Luke Tipple is joined by lead ocean field scientist at The Ocean Cleanup, Matthias Egger, to discuss efforts to eliminate the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Luke Tipple is joined by environmental scientist and lead ocean field scientist at The Ocean Cleanup, Matthias Egger. They’ll discuss the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a mass of floating plastic debris between Hawaii and California that is twice the size of Texas and how The Ocean Cleanup plans to eliminate 90% of the garbage patch by 2040. The guys will also look at the effects of plastics and microplastics on marine life and the ecosystem and reveal what you can do to help.
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[00:00:00] Luke: On today's podcast, we'll be joined by environmental scientist and lead ocean researcher from The Ocean Cleanup, Dr. Matthias Egger. He's gonna tell us all about the amazing work The Ocean Cleanup is doing, all around the world, to rid our oceans of plastic. You know, they recently removed 25,000 kilos, that's 28 US tons, or 55,000 pounds of plastic out of the Pacific.
[00:00:25] Luke: We'll discuss the effects of ocean pollution on sharks and other ocean wildlife habitats. Plus, Dr. Matthias will be discussing ways that we can all do our part to keep our oceans clean. All that and more is coming up on this episode of Shark Week: The Podcast
[00:00:42] Luke: I'm Luke Tipple, marine biologist and a frequent voice on my favorite things, oceans and sharks. And I'm stoked to bring the magic of Shark Week, right to your ears. You know, sharks have been a big part of my life for over 20 years. They're a critical part of the ocean and a conduit to better understanding life on our planet. So, whether you've never seen Shark Week before or you've been a die hard fan over the 30-plus years it's been around, this podcast is for you.
[00:01:15] Luke: On today's episode, I have a very special guest and I gotta tell you, I've been very excited about this episode for quite some time because we're talking about a topic that is extremely important. And while it's not directly about sharks, it directly affects sharks. So it's something we should all pay a lot of attention to.
[00:01:35] Luke: We have lead ocean researcher from The Ocean Cleanup, Dr. Matthias Egger! Mate, welcome to the Shark Week: The Podcast.
[00:01:42] Matthias: Thank you Luke and thanks for having me.
[00:01:42] Luke: So let's, uh, let's set the, you know, the stage here. Tell everyone what it is you're doing.
[00:01:50] Matthias: Yeah. So I'm like you said, I'm part of the research team here at the Ocean Clean.
[00:01:54] Matthias: The cleanup is a nonprofit. We are based in the Netherlands, and our, our bold aim is to essentially read the world's oceans of plastic. So try to make sure that there's normal plastic waste in the ocean. And, and my role within the organization is to figure out the problem. So what is the problem that we're dealing with with.
[00:02:13] Matthias: Where's the plastic coming from that ends up in the ocean? You know, how is it getting there? What happens to it once it is in the ocean? And what kind of harm is it doing, you know, while just accumulating in the ocean and fragmenting into small bits of plastic and, and all the stuff that's happening to it now.
[00:02:28] Matthias: How
[00:02:29] Luke: big a problem is plastic in the ocean. And you must get this question just constantly, but we hear it in the news all the time that, you know, our oceans are basically turning into plastics. Uh, it's in everything. It's in our, it's, it's turning up in our blood. It's, it's, it's in our guts. It's, it's in our seafood, it's in everything.
[00:02:46] Luke: So is this really the. Catastrophic problem that it's made out to
[00:02:50] Matthias: be. It is a significant challenge to marine life. Yes. Uh, it adds up to other stresses like climate change, ocean acidification. You have deoxy oxygenation because of, you know, fertilizer going into the ocean. You have overfishing. There's a whole bunch of issues that marine life has to deal with.
[00:03:06] Matthias: And on top of that, you add lots of plastic to it, uh, with it lots of pollution, chemicals, nasty stuff. Associated with the plastic. So it's certainly not helpful for marine life. It is a big problem, but it's also a problem that, you know, I think we can still manage, we can still solve. So it's not too late, but, uh, the time is
[00:03:23] Luke: running Now.
