I grew up on a beach in a island called
Tasmania a beautiful place it gave me
the opportunity to meet and interact
with incredible creatures and it was
where I developed a deep connectivity
with the ocean now tez mania is one of
the most beautiful islands on the planet
but 30 years ago the city I grew up in
had a terrible problem the ocean was
polluted with the outfall from heavy
industry there was a pulp and paper mill
a paint pigment plant and a
slaughterhouse among them these were
causing rashes on the bodies of swimmers
and surfers and when you got out of the
water you had saw red eyes Burnie at
that time had one of the highest
incidents of cancer in Australia
following the lead of three generations
of journalists in my family I made it my
investigative mission to uncover whether
these industries were in fact
responsible for the illnesses we were
seeing and also the poor state of the
ecosystem along the coastline so I got a
laboratory to test the waters around
Burnie and they found that the outfall
from the pulp and paper mill contained
organochlorines and these had dangerous
cancer-causing dioxins so I put these
findings to the state government and the
Minister for the environment and he
admitted for the first time that they
knew about these organochlorines
and these dioxins and that they were
dangerous but they hadn’t informed the
public so I published my stories in the
local newspaper
and it caused a storm of protests across
Australia national papers declared
Burnie Australia’s dirtiest city I
wasn’t very popular with our local
Tourism Authority I can tell you I was
20 years
of age at the time shortly after those
stories were published the industry
started to close down and today Bernie
has some of the bluest water along the
coastline and the fish have returned to
the waters around the city
I learnt then about the power of the
media now as I developed my skills in
the media through newspapers radio and
television I also developed a passion
for film film gave me the ability to
tell stories and to make documentaries
that gave voice to silent creatures like
the worms from my childhood but I also
had a deep love for a particular species
that had consumed my time as a child and
that was the blue whale an immense
creature also incredibly shy an
opportunity came to film a documentary
off the south coast of Sri Lanka it was
the combination for me of a live stream
now blue whales are the biggest animals
ever to have lived there bigger than any
dinosaur they grow to about 37 meters
long they have a heart as big as a car
but they were hunted almost to
extinction and as a result they’re
extremely elusive trying to find them is
like trying to find a giant needle in a
massive haystack we went up and down the
coastline of Sri Lanka for weeks on end
searching for these whales we would see
a spout in the distance we’d head
towards it we would get our cameras into
our underwater housings we’d get our
teams into the water would move towards
the whales and then we would never see
them again and this happened day after
day after day after day and if you want
to know what it’s like to go crazy look
out into an open ocean empty open ocean
for day after day after day after day
that’s where coffee became
friend of mine so he searched near an
underwater sea mount and this is where
krill gather because they’re bought in
by the currents and we knew the whales
would head there because they krill we
didn’t find whales what we found was
something very significant it was a
floating landfill of plastic this was a
massive slick of detritus as far as the
eye could see
it contained old fishing nets bait boxes
plastic bottles used lighters even
unopened biscuits the wastage of
humanity it was absolutely dreadful it
was the sign of a coming tragedy we
didn’t know that at the time we kept
looking for the whales for three weeks
and our time finally ran out we had to
head back to port because our visas were
about to expire but I’m an incredibly
stubborn individual and I hadn’t come
this far and worked this hard to give up
this easily so I refused to allow the
cameras to be packed away I refused to
allow the dive tanks to be put under the
boat I was going to exhaust every
possible moment we had on the water now
when someone yells whale your adrenaline
really spikes someone yelled whale and
my adrenaline shot through the roof
there 100 meters off our bow was a spout
high and very visible we cut the motors
on the boat we put the dive teams in the
water and the cameras and I got in with
the crews and we slowly
Findo ver towards what was a pot of
whales and as we got closer we realized
this was a family of eight and in this
family of eight whales was a juvenile
and when I say juvenile he was 15 meters
long and he was as curious as us as we
were of him
and with a big flick of his tail he
dived incredibly deep and out of sight
and then moments later he came up right
