Raising Awareness of Plastic Hazards

Key concepts

The diversity of the plastic problem requires
• a diversity of talent; different types of organizations
• champions with diverse expertise and different approaches
• both big ideas and continuous improvement
• continually trying new experiments and engaging new champions

Diverse organizations are working to change the way plastic is viewed and plastic waste is handled, through strategic planning, communication, consumer awareness campaigns, raising business awareness, documentary films, education, cleanup campaigns, scientific research, entrepreneurial innovation, legislation, and sustainability.

Some of the  organizations listed below are large, some small; some old, some new. We list them alphabetically because we do not want to judge their work. What is significant is that so many organizations are doing work, whatever work they can do to contribute to this grand challenge.

The aim is to increase understanding of the plastic pollution problem so more sustainable solutions are found, innovations implemented, and more people and organizations are empowered to take action to stop plastic pollution and live plastic-free. Solutions include recycling, new technologies, legislation, changes in individual attitudes and habits, responsible business processes and practices, and paradigmatic changes on a global scale.

Ellen MacArthur Foundation

See our article featuring The Ellen MacArthur Foundation as an exemplar how individual vision, leadership and team-building can have a significant impact.

5 Gyres

See our article featuring 5 Gyres also an organization that started small and has developed its own unique niche, leading expeditions and fostering awareness.

Living Oceans Society

Living Oceans Society works to protect Canada’s oceans and advocates for oceans that are managed for the common good according to science-based policies that consider ecosystems in their entirety. They engage in campaigns, inform stakeholders using maps, reports and other publications, engage with government, industry and the people who live and work on the coast to create viable solutions to conservation issues, promote sound public policy and corporate social responsibility, and enable coastal communities to protect the ocean resources they depend upon. A coastal cleanup on the northwest coast of Vancouver Island bagged 10 tons of debris.

Marine Litter Solutions

Marine Litter Solutions has built a coalition of local organizations addressing the problem of litter washed up on beaches in their local communities.

Marine Litter Solutions initiated The Global Declaration, which obliges signatories to commit to action in six areas: education, research, public policy, best practices, recycling/recovery, and product stewardship. As of 2014, more than 185 marine litter projects have been planned, underway, or completed around the globe. Projects ranged in size, focus, and scope and involved an ever growing number of partners, all forging cooperation and furthering progress to prevent, reduce, and improve understanding of marine litter. They found that consistently across the 6 countries, most residents could not pin point which plastics could be recycled and only a modest proportion correctly matched different plastics to their international recycling codes. In a 2017 survey commissioned by the Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA), the voice of the petrochemical industry in the Arabian Gulf, revealed that only 38 percent of GCC residents had an informed view of recyclable and degradable plastics. Their website chronicles their global organizational efforts. The following four initiatives are grouped here because they are all working on related concepts:

Cool Seas Investigators (CSI Challenge in the UK)

CSI, a project of Marine Litter Solutions, recognizes that litter is a major environmental issue, a threat to wildlife, impacts the ocean, affects the local community, and is a financial burden and is running the CSI Challenge to raise awareness.

Keep It Beachy Clean

Keep It Beachy Clean in Virginia is an effective local organization for litter prevention and marine debris prevention program, piloted by Clean Virginia Waterways, which focuses on reaching Virginia Beach’s resort community including hotel guests and employees, with anti-litter messaging, designed to influence the behaviors of visitors.

Love Where You Live

Love Where You Live is a book, and associated campaign that aims to inspire, encourage and enable individuals to make where they live, work and play, the kind of place where they really want it to be, and making a difference, whether as individuals, groups, local authorities.

TAKE 3

TAKE 3 was foundedin Australia by a group of beach lovers, environmentalists and surfers based in Australia, and is dedicated to keeping beach areas free of litter. They developed an initiative that encourages people to leave the world’s beaches and oceans cleaner than when they found them, transforming littered beaches into clean ones by encouraging beach goers to pick up three pieces of trash every time they leave the beach.

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

The Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC, works to safeguard the people, plants, animals, and natural systems of the earth. They have two million members and online activists, and use the expertise of over 500 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of people for air, water, and the wild.

NRDC has four programs that focus on the ocean: ocean protection, ocean threats, sustainable fishing, and noise. They aim to protect marine life by preventing plastic pollution from reaching the ocean, and feel that one of the most effective solutions is to call on producers of single-use plastics to take greater responsibility for their products. While many states mandate that manufacturers of paint and carpets recover and recycle their products after use, makers of plastic packaging could also be required to find innovative ways to design materials that can be fully recovered for recycling or reuse, as well as help cover the costs of keeping plastic out of the oceans.

At the state level NRDC supports strategies that reduce the use of single use plastic bags which enter the ocean. In California NRDC helped make the economic case for dealing with marine plastics, analyzed data from coastal communities in the state, and found the state spent $428 million every year to clean up plastic trash and debris from waterways. As part of a growing coalition of waste management, community, environmental, and business groups, they advocate for measures that would address the many different types of single-use plastics, recommend creating incentives for industry to use less plastic packaging for their products, make packaging fully recyclable, and ensure that recycling actually happens. These measures would reduce marine trash and the costs of managing it as well as creating jobs: One study found that recycling 75 percent of the nation’s waste could generate 1.1 million jobs by 2030.

Oceana

Oceana works to protect and restore the world’s oceans through targeted policy campaigns based in Washington D.C with offices throughout the world, to protect sea life affected by industrial fishing by using targeted policy campaigns focused on science combined with media, law and public pressure, including responsible fishing and preventing ocean pollution.