[00:03:24] Luke: When you say it's a problem for marine life, I mean the, the studies coming out. You know, fairly regularly now identifying microplastics and chunks of plastics and even very large piece of plastics in marine life. You know, uh, in our favorite animals in sharks, it's being found in their gut tracks, in their, their tissue.
[00:03:43] Luke: Uh, a new paper that just came out saying that they're finding it in deep water sharks now, uh, in 67% of deep water sharks that are being caught and sampled, they're finding micro plastics in their gut. And, you know, this is clearly. A problem that's affecting all the, the TRO levels of our marine life. Um, how do you explain to somebody how this actually affects us when it's affecting marine life?
[00:04:10] Matthias: Well, us humans, it can affect it like twofold. First of all, through consumption of seafood, right? If, if there's plastic and chemicals in the fish we eat, we eat that stuff so it ends up on our plate. That's one way. Plastic pollution in the ocean can affect us as consumers, but I think maybe even more importantly now, it can impact the how marine ecosystem work.
[00:04:31] Matthias: Marine, they play a really essential role in providing oxygen for us, you know, in taking up CO2 from the atmosphere. So they have a key role to play in regulating climate and oxygen levels, and we start messing around with that, and we just don't know what the impact of that is, uh, for, for humans on
[00:04:46] Luke: earth Now.
[00:04:48] Luke: It was probably, Now correct me if my timeline is wrong here, but I remember probably about a decade ago, um, we started hearing about this place called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Um, you know, it was this big revelation that we had this large Gyre in the Pacific Ocean that was pretty much on a straight line between Hawaii and California.
[00:05:11] Luke: And it was just this gigantic Texas size. Patch of plastic that we were hearing different reports of, you know, almost being able to walk on solid plastic across a, you know, it was, Can you explain to people the, the problem what you've put into place to solve it and the actual scale of your global
[00:05:30] Matthias: operations?
[00:05:31] Matthias: Yes. Um, Will be my pleasure. There's also a lot of misconception about what the Great Pacific Garbage patch is and what it is not. So first of all, I think it just shows, you know, it's, it's very remote. Just think of you, you're entering a boat or a vessel in California. Why? It takes about five days to get out there.
[00:05:48] Matthias: So it's really, really far away from any land, right? Uh, so we usually out there for a month or two, uh, and the snow land. Anywhere close and all of a sudden you see like all this plastic accumulating around you. It just really visualizes quite well. The, the scale of the problem, right? It's, it's there out in the middle of the ocean floating around.
[00:06:05] Matthias: You see a toothbrush, for example. Uh, but that's just the visible part of the, of the, the iceberg, right? There's lots of plastic also in the, in the water, on the sea bed. But it's a very nice visualization of the extent that we are polluting our oceans. And then it is certainly not an island of trash. You cannot walk on it.
[00:06:23] Matthias: So if, if I'm out there and I would send you a photo of, of the ocean surface there, the only thing you would see is blue, very pristine, beautiful ocean landscape. Uh, but if you then sue me and you'll start realizing, oh, there's lots of little bits and pieces there, like lots of microplastics, especially if the seas come and you're out there on a, on a small dinghy or a small sailing vessel.
[00:06:45] Matthias: I usually compare it to the night sky. You know, you see stars and the long you look, the more you see. And that's essentially what you see out there of the microplastics. If you take a step, step back and zoom out a little bit, you start realizing that, say if you fly over with an airplane or a drone, you don't see the microplastics, but you start seeing big stuff.
[00:07:02] Matthias: You start seeing big nets, you know, you see buoys, crates, baskets, all the kind of big items if you count the pieces of plastic floating out there. It's mostly microplastics because they're very abundant. If you talk about the plastic mass, so the weight of plastic accumulating there, it's mostly big items like nets and, and crates and buoys.
