experience been like
you know I find that sometimes being a
woman is actually a really wonderful
thing and you can be traveling around
with your backpack and I was serious
about my alpaca she sticks out the back
of my backpack
and you’ll just walk on the street and
you look somebody in the eye and you’ll
smile at them and they’ll smile back
it’s you especially the older women they
love smiling back at you and you realize
like that that human connection is so
beautiful and it’s so real and that’s
what we’re missing a lot today in our
society and I think I have an advantage
as a woman because you know you smile at
a granny she smiles back you have that
that connection you know I found that
traveling alone was not an issue it was
more so that in Taiwan their Taiwanese
and then there’s white blur in people
from the outside outside people and I
don’t look like Taiwanese at all I make
a joke then my parents come from Iran
and they have a little place called
Ilan so in Chinese Iran is Eli Iran and
so I call and you should tie over and
not like are you Taiwanese and it’s like
no I don’t come from
elana come from iran it’s kind of funny
but i find that you know human being a
human being regardless with your gender
you can make it work and being a white
corinne and being connecting with local
people is really important because it
shares your your shared humanity that’s
great okay I’ll bring us back now back
to plastics and I want to talk about
magazine because it was incredible it’s
incredible and hopefully everybody has
seen the biggest poster in all of
Washington DC across the street and if I
could get the picture of the cover of
the magazine please so Jenna you had a
lot to do with this content Laura Parker
was the author behind the feature story
and I know she spent quite a bit of time
with you in Georgia and you know this
particular choice that was settled on
for the cover has been interesting and
how much conversation it’s been sparking
more than I actually expected it to and
as somebody who’s been working really in
this space with waste for a long time I
just love to get your perspective on the
notion of the iceberg and what that what
you think that that actually means yeah
so I feel like it has two meanings and
the first is a bit more literal in that
you know we calculated the quantity of
plastic entering the ocean every year
and what we have quantified in terms of
the floating plastic is a standing stock
and that is only a fraction of what we
see going in every year and so in that
way it begs the question where is the
missing plastic and that is just the tip
of the iceberg what we see floating out
there and then a bit more figuratively
thinking about this issue as a whole
it’s fairly new in terms of the science
although it has ramped up really quickly
you know I feel like we just have the
tip of the iceberg of what we know about
it of what we understand the impacts to
be and so there’s much more out there to
be discovered and to learn and really
understand about what the implications
are of plastic everywhere that’s great
and and I do want to ask Heather you one
question before I turn it over as I
promised I would
the work that you’ve been doing with
networks have been really impressed and
the piece of it that I find almost most
interesting of all of it is how much
you’re drawing from other different
sectors and different disciplines and
learning things from other areas that
have done things well like the finance
mechanisms and pulling from the
development community or going to use
something like a winepress to bail your
nets where do you see great potential
moving forward we do have a theme this
year of collaborating to ignite change
so where are some of those
collaborations that you might look to
moving forward it’s definitely a case of
sort of breaking down the barriers and I
think the fascinating thing about the
plastic topic it is completely all
sectors we need involved so obviously
there’s very diverse expertise across
this panel but also it requires design
market product design marketing
engineers all sorts of different sectors
to come together to actually solve it I
think that’s the the challenge and the
opportunity in terms of looking at
networks I think it’s quite hard
particularly in science because you
specialize so quickly that it’s even
hard to keep up with other scientific
disciplines that are related and so then
thinking about how can I talk to
business or how do I talk to a marketing
agency to get my science message across
becomes more challenging but these are
the areas we have to break down we were
very fortunate to be invited to a
workshop by interface who are looking at
this topic around they’re very ambitious
sustainability strategy because of our
scientific expertise and one of my
colleagues in particular and that
started this process going and for me in
conservation what was particularly
interesting is we tend to think in
business about how do we get business
doing less harm actually the ambition
set by interface was was way ahead of
our thinking and actually the the
businesses bring expertise our
collaboration with Selfridges has really
transformed our ability to communicate
marine conservation to completely new
audiences and to stop talking to
ourselves which we tend to do a lot
so I think it is thinking out of the box
and then also being bold enough to try
and make contact with those sectors that
we actually don’t have those easy links
with now and often that comes from
social circles and others or attending
unusual meetings or events that you
wouldn’t normally as a marine biologist
and not being afraid to have
conversations looking for solutions
that’s great your turn
oh I see lots of hands ok let’s start
right here up front please and just wait
for the mic this is absolutely wonderful
and I’ve got a general question based on
my personal life experiences with the
Zabaleen garbage Pickers of Cairo who I
lived among and then brought home to my
own home and Lily you you talked about
changing the perception of garbage and
we have a special relationship because
they were in the mentor-mentee program
so it’s great to see you up on stage the
Zabaleen ethic is that plastic is so
valuable that you would never let it go
in the ocean because there’s so many
things you can do with it
and when I took that message from living
with them home this idea that micro
plastics are sites for bacterial biofilm
growth that can cause methyl mercury up
for example or that washing our clothes
can put microfibers into the ocean in
our home based on the Zabaleen ethic
we’re scavenging constantly in the bio
digester in aquaponics fields for urban
plastic garbage to put into our bio
digesters for biofilm growth to enhance
their production rates to put into our
aquaponics to do denitrification to
enhance the fish growth and so when we
wash our clothes now all of the fibers
go into our household bio digester and
then into the aquaponic system and so
our plastic never leaves our home in our
off-grid experience in Florida so my
question the general is if the Zabaleen
in Cairo and the other trash picking
peoples that we visited in the world
know this value why can’t we get a
policy going saying you can’t let it
leave your home or your community you’re
stuck with it there’s no way because
enough of us has done it in the world to
show that there is no way and that we
like that we want our plastic to stay at
home so can we get that consciousness or
why can’t we small question
I’ll take your first time so policy I’m
not a policy maker by any means I’m a
storyteller but what I understand is the
way we understand things affects the