between our cameras and we had for the
first time footage underwater on
cinematic cameras of a juvenile blue
whale it was a profound moment for us as
we were heading back to port and I was
reflecting on the shoot I realized that
these whales were resting and probably
feeding right near where we had filmed
this floating landfill of plastic
now whales when they feed blue whales
they open their mouths they suck in
thousands of liters of water and they
expel that water leaving behind the
krill in their baleen or their teeth but
whales can’t tell the difference between
krill and plastic the Sri Lankan
expedition was the start of an epic
quest for us but it posed more questions
than it answered if whales were
consuming plastic in a pristine
environment like the Indian Ocean what
was happening to marine life in oceans
in other parts of the planet and if as
we’d found out that 350 million tons of
plastic were being made that year how
much of that was ending up in the oceans
and if marine life in oceans around the
world were consuming plastic and we’re
at the top of the food chain what did
that mean for human health
well we gathered teams and brews and
scientists and we traveled for four
years around the globe to 20 different
locations to answer these questions for
our film a plastic ocean our
investigation was relentless for example
we found that 70% of plastic sinks now
what we’d seen then was just the tip of
the iceberg
so we hired a research vessel and two
submarines and we went to the
Mediterranean and we traveled to the
bottom of the Mediterranean sixteen
hundred metres below the surface to see
what happened to plastic in the absence
of light
in the absence of oxygen we traveled
thousands of kilometres to the Pacific
to islands where seabirds were ingesting
plastic mistaking it for food one of the
most powerful scenes in the film is of a
heroic little sea bird called a shear
water these birds chicks were turning up
dead in their hundreds on an island
called Lord Howe Island and when we open
the stomach’s of these birds we found
them filled with plastic in one
particular little chick
we found 272 pieces of plastic that’s
equal to about 12 pizzas if you were to
eat them all at once and put them in
your stomach can you imagine the pain
this animal was going through as we
opened other chicks
we found a red bottle cap and I realized
at that moment that that bottle cap
could have been a bottle cap I threw
away years earlier without understanding
the consequences of my actions now if
I’m a surfer a diver and an oceans
explorer and I didn’t realize the
consequences of my actions to the
natural world eight years ago how could
I expect anyone else to understand
theirs we needed awareness and a plastic
oceans would become the tool for that
now scientists told us that we would
dispose between eight and twelve million
tons of plastic into the world’s oceans
every year how on earth did we allow
that to happen well the answer is simple
we were told plastic would make our
lives easier we would no longer have to
do the washing up it would keep our food
fresher it would protect our consumer
products like no other material before
it and in many ways it did just that but
we were also told that plastic could be
used just once and thrown away think
about that plastic is the most durable
product we have ever made how can the
most durable product we have ever made
be considered disposable the answer is
it can’t it isn’t every piece of plastic
ever made is still on the earth unless
it’s been burned in the past decade we
have produced more plastic than the
entire century before that 15 years ago
the United States Center for Disease
Control released a study which showed
that more than 92 percent of all
Americans contain chemicals related to
plastic in their blood and their urine
and more disturbing than that was that
children between the ages of 6 and 11
have twice as much now plastic chemicals
like phthalates and bisphenol A
contain compounds which have estrogenic
activity which mimic and sometimes block
the natural hormonal production of our
bodies recent research shows that this
can cause endocrine disruptive disease
cancer diabetes fertility and other
reproductive issues but plastic has
become an integral part of our society
it’s a very useful tool my cameras my
car my computers all contain plastic
components but our habitual
consumption of single-use plastic is
destroying life-giving environments it’s
killing other species and it’s polluting
our food source so what will happen if
we don’t stop production of plastic well
as at 2015 we had produced globally
since plastic production had begun in
the 50s eight point three billion tons
of plastic eight point three billion
tons six point three billion tons of
that has become waste and of that six
point three billion tons of waste only
nine percent has been recycled by 2050
our population will explode to more than