[00:07:20] Matthias: Um, but the point is it's, it's quite dispersed. So we, we talk about maybe one piece of plastic per square meter. So it is a lot if you look at, at the area so that the garbage patch, it's quite dynamic, you know it move. North and south, and it's, it's just moved around a lot with the ocean currents and weather conditions, but it's about three times the size of France, or for the American France, about two times the size of Texas.
[00:07:43] Matthias: It's a huge area. And if you have one piece of plastic per square meter, that, that adds up to a lot of plastic, right? Uh, but you cannot just go there, walk on it, or even like, just scoop it up because you know, first have to concentrate it somehow. And that is exactly what we do. So essentially what what we do is like the.
[00:07:59] Matthias: Islands, they're out there and in close to the patch, and they, they have lots of plastic on their beaches because the, the stuff that's in the garbage, garbage patch ends up on those coastlines. So what we do is we develop the cleanup system that goes into the garbage patch and creates an artificial coastline so that then accumulates the plastic in this cleanup system.
[00:08:19] Matthias: Which allows us essentially to then extract it. So we first have to concentrate it up to make it in feasible to extract, and that is what we do at the Ocean cleanup. And, uh, it is quite, you know, an ambitious, uh, project. Um, but I think it gives me a lot of hope also because you're out there. We are not only cleaning, we are earning so much about the problem.
[00:08:39] Matthias: And so what we now can do is, so if you're a scientist, if you're lucky, you maybe can go out there once a. If have good funding for that or research vessel associated with your institute? What we have is we have vessels going back and forth all the time over, you know, the entire year. So we now starting collecting data from all different seasons between different years and that is really like increasing our standing of the ecosystem also out there.
[00:09:02] Matthias: Not only the plastic and how we can clean it, but also what kind of animals do actually leave out there at the top of the ocean surface.
[00:09:09] Luke: So let's, uh, kind of tackle the problem and, and, and lay out, you know, the solution for people. And we'll get into where the plastic is coming from later. Um, what is actually causing this?
[00:09:22] Luke: Garbage patch, uh, you know, the gyre what, what kind of ocean movements are involved?
[00:09:27] Matthias: Yeah. It's large scale ocean dynamics. So you have like the, the big general circulation s in the ocean and it creates this kind of es like eddies in, in the subtropical gys. So that's usually around 30 degrees north and south and latitudes.
[00:09:42] Matthias: And so you see those eighties forming because of how the water moves through the ocean at, at the ocean. Uh, so you have one in the North Pacific, then you also have such an Eddie in the South Pacific, North and South Atlantic and in the Southern Indian Ocean.
[00:09:57] Luke: So to kind of put it in, in, you know, visual terms of somebody, uh, would it be fair to say that, you know, the ocean currents are basically banging into each other from different.
[00:10:06] Luke: Ocean movements and in the middle of those it's creating kind of like this, you know, accumulation area. Maybe you think of it like a, like a drain plug where you know, not so dramatic as creating this great big whirlpool, but it's creating an area that's bringing everything into it like you might see in a sink full of food scraps or something.
[00:10:27] Luke: It all concentrates on the center. Yeah. Is it
[00:10:29] Matthias: something. Yeah. Yes. But I think more visually, um, just look at the toilet. You flush it, you see a world forming and stuff tends to sink in the middle of it. Um, that's actually what's happening. You know, we have this, this, this, this big world. And spit water. Uh, and you know, in the middle of it, stuff tends to sink and so the water goes down in the middle.
[00:10:51] Matthias: But plastic, for example, it doesn't go down because it's floating. So by the water goes down, plastic stays at top. So essentially, if you would flush your toilet with just stuff that only floats and doesn't sink, you'll see that over time it accumulates a lot of it in, in the middle of, of, you know, of your.
[00:11:05] Matthias: Pond in
[00:11:06] Luke: there and there's, you said there's five areas of focus of these, you know, eddies around the planet. Are they all of the scale of the, the, the Pacific garbage patch, or are they all accumulating
[00:11:20] Matthias: plastic? That's one thing we do here at the Ocean cleanup is try to map those garbage patches. We've done it for the North Pacific.