choices that we make and those choices
often leak on policy and I think the
elephant in the room that we have to
address formally is the economics the
tide economics you know for a lot of
people in the world they use plastic in
these small satchels because they can’t
afford to get bulk
there’s no Costco in rural India right
you can only afford a little bit I must
hide your economics you know in America
like we have a system where we have
ultimate choice we have lots of choices
we have an abundance of choices and
those choices come from the fact that a
lot of our supplies are shipped from
many different places around the world
and the reason positive became such a
big thing is because it’s cheaper to
make and it’s easier to transport and a
lot of people thought that this this
plastic beam was so wonderful because
not only where we’re not taking away
from natural resources because man had
created his own resource but it was also
the notion that that these objects could
transform our lives so I think what it
really requires is a government to get
behind and realize what we’re seeing in
the UK especially in a places like
Taiwan that they are resources
our government is yet to address that
issue and it’s one of my goals is when I
go back home is to bring it to the
forefront of my local municipality and
San Diego to do something about it but
it starts with people caring and when
you care then you make a difference
another question Sylvia so I think we’re
letting the fishing industry and those
who consume ocean wildlife off the hook
a bit with our focus primarily on
domestic plastic bags straws cosmetics
when we know that much of what is
clogging the ocean comes from the new
lightweight relatively inexpensive gear
that has been introduced into the sea
since the 1950s before that time
Anette every line was treasured handmade
out of products that you you fixed a net
if it got torn today if a net gets torn
it’s easy it’s economically attractive
just to throw it away but the idea that
there’s a business model built on on
these lightweight materials primarily
from insurer Fisher’s but the big
problems are the industrial scale
fissures that supply 90% of the quote
seafood sea life to this country and
around the world it’s this large scale
extraction of wildlife from the sea made
possible because of these wonderful new
materials that did not exist a few
decades ago that coupled with our
appetite and our ignorance about the
real consequences of what what a tuna
fish sandwich really costs when you
think about where it comes from how it
was caught where is that care I’d love
to hear your insights into this this
major issue that is getting fairly light
attention because I guess it’s because
of our appetite for the wildlife that we
like to consume and and yet when you
think about what it takes to get them to
your plate you might choose you might
think again so I’d love to very quickly
head there if you have a quick response
on nets and maybe Jenna if you don’t
talk about just um the what the value
proposition means when it changes from
heavier duty plastics to lighter weight
plastics so we could have a whole panel
obviously on sustainable fisheries and
reducing our impact on the ocean so I’m
not going to touch on that I think the
bit that’s missing that I had insight
from working with recycling business is
why isn’t that part of the conversation
so why isn’t there a circular economy
around nets why isn’t that factored into
when nets are designed and why isn’t
that part of certification of
sustainable fisheries is what happens to
the net end of life at the moment
there’s a big disincentive to bring your
net back
to port where you may have to pay for it
to go to landfill commercial Nets also
go to aqua fill so that is there are
solutions for some types of nets and
there’s some great initiatives happening
but we need to factor that into the
whole conversation about sustainable
fisheries and nets need to be designed
for disaggregation and as as part of the
circular economy and the materials
they’re made of and how they’re made
okay so quickly you know I think what
we’ve seen with plastic is that because
it is so lightweight and inexpensive and
people have used it for this large
transport of goods and even you know the
Nets weigh less than and they think
we’re conserving resources ironically
that is what led to what leads to these
materials being low value at their end
of life and so they’re not recovered
because there’s not as much plastic
there so it’s sort of this dichotomy and
tension there because it maybe saves on
one end but it actually in terms of a
lifecycle how do you quantify the impact
of killing these sea creatures within
that system and so low value means it’s
very likely to be leaked and that’s what
we see into the ocean so I’m going to
take the liberty of the last question to
Emmitt in how soon until we have some
kind of tool to actually capture micro
fibers from our washing machine we’re
gonna be testing different inventions
and you know bright ideas some are going
to be more successful than others but
it’s all part of innovation I think
looking into the future this is where we
need to be we need to be looking at
these bright ideas and changing the way
that our behaviors especially in the
washing system
so hopefully weights maybe a year in two
years and I’ll come back with a top
answer that’s great so if you want to
hear more about solutions we are also
going to have quite a bit of that on
Saturday so definitely come back for the
public sessions where you’ll hear a
little bit more from Heather and we’ll
also have some other National Geographic
explorers on stage talking about
solutions in plastics and don’t leave
your seat because I
know there’s something exciting coming
up next thank you very much please give
thank you all so very much and now it’s
time for a very special performance to
end the day this is going to be so
exciting okay the Hagana art and music
project teaches tropical earth
ecosystems of Columbia to all of us
through songs and through Illustrated
booklets for children so here to play
for us it’s gonna be incredible is Johnny Benavidez let’s welcome her
that classic film called The Graduate
starring Dustin Hoffman and as a young
graduate was advised by the crusty
businessman the future and my boy his
plastics think 1960s when plastics in
our society were just beginning to
become a part of our lives
in a serious way now synthetic materials
go way back and bakelite is one of the
early forms of synthetic materials that
entered our life go back too early in
the 20th century but from Dustin Hoffman
and the Graduate to the present time
just imagine how much plastic has become
central to our lives so when you think
about it we should not be so surprised
that this has happened because like
every other creature on the planet we
use the natural world to foster our
prosperity birds break off twigs to make
their nests you think about those big
muddy nests that flamingoes make all
creatures modify the world around them
use materials but no creature has been
more successful that transforming the
nature of earth to foster what we
imagined to be her prosperity than
humankind but imagine this that wherever
you want to begin our origins he might
start maybe ten thousand years ago when
civilization really first began to get
up and running and them significantly
somehow we did not
to rely on plastics to carry things
around somehow a thousand years ago we
managed to exist without plastics I’m
not sure how we did that but a hundred
years ago during all preceding history
and yet today it seems that we are