Oceana was established in 2001 by a group of leading foundations — The Pew Charitable Trusts, Oak Foundation, Marisla Foundation (formerly Homeland Foundation), and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

In 1999, these foundations commissioned a study and discovered that less than 0.5 percent of all resources spent by environmental nonprofit groups in the United States went to ocean advocacy — an appalling statistic. No organization was working exclusively to protect and restore the oceans on a global scale.

Andy Sharpless, CEO of Oceana, speaking at TEDx San Francisco:

To fill the gap, our founders created Oceana: an international organization focused solely on oceans, dedicated to achieving measurable change by conducting specific, science-based campaigns with fixed deadlines and articulated goals.

The Ocean Law Project — also initiated by The Pew Charitable Trusts — was absorbed into Oceana in 2001 as Oceana’s legal arm. In 2002, Oceana merged with American Oceans Campaign, founded by actor and environmentalist Ted Danson, to more effectively address our common mission of protecting and restoring the world’s oceans.

Since its founding, Oceana has won more than 100 victories and protected more than one million square miles of ocean.

Ocean Conservancy

Ocean Conservancy advocacy for a healthy ocean since 1972 has initiated projects, including International Coastal Cleanups, which enlist thousands of volunteers all over the U.S. each year to assist in clearing trash and other human debris from beaches. They also run an online petition aimed at forcing BP to take full responsibility for the cleanup of the devastating 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed eleven people and caused incalculable damage to the surrounding wildlife.

Ocean Health Index

The Ocean Health Index was founded to focus on ways to monitor and report the health of our oceans.
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Ocean Recovery Alliance

Ocean Recovery Alliance hosts Plasticity Forum workshops in various cities and works on ocean plastic cleanup. A new report on the trends in the plastic-to-fuel industry was released at the Plasticity Forum by the ACC and Ocean Recovery Alliance as a discussion tool for a variety of local and international stakeholders including: municipal and national governments, corporations, community leaders, business associations, NGOs, project developers, and others interested in the management of end-of-life plastic waste.  It aims to highlight the opportunities available for creating value from plastics, in concert with the regulatory, technical and logistical barriers that need to be overcome on the path towards the widespread commercial adoption of plastics-to-fuel (PTF) technology. The report can aid stakeholders by facilitating knowledge-sharing and regulatory convergence to expedite project deployment. Their focus is on working with the enterprise through their Plastic Disclosure Project.

Ocean Research and Conservation Association (ORCA)

The Ocean Research and Conservation Association (also known as Team ORCA) was set up in 2005 by marine researcher Edie Widder, PhD. Since then, the team of engineers, research scientists, and marine biologists behind ORCA has been using the latest technologies to develop low-cost solutions and analysis of polluted waterways. Some of ORCA’s initiatives include the FAST (Fast Assessment of Sediment Toxicity) program, and the ORCA kilroys, a low-cost oceanic monitoring network that enables the team to keep track of the long-term health of the oceans. Another campaign, Mission Blue, was launched in 2009 after the author, oceanic advocate, and ORCA supporter Sylvia Earle expressed a wish to “ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.” Mission Blue became a network of global philanthropists, including Glenn Close, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Jackson Browne, and Leonardo DiCaprio who pledged over $16.7 million which enabled ORCA to continue their work.

Ocean Voyages Institute

Ocean Voyages Institute sponsors Project Kaisei and and works on ocean plastic cleanup.

Plastic Oceans

Plastic Oceans is a global network of independent not-for-profits and charitable organizations, united in their aims to change the world’s attitude towards plastic within a generation. There are currently four Plastic Oceans Foundation entities: United States, Canada, Hong Kong and United Kingdom serving both the ocean and the public. Plastic Oceans is challenging society’s perception that plastic is an indestructible substance that can be treated as ‘disposable’. They engage people of all ages, in all social situations, to understand the danger of continuing to perceive plastic as disposable. By increasing awareness of the plastic threat to human health, they hope it will become a personal choice to prevent plastic waste from entering the environment. They are doing this through an awareness campaign that includes the documentary film, A Plastic Ocean. They aim to spread the message of the film and promote solutions through education, business, and sustainability and science across the globe.

Plastic Pollution Coalition

See our article featuring Plastic Pollution Coalition as an exemplar of a cause-based, next generation social network, committed to problem-solving. Their film “Open Your Eyes” with actor Jeff Bridges and their campaign with the band U2 raise public awareness.

Save Our Shores

Save Our Shores is a nonprofit marine conservation organization in Santa Cruz, California whose mission is caring for the marine environment through ocean awareness, advocacy, and citizen action. Over the last 30 years, they have been responsible for key accomplishments including preventing offshore oil drilling in Central Coast waters, helping to establish the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, preventing local cruise ship pollution, and bringing together diverse stakeholders to find common solutions to ocean issues. Today we focus on educating youth about watersheds, tackling plastic pollution on beaches and rivers, advocating for plastic-free communities, managing Annual Coastal Cleanup Day in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, running a nationally renowned Dockwalker program, and providing the community with educated and inspired Sanctuary Stewards. They seek to change attitudes, measure positive change, engage community, promote action and inspire advocacy.

Surfrider

Surfrider is grassroots non-profit organization that focuses on water quality, coastal ecosystems, beach access, and beach and surf spot preservation mainly in North America, as well as parts of South America, Europe and Japan, through an activist network, coastal conservation efforts, and digital petitions.

See the app @ earthDECKS.org
Saving Our Oceans from Plastic: articles by Zann Gill



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