[00:11:27] Matthias: Uh, and we published that a few years ago, and now we are working on mapping the other garbage patches because for example, especially in the Indian Ocean for example, it could be, there's a huge one there, but it could also be that there's not a garbage patch for me because of now how water moved moves through the ocean.
[00:11:43] Matthias: So, so we don't know whether there's a big one there on, not even one at all. Um, and that shows the, you know, we have a chill idea of where things are accumulating and some educated guesses. But we just like no more data to confirm our model estimates.
[00:11:57] Luke: So how do you actually establish that there is one of those accumulation sites?
[00:12:01] Luke: Do you, I mean, I imagine you actually have to go out there and sample it, right? Yeah. You go
[00:12:05] Matthias: out there and have a look, , just simple that, I mean with fancy tools, but that's what it comes down to. You sail across. Sure. Uh, we collect data, visual observations. We fly drones. Uh, we have some small net, which like for microplastics, bigger net for, for bigger stuff.
[00:12:21] Matthias: Uh, we also developing a camera system we can attach to a vessel to a boat, and it takes a photo of the sea surface every few seconds. And then we have an AI going through all that millions of photos, and it detects whether as a plastic object actually there or not. So it tells us how much plastic is floating while, you know, transiting with a vessel.
[00:12:40] Matthias: So yeah, but we have to go out there. And what we do is we combine then what we observe without what our model predicts. And if you see that those two match, we are confident about the models. If they do not match, then we can use the data that we collect to fine tune the model to make it work.
[00:12:56] Luke: So you've established that obviously there is this garbage patch in Pacific and you're actually out there engaged in a cleanup now and.
[00:13:05] Luke: To me when I look at this, uh, the scale is staggering cuz I hear reports of you bringing out, I think just recently you brought out 25,000 kilos of plastic from that area. And, you know, there's other reports saying that there's, you know, 5 trillion pieces of plastic in our ocean. So these are gigantic, almost incomprehensible numbers.
[00:13:25] Luke: What does it actually take to pull 25,000 kilos of plastic out of the.
[00:13:31] Matthias: Well, for us it takes, uh, a crane and a big boat. . No, but it's a bit more complicated than that, but it's, it's a lot of weight. It sounds like a pretty big boat. . Well, it's, I mean, if you look at what Fisher Fisheries are doing, you know, they're dealing with butcher more mass.
[00:13:48] Matthias: Also, if you go and look at the offshore oil and gas, you know that that's, that's different loads that they're, Towing and lifting. So at 25 tons, so 25,000 kilograms, that's, it's a lot, but it's also not very uncommon for these kind of vessels to have cranes that can actually lift that. Uh, but it's substantial.
[00:14:05] Matthias: And we, we are now over a hundred tons or a hundred thousand kilograms that we removed from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Um, but the thing is, we were still testing, are still testing, I'll clean up systems, so we aim to make it larger, you know, to actually increase that substantially to, to even collect even more plastic with one cleanup.
[00:14:21] Luke: And for those of you who are questioning kind of how it works, imagine that you're trying to clean up a pond at home. Imagine you go this great big pond in your backyard and you've got stuff floating all around it. Now you could go out there with a a pool net and try to scoop trash out like little bit by bit, or you could get a great big net that goes all around the very edge of the pond, and then you slowly, slowly drag it in and drag it towards you capturing everything that's in the pond.
[00:14:50] Luke: The water. Now, this is basically what they're doing out on the ocean. They've got a great big barge that puts out a huge net. It's a very shallow net. So the, the fish and everything can get out, but the floating plastic can't. So they drag it into the boat slowly, slowly, slowly, so the plastic doesn't spill over.
[00:15:07] Luke: And then, As it gets closer to the boat, they wrap it in this great big kind of like net sock stocking thing and drag it on board. And it's now this huge big package of discarded plastic in various states of disrepair and, and degradation. And that gets hold away for
[00:15:24] Matthias: recycling. So, and I think the key thing here is that, and net is open at the bottom right, our cleanup systems, but three meter deep.