increasingly reliant on these miracle
materials that do not exist in nature
except of course in their basic
ingredients it’s when we really began to
discover the magic magical properties of
petrochemicals not just for burning oil
and gas but for what we can make out of
those basic materials plastics so a lot
of people think the biggest problem with
the ocean is oil spills and for sure
that is a problem but we are seeing
another kind of oil spill it’s the oil
spill translated into those many
variations on the theme of things we
call plastics now or all plastics banned
or any plastics banned not the materials
themselves in theory we just saw that
little ROV that David Lange brought out
it’s mostly made of plastic but for sure
that’s not going to wind up in a
landfill or dumped out on the ocean
somewhere but how is it that we have
become accustomed to the concept of used
something once throw it away I think
it’s a business model that seemed like a
good idea at the time to have something
that will always have a market always
have a market use it once throw it away
use it once throw it away whether it’s a
cup made of paper or a cup made of
plastic it’s still that mentality
somehow it’s convenient but now we’re
seeing the major inconvenience of that
illusion that that what we throw away
does not go away
here’s the thing in all of human history
never has there been a better time to be
alive to solve this problem this this
idea that we are the masters of the
universe we now know what we could not
know when I first began exploring the
ocean before plastics were there before
we had lost so much of what we had taken
out of the ocean as well as what we put
into the ocean armed with knowledge for
the first time we can see that there are
limits you know elephants can’t notice
dolphins and whales as smart as they are
can’t see what ten-year-old kids of
today what no humans in the past could
know either about what earth looks like
from afar and to be able to gather the
knowledge and use the knowledge that we
now have at our disposal this truly is
the most important time in history we
have a choice to use the knowledge we
have to really find an enduring place
for ourselves within the natural systems
that keep us alive to try to solve the
problems now that we know that we’ve got
them so glad to be here with you
explorers to solve the problems going
few on into the future and you’re about
to hear some from some real champions
how about another massive round of
so while we are setting the stage for a
new crop of panelists I want to take a
moment to introduce the one who will be
introducing the panel she’s the deputy
to the chief scientist and the vice
president of operating programs for
National Geographic Society so let’s all
give a very very warm welcome to Valerie
Craig
[Applause]
[Music]
so as Silvia just so clearly described
our planet is in trouble and we’re
reaching a crisis point when it comes to
plastic pollution it’s a problem that’s
global it’s visible and it’s harmful but
it’s also solvable about a month ago
National Geographic launched a first of
its kind initiative to grab the public’s
attention to raise awareness and to
meaningfully engage people to take
action to address one of the greatest
threats to the planet today planet or
plastic is truly a one brand initiative
for National Geographic we will harness
the full power of our media platforms
and our international reach and we’re
going to launch scientific expeditions
to fill gaps and knowledge to engage
communities and to accelerate innovation
the for absolutely incredible women that
are you going to join me on stage today
are helping us get there they’re
demonstrating the true power of science
and storytelling to address this huge
problem and to accelerate change and
have lasting impact so please help me
welcome them to the stage dr. Jenna
jam-pack image is NASA Lilly gold said
it got
I am so psyched to be with this kick-ass
team of women it’s amazing I think we’re
the all-female panel so we’re gonna kick
it off with Jenna Jenna Jam Beck may be
new to the National Geographic family
but she’s been studying solid waste for
about 20 years and her seminal paper
published in science in 2015 brought
global awareness to the role that rivers
play as conduits for conveying plastic
waste from the land to the ocean so
people are always asking her about the
role of waste in rivers and waste in the
ocean but amazingly she’s a lot more at
home in a landfill and she even tells me
that she fell in love in a landfill so I
hope you’re gonna tell us a little bit
more about that why don’t you tell us a
bit about your work thank you alright so
when I was 40 years old I kissed my
husband that I did meet true story at
the landfill and my two young sons
goodbye and set off on a 28-day
expedition sailing across the ocean with
13 other amazing women to promote women
and underrepresented disciplines like
science technology engineering that I’m
in and math as well as spread awareness
and sample plastic in the ocean in the
middle of the Atlantic the ocean looks
like this blue pristine and beautiful
but when you pull the plankton net or
the manta trawl that was described
earlier through it it tells a very
different story
Micra plastic plastic that’s about the
size of a pencil eraser or smaller is
what we found in that net plastic does
not biodegrade over time
it’s simply fragments into these smaller
and smaller pieces and for all practical
purposes it exists on our planet forever
so before we went on this sailing trip
we went to this Beach this most amazing
gorgeous Beach to do a beach cleanup
and I walked to the ocean’s edge as I
often do I can’t go to a beach without
saying hi to the ocean and so I walked
in and the waves are are lapping up on
my legs and I’m looking out and then I
looked down and I was shocked and
saddened there was microplastic this
microplastic was washing up on the shore
with every single wave it was a really
significant moment for me I was like our
oceans are literally spitting this
material back at us saying this doesn’t
belong here so we’ve heard about the
animals that are impacted by plastic
recently we heard about a whale in
Thailand it died and had 80 plastic bags
in its belly we hear about the
albatrosses feeding plastic to their
chicks we hear about the turtles eating
plastic bags and the turtle with the
straw stuck in its nose we know that
seals play with large plastic debris
like derelict fishing year we know that
the smallest animals in our food web are
consuming plastic when I heard about our
trash ending up in the ocean it was
actually way back in 2001 and because
I’m an environmental engineer who
studies waste management I immediately
connected it to our activities on land I
thought if our trash is ending up in the
ocean we must be doing something wrong
here for that to happen so I wanted to
research it for my PhD I met with some
marine scientists and I said I really
want to work on this issue and he
replied nobody cares about that I was
totally taken aback not expecting that
answer and I said why and he said well
maybe if you’re in Alaska where derelict
fishing gear is an issue or if you’re in
Hawaii where the plastic washes up on
the shore but I was in Florida and he
said nobody cares about that little Dino
he lit a big fire under me I couldn’t do
the research for my PhD I had to do
something more relevant to my discipline
but I started doing this research on the
side and 10 years later that paid off
when I was invited to be a part of an
international working group where we did
get to start to answer some of those
questions that I really wanted to