nine point eight billion people and by
then we will be sending 12 billion tons
of plastic to landfill and to the
environment it’s staggering so what’s
the solution
well we need to stop our addiction to
single-use plastic we need to move to a
zero waste society we need to change the
very social and financial paradigms that
consider single-use plastic a useful
resource we need a multi-faceted
approach to this problem with input from
governments retailers manufacturers
consumers and we need to integrate new
ideas like new legislation circular
economies and cradle to grave
responsibility for manufacturers and
retailers and as consumers each one of
us needs to be smarter about the choices
we make we all need to rethink plastic
so how do we do that
well we stopped buying single-use
plastics to start with when I’m at home
and I have a drink I don’t need to use a
straw so why do I need a straw when I go
to a restaurant I don’t why would I
spend up to two thousand percent more
buying water in a plastic bottle when it
cost me so much less to refill a steel
container from the tap and it’s quite
often healthier it makes no sense
take a bag with you a reusable bag when
you go shopping and when you get to the
supermarket or the market call the
manager over at the checkout unwrapped
all the plastic from all of those fruits
and vegetables that have been
individually wrapped with this plastic
stuff and give it to the manager back to
the supermarket back to the market and
tell them to dispose of it properly
because you don’t want to have the
responsibility of taking at home and
having to do that anyway but more
importantly we need to go back we need
to understand the systems that sustain
life on planet Earth like the bird and
the worm the bird wasn’t committing
murder they’re part of a greater
ecological environmental system which
sustains life on Earth I know that now I
didn’t when I was 5 years of age
just like eight years ago I had no idea
that by throwing my plastic products
into the rubbish bin I was damaging the
environment and I was polluting the food
chain awareness is a very powerful tool
as I say in the film with knowing comes
caring and with caring comes change and
I’d like to leave you with this laughs
thought change starts with each and
every one of you there is a need to
change and when that need arises it’s
right now so we all need to start change
for our future for ourselves and for our children thank you very much
Tasmania a beautiful place it gave me
the opportunity to meet and interact
with incredible creatures and it was
where I developed a deep connectivity
with the ocean now tez mania is one of
the most beautiful islands on the planet
but 30 years ago the city I grew up in
had a terrible problem the ocean was
polluted with the outfall from heavy
industry there was a pulp and paper mill
a paint pigment plant and a
slaughterhouse among them these were
causing rashes on the bodies of swimmers
and surfers and when you got out of the
water you had saw red eyes Burnie at
that time had one of the highest
incidents of cancer in Australia
following the lead of three generations
of journalists in my family I made it my
investigative mission to uncover whether
these industries were in fact
responsible for the illnesses we were
seeing and also the poor state of the
ecosystem along the coastline so I got a
laboratory to test the waters around
Burnie and they found that the outfall
from the pulp and paper mill contained
organochlorines and these had dangerous
cancer-causing dioxins so I put these
findings to the state government and the
Minister for the environment and he
admitted for the first time that they
knew about these organochlorines
and these dioxins and that they were
dangerous but they hadn’t informed the
public so I published my stories in the
local newspaper
and it caused a storm of protests across
Australia national papers declared
Burnie Australia’s dirtiest city I
wasn’t very popular with our local
Tourism Authority I can tell you I was
20 years
of age at the time shortly after those
stories were published the industry
started to close down and today Bernie
has some of the bluest water along the
coastline and the fish have returned to
the waters around the city
I learnt then about the power of the
media now as I developed my skills in
the media through newspapers radio and
television I also developed a passion
for film film gave me the ability to
tell stories and to make documentaries
that gave voice to silent creatures like
the worms from my childhood but I also
had a deep love for a particular species
that had consumed my time as a child and
that was the blue whale an immense
creature also incredibly shy an
opportunity came to film a documentary
off the south coast of Sri Lanka it was
the combination for me of a live stream
now blue whales are the biggest animals
ever to have lived there bigger than any
dinosaur they grow to about 37 meters