[00:15:31] Matthias: The new one will go to four meter, but it's very shallow. Um, because most plastic is just floating at the top, right? At least floating fraction. And then so it's open at the bottom. Fish can just swim in and out, you know, And the, the speed is crucial. So the towing speed is less the speed you would just walk when you walk on the street.
[00:15:49] Matthias: So it's really slow. So we see it's just fish swimming into the system, checking it. Swim out again. Uh, and so they can just swim in and out. There are escape route for, you know, uh, fish one there. So we have those two arms that are collecting the debris and at the end of it we have a retention zone.
[00:16:06] Matthias: That's where all the stuff, all the debris accumulates. That's also, we know where we don't have. Do not wanna have any marine life in there. So there escape route from out that zone. There are also breathing, uh, possibilities. So if you, if you know turtle needs to surface for air, you can do that. Uh, and there are like the lights scaring them off.
[00:16:24] Matthias: You know, I think that's even like a fake shark scaring off turtles. So we, we are trying to mitigate any marine life.
[00:16:30] Luke: You gotta elaborate on that, You. Fake shark that scares off turtles.
[00:16:33] Matthias: Yeah. Oh, I haven't seen myself, my colleagues told of me that they're playing around with that to see if that's any effect in scaring off turtles.
[00:16:39] Matthias: Um, so you have to take any measure of possible, because every turtle safe is, is a good. Tool. Right? So certainly we do not wanna have anything ending up in the retention zone. And if it's, if a fake shark helps to scare them off, then, then why not try
[00:16:53] it?
[00:16:53] Luke: Yeah. Do you know what, uh, what they're actually using?
[00:16:57] Luke: Like, is it a robotic tiger shark or something? Or just like a, a model of a shark, You know, any idea.
[00:17:03] Matthias: I do not know, but I will definitely ask my colleagues, uh,
[00:17:07] Luke: tonight. Yeah. Yeah. We definitely wanna talk to the head of your robotics team that's building, you know, robotic giant tiger sharks that swim around in nets, cuz that sounds cool.
[00:17:17] Luke: It does. Yeah. Um, but, okay, so with all this effort, uh, is there any bycatch in what you do?
[00:17:23] Matthias: There is by catch. Uh, it's not a lot, but there is by catch. And so we actually look. The bycatch that we have in the system. And we also do an on, on those fish that we collect. And on the, so the turtles, for example, that we collect, uh, try to figure out what the health condition was.
[00:17:39] Matthias: And for the turtles, we see that very often. Almost all cases that the turtles that we had in the cleanup system, they had lots of plastic and chested. Sometimes there were even dead before they were collected in the cleanup system because they were quite composed already. So we tried to figure out, you know, how much is actually primary.
[00:17:56] Matthias: Bycatch. So no things that we killed or animals that, you know, were, uh, extracted because of our operation and things that were just floating their dead already, the secondary bycatch. And we do those autopsy and we share that data with the auto scientists in order to really investigate that further. Uh, also, Since this is a shark podcast, we have PME sharks in there.
[00:18:15] Matthias: Uh, but we also look into how much microplastics do we find in the guts of, of those pme sharks to also tell us something about, you know, what's the impact the plastic pollution is having on those remote ecosystems. So you can do two things, right? You can look at the impact that you have while cleaning, which is very crucial.
[00:18:32] Matthias: We need to very closely monitor and make sure that that's very low. But it also, because that's bycatch, we can use that as, you know, a possibility to actually study. What is the impact of plastic pollution on those fish species or, or the species
[00:18:46] Luke: that we collected? Uh, what is the, uh, determination when you do these autopsies and look at these animals?
[00:18:52] Luke: Is the general thought that they were very sick and that's why they were unable to escape the net system or already dead, as you say,
[00:19:00] Matthias: it depends on the species you look at. If, if you have a turtle, you know, and, and they have lots of plastic in the stomach, we know that they have difficulties. Diving going into deeper waters.