address so we now know that globally we
have produced a
three billion metric tons of plastic
since 1950 that’s equal to 80 million
blue whales because much of this plastic
is used for packaging and single-use
items we’ve already produced 6.3 billion
metric tons of plastic waste
we’ve only recycled on average nine
percent of that globally we’ve
incinerated 12% and that means 79% has
ended up in our landfills or in our open
environment in 2015 we also estimated
the quantity of plastic entering our
oceans globally from 192 countries
around the world from mismanaged waste
our mid estimate was 8 million metric
tons these numbers are hard to imagine
so let me describe it for you imagine us
standing hand to hand covering the
entire coastline of the world we take up
about a foot of space in front of each
and every one of us would be five
grocery sized bags filled with plastic
and that’s what’s going into the ocean
every single year how does this plastic
get there when we know that I can be
blown or washed directly into the ocean
or it can be blown or washed into a
conduit a river a waterway like this one
and also reach the ocean and finally
thinking about or researching the
influencing factors why was this
happening why were we seeing this
leakage of plastic well where we saw was
these middle-income countries with
really rapidly developing economies
where the solid waste management
infrastructure just could not keep up
with the increase in waste generation
and increase in plastic use that comes
with this economic growth also there’s
millions of people’s around the world
participating in informal none document
we’ve managed meant that try to
contribute to helping this issue and
then finally in high-income countries we
see even though we have a robust waste
management infrastructure because we
produce over double the amount of waste
per person as people in many of these
Southeast Asian countries even a small
bit of mismanaged ways through littering
and a large coastline means we
significantly impact this issue as well
so I’m happy
say I prove that naysayer wrong I think
people do care about this issue and so
what are we going to do about it well
you’re gonna hear some amazing stories
and solutions here in a minute but when
I think about this I think about an
integrated approach so all the way
upstream there’s choices that you and I
can make every day those of us that have
the luxury of these choices not
everybody has access to clean water but
if you do a reusable water bottle a
cloth bag saying no to plastic straws
these choices sound boring but honestly
our research shows that taken
collectively and over time these choices
make a difference we need to think about
redesigning our products looking at
material substitution can we actually
meet people’s needs and increase
livelihood without producing waste
decoupling that waste generation rate
from economic growth and finally we need
culturally appropriate and
context-sensitive safe and sound
waste management around the world so we
all have a role to play our government
our industry our private companies
academia citizens you and I collectively
we hold the solution to this in the palm
of our hand we can make a difference
we won’t let you get too depressed
there’s always a silver lining in each
of these talks so a couple of months ago
Imogen Napper became one of the first
Skye Ocean rescue scholars which was a
collaboration between National
Geographic and sky media so you just
heard Jenna talk about how plastics can
break down into small bits over time
into a form that becomes really
difficult to remove from the environment
but what about the trillions of bits of
plastic microscopic bits of plastic that
start out that small what about those
where do they come from well in about
five minutes I think all of you might be
questioning your clothing choices
that’ll be just a little clue so in
addition to studying micro plastics
Imogen is also a reserves officer in the
Royal Navy yes they are truly a kick-ass
team of women up here and she’s just two
weeks away from getting her PhDs this is
I’ve always had a really strong
connection with the ocean I’m from a
really small seaside town called
Clevedon which is near Bristol in the
United Kingdom it’s known for its fish
and chips it’s really long old Victorian
pier and we look over s3 to our
neighboring country of Wales
I’m also connected to the ocean in a
variety of different ways as said I’m an
officer in the war Navy Reserves and I
specialized in mine warfare and I’m also
a really keen surfer and I’m really
lucky to live near coal which is the
California of the UK but how am I here
at the explorers festival as a marine
scientist and it’s quite interesting to
look back and connect the dots I had no
idea what I wanted to do after school
really no clue I knew I really liked
research and I also really enjoyed
science I hadn’t had that passion I
didn’t know what I wanted to study
I remember flicking through a prospectus
of a universe
you wanted to go to and looking at all
the science topics and I picked
biomedical science so there I was but
during my undergraduate degree I got
really involved in surfing and Beach
cleans and as one Beach that has stayed
in my mind the beach that I regularly
surfed out as well so the eye the
surface looks really clean there are no
bottles there no bags but when we
started to dig through the sand we found
lots and lots of tiny micro plastic
pieces plastic less than five
millimeters in size and this really
shocked me it angered me it also gave me
a lot of curiosity where it’s all of
those tiny bits of plastic coming from
there on my beaches
so this fueled my passion and I guess
you could say this gave me my research
mojo skip forward another four years and
I’m at the end of my PhD really really
really close about two weeks away
hopefully and I’ve been able to research
just that the sources and fates of
plastic going into our oceans and ending
up on our beaches when I started my PhD
I was thinking well plastic must come
from landfills and from lissa but can
also come from a variety of different
sources that we wouldn’t necessarily
always think of one of those being
microbeads in facial scrubs my
creepiness and facial scrubs are tiny
bits of plastic that are used as
exfoliants to get the dead skin off but
they’re completely unnecessary because
they can be used instead with salt or
sugar we found that out that three
million tiny plastic pieces could be in
one bottle in one squirt of your hand
there could be more than 10,000 well
wash our faces we’ll wash our bodies and
these micro plastic pieces will go down
the sink into the drains potentially
through the sewage treatment works and
into our oceans making our oceans into a
big plastic soup this was my first
research piece and it was really
exciting to see the development and
courage of people banning these products
from their lives
now governments around the world are
banning the sale and production of
microbeads and that was all because of
this little bit of research the next bit
of research that I did was looking at
washing our clothes and most of you sat
here in the audience a day I’m sorry but
you’re wearing plastic this could be
polyester acrylic or polyester cotton
blend in the mechanical nature of the
washing machine where our clothes are
swishing and swirling around tiny fibers
can come off and like the microbeads go
into our wastewater potentially into our
seas we did some research that search
showed up to 700,000 fibers to come off
our clothes in one wash all of this
research gained a lot of media attention
and it was really exciting to see how