long they have a heart as big as a car
but they were hunted almost to
extinction and as a result they’re
extremely elusive trying to find them is
like trying to find a giant needle in a
massive haystack we went up and down the
coastline of Sri Lanka for weeks on end
searching for these whales we would see
a spout in the distance we’d head
towards it we would get our cameras into
our underwater housings we’d get our
teams into the water would move towards
the whales and then we would never see
them again and this happened day after
day after day after day and if you want
to know what it’s like to go crazy look
out into an open ocean empty open ocean
for day after day after day after day
that’s where coffee became
friend of mine so he searched near an
underwater sea mount and this is where
krill gather because they’re bought in
by the currents and we knew the whales
would head there because they krill we
didn’t find whales what we found was
something very significant it was a
floating landfill of plastic this was a
massive slick of detritus as far as the
eye could see
it contained old fishing nets bait boxes
plastic bottles used lighters even
unopened biscuits the wastage of
humanity it was absolutely dreadful it
was the sign of a coming tragedy we
didn’t know that at the time we kept
looking for the whales for three weeks
and our time finally ran out we had to
head back to port because our visas were
about to expire but I’m an incredibly
stubborn individual and I hadn’t come
this far and worked this hard to give up
this easily so I refused to allow the
cameras to be packed away I refused to
allow the dive tanks to be put under the
boat I was going to exhaust every
possible moment we had on the water now
when someone yells whale your adrenaline
really spikes someone yelled whale and
my adrenaline shot through the roof
there 100 meters off our bow was a spout
high and very visible we cut the motors
on the boat we put the dive teams in the
water and the cameras and I got in with
the crews and we slowly
Findo ver towards what was a pot of
whales and as we got closer we realized
this was a family of eight and in this
family of eight whales was a juvenile
and when I say juvenile he was 15 meters
long and he was as curious as us as we
were of him
and with a big flick of his tail he
dived incredibly deep and out of sight
and then moments later he came up right
between our cameras and we had for the
first time footage underwater on
cinematic cameras of a juvenile blue
whale it was a profound moment for us as
we were heading back to port and I was
reflecting on the shoot I realized that
these whales were resting and probably
feeding right near where we had filmed
this floating landfill of plastic
now whales when they feed blue whales
they open their mouths they suck in
thousands of liters of water and they
expel that water leaving behind the
krill in their baleen or their teeth but
whales can’t tell the difference between
krill and plastic the Sri Lankan
expedition was the start of an epic
quest for us but it posed more questions
than it answered if whales were
consuming plastic in a pristine
environment like the Indian Ocean what
was happening to marine life in oceans
in other parts of the planet and if as
we’d found out that 350 million tons of
plastic were being made that year how
much of that was ending up in the oceans
and if marine life in oceans around the
world were consuming plastic and we’re
at the top of the food chain what did
that mean for human health
well we gathered teams and brews and
scientists and we traveled for four
years around the globe to 20 different
locations to answer these questions for
our film a plastic ocean our
investigation was relentless for example
we found that 70% of plastic sinks now
what we’d seen then was just the tip of
the iceberg
so we hired a research vessel and two
submarines and we went to the
Mediterranean and we traveled to the
bottom of the Mediterranean sixteen
hundred metres below the surface to see
what happened to plastic in the absence
of light
in the absence of oxygen we traveled
thousands of kilometres to the Pacific
to islands where seabirds were ingesting
plastic mistaking it for food one of the
most powerful scenes in the film is of a
heroic little sea bird called a shear
water these birds chicks were turning up
dead in their hundreds on an island
called Lord Howe Island and when we open
the stomach’s of these birds we found
them filled with plastic in one
particular little chick
we found 272 pieces of plastic that’s
equal to about 12 pizzas if you were to
eat them all at once and put them in
your stomach can you imagine the pain
this animal was going through as we
opened other chicks
we found a red bottle cap and I realized
at that moment that that bottle cap
could have been a bottle cap I threw
away years earlier without understanding
the consequences of my actions now if