[00:19:09] Matthias: So it could be that they don't, cannot use our escape routes because they have difficulties actually diving down there like the three, four meter step. Um, but so we don't know yet. So that data's being collected and it's being shared with experts because I, myself, I'm not an expert in all the species. Um, and so we, we need to partner up with the scientists that actually know whether, you know, why we think those species ended up in our retention system and
[00:19:33] Luke: what is the, the ultimate goal and time.
[00:19:36] Luke: For what you're doing in the
[00:19:38] Matthias: Pacific? Yeah, we wanna have 90% of the great Pacific, Great Pacific garbage patch cleaned by 2040, so within the next 20 years or so.
[00:19:47] Luke: So that's 20. Uh, how long have you been out there
[00:19:49] Matthias: total? So far? We have been now with the current cleanup system over one year, but we started trialing the first prototypes 2018.
[00:19:58] Luke: So this. in one year, you are, you know, experimenting, getting the methods right. I What does the development timeline for you guys look like? Is it just more vessels? Is it advanced cleaning techniques? You know, I imagine in 20 years from now the, the methodology may change or is it just more stuff out there?
[00:20:18] Matthias: Yeah, so I mean, to maybe clarify a little bit, I. Since last year, we have a cleanup system out there that works, uh, but of the trials started way earlier than that. So we start with like pool tests and model simulations here in the Netherlands. Went into the North Sea to test different barrier ations. And in 2018 we had Wilson, our first cleanup system that we launched from, uh, San Francisco.
[00:20:39] Matthias: Maybe we've seen it, You know, we taught it on the Golden Gate Bridge. Went out, did lots of testing. It worked, but it did not, It also failed and broke into two pieces. But we had the lack of lessons learned. We had another prototype system one B out there the year later, and now we have system two that actually works.
[00:20:56] Matthias: Now. That's a proof concept. And so what we do now, we just started the transition to system three, so that's the next cleanup, system iteration, and that's essentially making system two bigger. So we are adding components to it slowly, uh, to make it bigger and more to our node efficiency. But also is there any change in environmental impact?
[00:21:15] Matthias: Because that's the key thing, right? The reason why we do not have 10 system out there now is because we wanna make sure that. We know that we don't do any harm to the ecosystem out there. So we have one system, we make it bigger, we monitor, we observe, and if it's safe, then we want to use system three as a blueprint for a larger fleet.
[00:21:32] Matthias: So there increase it to two systems, three systems up to 10, uh, to then really start the full cleanup of the grab. Go Pacific Garbage patch.
[00:21:40] Luke: And what type of finances are involved in putting this together? Like what does a year of operations look like for the ocean cleanup?
[00:21:47] Matthias: Well, that pretty much depends, uh, on your r and d costs.
[00:21:50] Matthias: Um, so it's very difficult to just use the spendings from last year and, you know, make predictions to, to the future, uh, because costs will come down. Um, also once you have big system, you extract more per unit of effort. Uh, our aim is to. 10 euros per kilogram of plastic removed. I think that's equal roughly month, 10 SD per kilogram of plastic that we remove eventually from the Gray Pacific garbage.
[00:22:13] Luke: And that's all funded by, Uh, you're a non-profit, obviously, so is it private donations? Is it government donations? I mean, 10, $10 a kilo, and you're aiming to remove, you know, tens of thousands of tons. You know, that's an extremely expensive operation.
[00:22:28] Matthias: It is very expensive. Yes. Uh, we are, the money, the money we get is donations.
[00:22:33] Matthias: It's, we are nonprofits. Uh, so we are funded by donations purely, uh, a lot of it is no fundraising, like Facebook, for example, and our, no me, other people like you, me, giving small amounts, but it adds up to actually a substantial amount of money. But also philanthropists know, uh, rich people trying to know, help the solving this issue, uh, and giving us money.
[00:22:53] Matthias: Therefore, we have. Partnerships that also gives us some inkin contributions, you know, access to infrastructure, logistics. So it, it really is a team effort and it's really motivating to, to see, know that people are so willing to help. And it goes beyond giving money, it really sharing expertise and giving access to, to their equipment.