research can change industry government
and public perception and these were my
first to research pieces but my first
two pieces into the large jigsaw that is
solving marine litter but we still have
a really long way to go I’m now excited
to start the first bit of research after
my PhD which is looking again at washing
our clothes and this is in collaboration
with sky ocean rescue of which I’m one
of the scholars and National Geographic
where we’re going to be testing
different inventions that are used in
the washing machine to try and capture
these fibers so hold on because in the
future I can be telling you the future
lilly tzedakah is a Fulbright National
Geographic digital storyteller she’s
documenting Taiwan’s waste management
system and innovations in recycling
she’s working to transform the way
people see trash transforming from just
something we throw away to something
that has value she’s also a one-woman
demonstration of the power of an
individual to have change if you’ve seen
her walking around campus this week you
might have noticed that she walks around
with a little knapsack which I’ve
decided to think of as her plastic frigo
bag everything in it is what you would
need to have a full day plastic free
anywhere anytime the bowl that utensils
the bottle it really is that easy Lilly
tell us a little bit more about your
work I love Taiwanese milk tea when I
was 12 years old I discovered the first
tea house near my father’s old apartment
who walked through the glass doors
straight up to the counter ordered my
first milk tea and instantly fell in
love and for the next 10 years I became
a VIP at that tea house and every time I
ordered a that Bay shout bean fountain
in my cha which translates to a large
cup minimal sugar minimal iced milk tea
and when I graduated from college I went
back to that same tea house sat in that
same orange shared facing the same
window with my milk tea to ask that
post-graduation quintessential question
what the hell am I gonna do with my life
and as I reach from my milk tea and
brought it close to me I paused you see
prior to that moment all I did was drink
that sweet sugary goodness and threw it
in the trash can he was in a custom
habit I didn’t think much of it but it
was in that moment that I finally saw
the plastic cup and I finally saw the
plastic straw and I realized that every
single time I drink the drink that I
love I’m destroying the environment that
I love so this led me on a global
mission to Taiwan to understand our
global plastic supply chain a waste
management system and people’s
perceptions of plastic and what I came
to find is Taiwan is an incredible place
the island was formed by the collision
of the euro-asian of Philippine plates
2/3 of it is covered in mountain 90% of
the 23 point five million people live on
the rolling plains of the western coast
it has to import 98 percent of its
energy 70 percent of its food and in
fact it became one of the rising Asian
Tigers as a result of one primary
industry plastics Taiwan has one of the
most sophisticated plastics supply
chains in the world both upscale and
downscale and at the time before the
1980s they had no waste management
system whatsoever so there were lots of
claims with illegal dumping and lots of
chances of people throwing their trash
haphazardly on the floor well a group of
housewives were sick and tired having
their kids walk through trash to school
every single day so in the late 1980s
they formed an organization called the
United homemakers Foundation and they
charged the EPA with creating the modern
system that Taiwan has today today
Taiwanese now have to divide the trash
into three categories Berner bowls
recyclables which had 33 different
subcategories and kitchen waste which go
towards their farms as fertilizer and
for pig feed now this incredible system
is also coupled by an interesting
tension while plastics pervade their
society the idea of circular economy of
zero waste of reusing your resources is
on resurgence on the island
in fact there are many small and
medium-sized businesses that are
charging ahead one of which is these
team of two powerful women who started
an organization called for the turtles
which sells glass straws on the market
and they’re building an alliance with
eco-friendly cafes across the island to
revolutionize eco-friendly products
inside the food industry and then there
are folks like ta Wu who’s the CEO of
Spring pool glass and he takes your
discarded mobile phones and the LCD
glass to transform them into fireproof
lightweights bricks for construction so
while the technological solutions are
there I realized that the problem is not
technology it is the perception of
plastic in Taiwan and in Japan things
that are wrapped in plastic are
considered cleaner fresher of higher
quality and this is inextricably linked
to the fear of plastic in their supply
chains if they had better supply chains
than they could not rely on plastic but
they’ve had scares in the past what’s
happened to their food and to their
beverage so plastic has become the
solution and in the United States there
are also other ways and reasons why we
use plastic most of it is out of sight
out of mind you can use your thing and
you throw it away you don’t think about
the environmental impact well in order
to transform the ways that we think
about these things we use storytelling
so what I did is I filmed and recorded
sounds from Taipei city’s waste
management system transform them into a
track had Taipei’s dancers danced to it
recorded the waste management system in
that screen and the idea was you may not
be able to see your trash but you can’t
unhear it so we can transform the way
that we perceive waste we can transform
the way we interact with it but then we
also realized but a lot of folks don’t
know really basic things about how to
recycle or what is plastic or these
processes in fact when you go to
Starbucks you may see that recycling
sign on your Starbucks coffee cup but
the reality is you can’t recycle it
that’s because inside is a small layer
of
cheapy plastic filling and if you want
to recycle it you need to split the two
materials if there’s any sort of
beverage or food residual in that
recyclable when you throw it into that
bin it’s going straight to landfill so I
understand that we also live in a time
where it’s a to go culture we don’t have
much time to do anything you grab and
you go but our choices or what’s driving
this system so what I did I did a 12-day
zero plastic waste challenge and why
couldn’t get to zero the reality is
there are choices that we can make in
our day to day lives to make this change
as was stated earlier you can bring your
own cup you can bring your own utensils
you can bring your own straw you can
even bring an alpaca with you and have a
wonderful journey in your eco waste time
that’s what I do
her name is Anastasia ultimately it is
our choices that ignite change but our
choices are based upon our perceptions
so we can transform our perceptions of
waste then we have a solution for the
Heather called away is a kite surfer
with a soft spot for seahorses she’s
also a National Geographic fellow and
she’s head of marine and freshwater
conservation at the Zoological Society
of London small jobs this one as you saw
from the intro video to this session for
the last few years Heather’s been
working in small island communities the
people that are at the front lines of
plastic pollution working together with
these communities to develop innovative
approaches to tackling the problem and
back in London she and her team have
also been coming up with creative ways
to engage the public to transform the