I’m a surfer a diver and an oceans
explorer and I didn’t realize the
consequences of my actions to the
natural world eight years ago how could
I expect anyone else to understand
theirs we needed awareness and a plastic
oceans would become the tool for that
now scientists told us that we would
dispose between eight and twelve million
tons of plastic into the world’s oceans
every year how on earth did we allow
that to happen well the answer is simple
we were told plastic would make our
lives easier we would no longer have to
do the washing up it would keep our food
fresher it would protect our consumer
products like no other material before
it and in many ways it did just that but
we were also told that plastic could be
used just once and thrown away think
about that plastic is the most durable
product we have ever made how can the
most durable product we have ever made
be considered disposable the answer is
it can’t it isn’t every piece of plastic
ever made is still on the earth unless
it’s been burned in the past decade we
have produced more plastic than the
entire century before that 15 years ago
the United States Center for Disease
Control released a study which showed
that more than 92 percent of all
Americans contain chemicals related to
plastic in their blood and their urine
and more disturbing than that was that
children between the ages of 6 and 11
have twice as much now plastic chemicals
like phthalates and bisphenol A
contain compounds which have estrogenic
activity which mimic and sometimes block
the natural hormonal production of our
bodies recent research shows that this
can cause endocrine disruptive disease
cancer diabetes fertility and other
reproductive issues but plastic has
become an integral part of our society
it’s a very useful tool my cameras my
car my computers all contain plastic
components but our habitual
consumption of single-use plastic is
destroying life-giving environments it’s
killing other species and it’s polluting
our food source so what will happen if
we don’t stop production of plastic well
as at 2015 we had produced globally
since plastic production had begun in
the 50s eight point three billion tons
of plastic eight point three billion
tons six point three billion tons of
that has become waste and of that six
point three billion tons of waste only
nine percent has been recycled by 2050
our population will explode to more than
nine point eight billion people and by
then we will be sending 12 billion tons
of plastic to landfill and to the
environment it’s staggering so what’s
the solution
well we need to stop our addiction to
single-use plastic we need to move to a
zero waste society we need to change the
very social and financial paradigms that
consider single-use plastic a useful
resource we need a multi-faceted
approach to this problem with input from
governments retailers manufacturers
consumers and we need to integrate new
ideas like new legislation circular
economies and cradle to grave
responsibility for manufacturers and
retailers and as consumers each one of
us needs to be smarter about the choices
we make we all need to rethink plastic
so how do we do that
well we stopped buying single-use
plastics to start with when I’m at home
and I have a drink I don’t need to use a
straw so why do I need a straw when I go
to a restaurant I don’t why would I
spend up to two thousand percent more
buying water in a plastic bottle when it
cost me so much less to refill a steel
container from the tap and it’s quite
often healthier it makes no sense
take a bag with you a reusable bag when
you go shopping and when you get to the
supermarket or the market call the
manager over at the checkout unwrapped
all the plastic from all of those fruits
and vegetables that have been
individually wrapped with this plastic
stuff and give it to the manager back to
the supermarket back to the market and
tell them to dispose of it properly
because you don’t want to have the
responsibility of taking at home and
having to do that anyway but more
importantly we need to go back we need
to understand the systems that sustain
life on planet Earth like the bird and
the worm the bird wasn’t committing
murder they’re part of a greater
ecological environmental system which
sustains life on Earth I know that now I
didn’t when I was 5 years of age
just like eight years ago I had no idea
that by throwing my plastic products
into the rubbish bin I was damaging the
environment and I was polluting the food
chain awareness is a very powerful tool
as I say in the film with knowing comes
caring and with caring comes change and
I’d like to leave you with this laughs
thought change starts with each and
every one of you there is a need to
change and when that need arises it’s
right now so we all need to start change
for our future for ourselves and for our children thank you very much
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