[00:23:12] Matthias: That's really, um, you know, um, good to see. And it, it fills me a lot of hope that we can. Tackle that problem and
[00:23:19] Luke: solve it. Let me move on to where this plastic is coming from because I, I just watched, uh, one of the videos that you guys put out and I found it absolutely fascinating actually, cuz in my mind the, the garbage patch was full of Coke bottles and, you know, land waste and, and stuff like that.
[00:23:39] Luke: But as it turns out, that's not at all what's out.
[00:23:42] Matthias: It is not no . So, uh, we already knew from past research that about half of the plastic mass is fishing that's out there, so that we knew. So we knew the fishing industry had know a significant role to play there. Uh, but somehow we assumed the other 50%, which is reds so hard plastic objects.
[00:24:01] Matthias: We, we assumed them to mostly come from land right from this polluting river. . Um, but what we now learn is know if you go out there and you look okay, what are the sources of those Richards, of the hot plastic items that we see? Uh, and you know, sometimes there are clues of origin or, uh, on there. Like there can be a text in a specific language that can be addressed, that can be a log of a company, uh, all the kind of, you know, information that we then puzzled together.
[00:24:25] Matthias: And so if you look at. The river contributing plastic to, to the ocean. You know, the, the most polluting rivers there, like somewhere in the Philippines for example, or India, are this kind of counter. We have a good understanding there. Then you go out in the garbage patch and what we see is we have a lot of items from China, from, from Korea, from from Japan.
[00:24:45] Matthias: But also from the US and you know, so those countries, they're not, that, they're developing nations, um, that, you know, usually the people point to with their fingers. Like you are to blame, you are polluting the oceans. Uh, I mean there's a lot of things wrong with that, but I'm not getting there. My point is that those are big nations and they are big fishing fleets in, in this area.
[00:25:05] Matthias: And so that pointed us towards, okay, maybe that, you know, a lot of that is actually coming from fishing. And so we then looked into what kind of object is it? And we see it's, it's mostly, it's buoys, it's, it's I traps that we find it, it's baskets, it's buckets, things used by, you know, fishermen out there.
[00:25:23] Matthias: Uh, and we then combine that with some, some additional modeling and some fancy stuff. And so really find out that hey, up to 80% of the staff out there is actually coming from. Uh, by mass again. So 80% of plastic mass in the Great Pacific garbage patch most likely comes from fishing activities. And the remaining 20% could also be from fishing.
[00:25:41] Matthias: We don't know, but it could also be from land because sometimes it's just very difficult to say where a piece of plastic came from because just a small fragment. Um, and so, It. We had a hard time. It was, it came as a big surprise, I have to be honest, because we, we knew it was important, but not that, if you look at the, what we think globally is happening, you very often hear about 80% of all the plastic that we find in the ocean comes from land.
[00:26:03] Matthias: About 20% from fishing. Uh, If you are in the garbage patch, you still be around 80% fishing, 20% from land. And you know, and the reason for that is if, if you're a plastic Coke bottle in the river, you float down the river, you enter the ocean, you have a very high chance of beaching back onto a nearby coastline.
[00:26:20] Matthias: Now with the tides and with the currents, you end up on the coastline, uh, and only a small fraction makes it offshore. But if, if you are a fishing, a buoy, or even a Coke bottle used by fishermen lost at sea, you're already away from any coast. And there, you know, you have a low chance of beaching and a high chance of actually accumulating in this, in this big garbage patches.
[00:26:40] Matthias: And that is the reason why we see so much fishing out there, fishing debris out there and, and not so much from land based sources.
[00:26:48] Luke: So you're saying that this great big two times Texas sized area of plastic that's drifting around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Vastly made up of discarded waste from fishing vessels or lost waste from fishing vessels.
[00:27:05] Luke: Yes.