way London approaches drinking water
Heather so I’m a marine biologist
passionate about sea horses and this
image summarizes my journey from sea
horses to plastic today if you’re a
marine biologist you come across plastic
whether you want to or not my journey
with sea horses about 20 years ago took
me to the Philippines one of the richest
areas of marine biodiversity on the
planet but it is where ocean population
poverty and plastic collide in
communities just like this the pressure
on marine resources has resulted in
overfishing which threatens low local
livelihoods of very poor people and that
leads to more and more fishing nets
catching fewer and fewer fish and those
nets are made of plastic
globally we estimate that six hundred
and forty thousand tons of discarded
fishing nets enter the ocean every year
where they degrade an hour left also
catching an entangling wildlife these
nets last anywhere between six hundred
and fifty years and forever it’s not
just nets these communities have no kind
of waste management system so we’re
dealing with all kinds of plastic
accumulating and entering the ocean we
took one kind of plastic these discarded
fishing nets
and developed an inclusive business
approach to dealing with it we looked at
collecting those discarded Nets out of
the ocean of cleaning those Nets and
gathering them off the beaches where
they were laying bailing the Nets using
innovative engineering based on a
winepress aggregating the Nets from
different communities transporting them
in efficient bales to be exported
because these nets are a very high grade
nylon that has significant value in the
recycling market an aquifer in Slovenia
recycle this to nylon yarn which is then
made into beautiful carpet tiles by
interface so here we have a system of
solving a problem it’s powered by
community banks our self-help means of
finance that brings much-needed
financial mechanisms to these
communities but also mechanism and
buying the soling the nets and
organizing that to happen the end result
of this work is cleaner beaches the nets
are now removed we know reduce
dependence on fishing and increased
well-being so we have an economic model
that works environmentally and socially
to date we’ve collected 167 thousand
tons of nets
sorry hundreds of tons of nets which is
enough to go around the world four times
as a functional fishing net sixty-four
thousand people have benefited from this
approach by having cleaner environments
and greater income and we’ve linked this
to bigger and better marine protected
areas so we actually have a lot more
fish and a lot less plastic but we only
have one ocean and as you’ve heard
plastic is everywhere we’ve tried to
think about this approach by taking the
single-use plastic water bottle as a
flagship species
for the ocean plastic issue and one city
Londoners use 1.2 billion single-use
plastic water bottles a year that’s a
hundred and seventy five per person it’s
slightly higher in the states and it’s
not just remote islands in developing
countries where we see piles are plastic
this is the River Thames in London we’re
looking at changing an entire system
from one dominated by a disposable
single use plastic culture a throwaway
society to one that’s dominated by
refill and we’ve developed a really
innovative collaboration with lots of
different skill sets to achieve that
we’ve had to look at everything from
behavior business case infrastructure
design policy and social norms this is
an issue for everybody not just greenie
tree huggers like me we’re making
amazing progress partly helped by the
great interest and attention on this
issue we’ve piloted drinking fountains
new solutions like a refill scheme
because it turns out that Brits will
carry a refillable bottle but are too
embarrassed to ask to have it refilled
so by putting a sticker and stores with
a refill scheme by a group called City
to see it breaks down that barrier to
make it okay to go and ask we’re doing
the science to make the change and
getting great traction with policy
commitments from the mayor in his
environment strategy and with surface
against sewage we now have commitment
for a plastic free Parliament what we do
with the plastic what we do with a
bottle it’s our choice and here we have
the luxury of choice we choose planet or
plastic and my choice is planet and I
this is great and since we have a team
who stuck to timing we’re gonna get a
good robust discussion going so I’m just
gonna start the conversation but I know
that this is a hot topic so I want to
turn it over to all of you very quickly
but I first want to step back from the
issue for a minute and take advantage of
the four of you being here women in
different stages of your careers doing
different kinds of work certainly having
faced different obstacles along the way
so I want to take a little bit of
advantage and dig into your backgrounds
a little bit so thinking about your
journey to today particularly in the
context of being women in male-dominated
fields or working in cultures or
communities were there unique challenges
for women and I’m going to start with
Jenna and Heather so think for a second
if you could go back to the beginning of
your career if you could go back and
talk to yourself at that point what
advice would you give to yourself maybe
I’ll start with you Heather well I feel
pretty lucky sitting here as National
Geographic fellow with an amazing group
of people around me so I wouldn’t say do
too much differently it was okay I think
possibly less angst about the need for a
career plan and making a lot of random
choices along the journey and I my PhD
is in the population genetics of Welsh
trout and I’m here as a National
Geographic expert fellow on plastic so
either they got it wrong or changed
along the way so I think it has been
that being open to different
opportunities I think looking for
support networks I think looking back at
time it’s been quite a lonely place and
actually finding your people in all
walks of life whether that’s at work or
outside work it’s finding a place where
you can vent or find support when things
are tough and possibly I was a bit too
independently charging ahead on my
and there are amazing support networks
wherever you look and sometimes it’s
so I didn’t I’m gonna go with the women
perspective of it and I didn’t see
myself as different than men and didn’t
think that you know I could do anything
they could do and but I think maybe
there was a bit naive and I would maybe
tell myself that bias is real implicit
bias is happens and to value myself and
even be a better advocate for myself
because once you sort of let that bar
slide it’s much harder to come back to
sort of prove equality later I guess and
if you’re not aware of that then you may
not work towards that from the first
place but I’m gonna say one more thing I
felt like I haven’t fit into very many
boxes but I feel like I fit in here with
explorers maybe a lot because nobody’s
in a box here so I’m really happy to be
here and I feel very welcomed so I think
hearing hearing from you in
conversations that we’ve had over the
last couple of weeks I I particularly
wanted to have this conversation hearing
that as a world-renowned scientist
you’re working in a department where you
might get an email that says gentlemen
here’s what’s happening in our
department that seems wholly
unacceptable and that that could still
be happening today so I think it’s still
a relevant conversation that we need to
keep having an image and you’re in a
really different place in your career
just kicking off but you’ve been working
in a research lab with very famous
people and I just want to get a little
bit of your perspective on what are you
where do you see great opportunity and
where might there still be some
challenges that you’re sensing I think
I’ve been really lucky that I’ve never
faced any obstacles and if I did then I
purposely do something to prove a point
that I could do it in my office there’s
some we have a really good support
network
you’re saying before and most of the PhD
people are women but we’re surrounded by
professors and all bar one and men so
looking to the future and seeing the
leadership within my own department is
quite difficult and also looking to the
future I know some of my colleagues are
worried that when they start having a
family is it going to be hard to get
back into research so I think there’s a
lot of unknowns in my career but I’m
excited for the future that’s great you
know I did a little bit of digging in
the last couple days and was really
surprised to learn that Taiwan ranks
incredibly high on measures of gender
equality and then I also found a lot of
people talking about you know we have
they have a female Prime Minister and
president and female leadership in the
country yet there is serious gender bias
that still exists in in Taiwan
culturally it’s embedded in the culture
and you’ve just spent nine months there
and women running around alone digging
into waste systems an interesting thing
so what what’s your experience been like
you know I find that sometimes being a
woman is actually a really wonderful
thing and you can be traveling around
with your backpack and I was serious
about my alpaca she sticks out the back
of my backpack
and you’ll just walk on the street and
you look somebody in the eye and you’ll
smile at them and they’ll smile back
it’s you especially the older women they
love smiling back at you and you realize
like that that human connection is so
beautiful and it’s so real and that’s
what we’re missing a lot today in our
society and I think I have an advantage
as a woman because you know you smile at
a granny she smiles back you have that
that connection you know I found that
traveling alone was not an issue it was
more so that in Taiwan their Taiwanese
and then there’s white blur in people
from the outside outside people and I
don’t look like Taiwanese at all I make
a joke then my parents come from Iran
and they have a little place called
Ilan so in Chinese Iran is Eli Iran and
so I call and you should tie over and
not like are you Taiwanese and it’s like
no I don’t come from
elana come from iran it’s kind of funny
but i find that you know human being a
human being regardless with your gender
you can make it work and being a white
corinne and being connecting with local
people is really important because it
shares your your shared humanity that’s
great okay I’ll bring us back now back
to plastics and I want to talk about
magazine because it was incredible it’s
incredible and hopefully everybody has
seen the biggest poster in all of
Washington DC across the street and if I
could get the picture of the cover of
the magazine please so Jenna you had a
lot to do with this content Laura Parker
was the author behind the feature story
and I know she spent quite a bit of time
with you in Georgia and you know this
particular choice that was settled on
for the cover has been interesting and
how much conversation it’s been sparking
more than I actually expected it to and
as somebody who’s been working really in
this space with waste for a long time I
just love to get your perspective on the
notion of the iceberg and what that what
you think that that actually means yeah
so I feel like it has two meanings and
the first is a bit more literal in that
you know we calculated the quantity of
plastic entering the ocean every year
and what we have quantified in terms of
the floating plastic is a standing stock
and that is only a fraction of what we
see going in every year and so in that
way it begs the question where is the
missing plastic and that is just the tip
of the iceberg what we see floating out
there and then a bit more figuratively
thinking about this issue as a whole
it’s fairly new in terms of the science
although it has ramped up really quickly
you know I feel like we just have the
tip of the iceberg of what we know about
it of what we understand the impacts to
be and so there’s much more out there to
be discovered and to learn and really
understand about what the implications
are of plastic everywhere that’s great
and and I do want to ask Heather you one
question before I turn it over as I
promised I would
the work that you’ve been doing with
networks have been really impressed and
the piece of it that I find almost most
interesting of all of it is how much
you’re drawing from other different
sectors and different disciplines and
learning things from other areas that
have done things well like the finance
mechanisms and pulling from the
development community or going to use
something like a winepress to bail your
nets where do you see great potential
moving forward we do have a theme this
year of collaborating to ignite change
so where are some of those
collaborations that you might look to
moving forward it’s definitely a case of
sort of breaking down the barriers and I
think the fascinating thing about the
plastic topic it is completely all
sectors we need involved so obviously
there’s very diverse expertise across
this panel but also it requires design
market product design marketing
engineers all sorts of different sectors
to come together to actually solve it I
think that’s the the challenge and the
opportunity in terms of looking at
networks I think it’s quite hard
particularly in science because you
specialize so quickly that it’s even
hard to keep up with other scientific
disciplines that are related and so then
thinking about how can I talk to
business or how do I talk to a marketing
agency to get my science message across
becomes more challenging but these are
the areas we have to break down we were
very fortunate to be invited to a
workshop by interface who are looking at
this topic around they’re very ambitious
sustainability strategy because of our
scientific expertise and one of my
colleagues in particular and that
started this process going and for me in
conservation what was particularly
interesting is we tend to think in
business about how do we get business
doing less harm actually the ambition
set by interface was was way ahead of
our thinking and actually the the
businesses bring expertise our
collaboration with Selfridges has really
transformed our ability to communicate
marine conservation to completely new
audiences and to stop talking to
ourselves which we tend to do a lot
so I think it is thinking out of the box
and then also being bold enough to try
and make contact with those sectors that
we actually don’t have those easy links
with now and often that comes from
social circles and others or attending
unusual meetings or events that you
wouldn’t normally as a marine biologist
and not being afraid to have
conversations looking for solutions
that’s great your turn
oh I see lots of hands ok let’s start
right here up front please and just wait
for the mic this is absolutely wonderful
and I’ve got a general question based on
my personal life experiences with the
Zabaleen garbage Pickers of Cairo who I
lived among and then brought home to my
own home and Lily you you talked about
changing the perception of garbage and
we have a special relationship because
they were in the mentor-mentee program
so it’s great to see you up on stage the
Zabaleen ethic is that plastic is so
valuable that you would never let it go
in the ocean because there’s so many
things you can do with it
and when I took that message from living
with them home this idea that micro
plastics are sites for bacterial biofilm
growth that can cause methyl mercury up
for example or that washing our clothes
can put microfibers into the ocean in
our home based on the Zabaleen ethic
we’re scavenging constantly in the bio
digester in aquaponics fields for urban
plastic garbage to put into our bio
digesters for biofilm growth to enhance
their production rates to put into our
aquaponics to do denitrification to
enhance the fish growth and so when we
wash our clothes now all of the fibers
go into our household bio digester and
then into the aquaponic system and so
our plastic never leaves our home in our
off-grid experience in Florida so my
question the general is if the Zabaleen
in Cairo and the other trash picking
peoples that we visited in the world
know this value why can’t we get a
policy going saying you can’t let it
leave your home or your community you’re
stuck with it there’s no way because
enough of us has done it in the world to
show that there is no way and that we
like that we want our plastic to stay at
home so can we get that consciousness or
why can’t we small question
I’ll take your first time so policy I’m
not a policy maker by any means I’m a
storyteller but what I understand is the
way we understand things affects the
choices that we make and those choices
often leak on policy and I think the
elephant in the room that we have to
address formally is the economics the
tide economics you know for a lot of
people in the world they use plastic in
these small satchels because they can’t
afford to get bulk
there’s no Costco in rural India right
you can only afford a little bit I must
hide your economics you know in America
like we have a system where we have
ultimate choice we have lots of choices
we have an abundance of choices and
those choices come from the fact that a
lot of our supplies are shipped from
many different places around the world
and the reason positive became such a
big thing is because it’s cheaper to
make and it’s easier to transport and a
lot of people thought that this this
plastic beam was so wonderful because
not only where we’re not taking away
from natural resources because man had
created his own resource but it was also
the notion that that these objects could
transform our lives so I think what it
really requires is a government to get
behind and realize what we’re seeing in
the UK especially in a places like
Taiwan that they are resources
our government is yet to address that
issue and it’s one of my goals is when I
go back home is to bring it to the
forefront of my local municipality and
San Diego to do something about it but
it starts with people caring and when
you care then you make a difference
another question Sylvia so I think we’re
letting the fishing industry and those
who consume ocean wildlife off the hook
a bit with our focus primarily on
domestic plastic bags straws cosmetics
when we know that much of what is
clogging the ocean comes from the new
lightweight relatively inexpensive gear
that has been introduced into the sea
since the 1950s before that time
Anette every line was treasured handmade
out of products that you you fixed a net
if it got torn today if a net gets torn
it’s easy it’s economically attractive
just to throw it away but the idea that
there’s a business model built on on
these lightweight materials primarily
from insurer Fisher’s but the big
problems are the industrial scale
fissures that supply 90% of the quote
seafood sea life to this country and
around the world it’s this large scale
extraction of wildlife from the sea made
possible because of these wonderful new
materials that did not exist a few
decades ago that coupled with our
appetite and our ignorance about the
real consequences of what what a tuna
fish sandwich really costs when you
think about where it comes from how it
was caught where is that care I’d love
to hear your insights into this this
major issue that is getting fairly light
attention because I guess it’s because
of our appetite for the wildlife that we
like to consume and and yet when you
think about what it takes to get them to
your plate you might choose you might
think again so I’d love to very quickly
head there if you have a quick response
on nets and maybe Jenna if you don’t
talk about just um the what the value
proposition means when it changes from
heavier duty plastics to lighter weight
plastics so we could have a whole panel
obviously on sustainable fisheries and
reducing our impact on the ocean so I’m
not going to touch on that I think the
bit that’s missing that I had insight
from working with recycling business is
why isn’t that part of the conversation
so why isn’t there a circular economy
around nets why isn’t that factored into
when nets are designed and why isn’t
that part of certification of
sustainable fisheries is what happens to
the net end of life at the moment
there’s a big disincentive to bring your
net back
to port where you may have to pay for it
to go to landfill commercial Nets also
go to aqua fill so that is there are
solutions for some types of nets and
there’s some great initiatives happening
but we need to factor that into the
whole conversation about sustainable
fisheries and nets need to be designed
for disaggregation and as as part of the
circular economy and the materials
they’re made of and how they’re made
okay so quickly you know I think what
we’ve seen with plastic is that because
it is so lightweight and inexpensive and
people have used it for this large
transport of goods and even you know the
Nets weigh less than and they think
we’re conserving resources ironically
that is what led to what leads to these
materials being low value at their end
of life and so they’re not recovered
because there’s not as much plastic
there so it’s sort of this dichotomy and
tension there because it maybe saves on
one end but it actually in terms of a
lifecycle how do you quantify the impact
of killing these sea creatures within
that system and so low value means it’s
very likely to be leaked and that’s what
we see into the ocean so I’m going to
take the liberty of the last question to
Emmitt in how soon until we have some
kind of tool to actually capture micro
fibers from our washing machine we’re
gonna be testing different inventions
and you know bright ideas some are going
to be more successful than others but
it’s all part of innovation I think
looking into the future this is where we
need to be we need to be looking at
these bright ideas and changing the way
that our behaviors especially in the
washing system
so hopefully weights maybe a year in two
years and I’ll come back with a top
answer that’s great so if you want to
hear more about solutions we are also
going to have quite a bit of that on
Saturday so definitely come back for the
public sessions where you’ll hear a
little bit more from Heather and we’ll
also have some other National Geographic
explorers on stage talking about
solutions in plastics and don’t leave
your seat because I
know there’s something exciting coming
up next thank you very much please give
thank you all so very much and now it’s
time for a very special performance to
end the day this is going to be so
exciting okay the Hagana art and music
project teaches tropical earth
ecosystems of Columbia to all of us
through songs and through Illustrated
booklets for children so here to play
for us it’s gonna be incredible is Johnny Benavidez let’s welcome her
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