[00:27:06] Matthias: We estimate about 80% of it. Yeah. To me
[00:27:08] Luke: that sounds like, I mean it, it's kind of hard to fathom how much material was carried out there by boats and how many boats are out there to be able to discard that much plastic.
[00:27:19] Matthias: Yes, it is mind blowing. Yeah.
[00:27:34] Luke: Now, what do you guys do with all of the plastic that you collect?
[00:27:37] Matthias: Yeah, , that's another question that we get very often. It's a very obvious question and a good one. Uh, it's two different things. So we have the garbage patch, right? And we clean the garbage patch. And so you're out there in the international waters, uh, nomans land.
[00:27:51] Matthias: So if you're a Dutch organization, you collect waste. It becomes Dutch. Um, we have to de compose, uh, co um, get rid of it. So what we do is, um, we recycle as much as possible, um, and we're really good at that. So we made the case study, um, two years ago where we took all the nets that we collected with system bomb B, previous prototype, and we turned them into sunglasses that we then sold.
[00:28:14] Matthias: So maybe you've seen them that the blue fancy the screen of sunglasses. Uh, but that was a proof of concept. So we don't do not intend to make millions of sunglasses for the plastic we collect, but it was to show. Stuff out there has a value. It can be used to make new goods, you know. Um, so there we partner with other, um, businesses to, you know, look into ways of recycling that into new products.
[00:28:36] Matthias: But when it comes to rivers, so we are also cleaning rivers, right? And inter setting plastic and rivers, that's a very different story, uh, because there, you're in a country, you collect the waste and you know, you have to know, look into what is the best, uh, available practices in, in these areas. And, and there it's a bit more complicated what it can recycle, what has to go to landfill.
[00:28:55] Matthias: But obviously our aim is to, to recycle as much as.
[00:28:58] Luke: Is it also about the types of plastics we're making? Like we see all these, you know, different degrees of recyclability of ability to break down. Um, could it be that we change the actual materials that we're producing to be, you know, perhaps less long lived?
[00:29:17] Luke: Would that
[00:29:17] Matthias: help? Yes, yes, it would help. Um, but a lot of the products made of plastic, they're, they're made to last. And for reasons, also for your food packaging, you don't wanna have any leakage. Or if you have know a coke bottle, again, you know, you want your coke to be in that bottle for as long as until you drink it.
[00:29:34] Matthias: Mm-hmm. . So it's very difficult to create such that, you know, it's perfectly fine. It doesn't degrade, it doesn't emit. Kind of chemicals into your Coke, but as soon as it's empty, it's gone. So that's very challenging. But what really helps here is to make it more recyclable. Because, you know, if, if you go into, let's say the shampoo bottles here in the supermarket in in your store, and they have different colors, different shapes, different additives, they have different softness, thickness.
[00:30:00] Matthias: That makes it really almost impossible, you know, to recycle. Also, very often we do not know what kind of additives, what kind of chemicals are added to the plastic because you have the plastic polys, but you also have chemicals added to the plastic to make a colorful, to make a different strength, you know, to make it last if it's exposed to sunlight, all these kind of things.
[00:30:18] Matthias: And you know, that's very little information out there from the industry telling us. What is in the plastic and how, how can we even recycle that? Um, so a lot goes into, uh, product design now, making sure that you have end of life in, in, in your product design as well, make it recyclable. Uh, certainly also biodegradability is, is very important.
[00:30:37] Matthias: It's very challenging and there's a lot of misconception about what is biodegradable, uh, because something that is biodegradable, degradable on an industrial scale is not biodegradable in your garden. So you know, you need high pressure, high temperature, and different conditions. So there's a lots of work.
[00:30:54] Matthias: To be done still. Uh, but I think as a first step, it would really help to just make sure that we, we, we stop producing so many different kind of polys and chemical additives and try to align there to make it more recyclable in the first place.
[00:31:06] Luke: Yeah. Now the, uh, the World Economic Forum just put out an article I found was really interesting and I, I'll quote it from the article here.
[00:31:14] Luke: They say, plastic consumption is projected to skyrocket in the coming decades from 460 million tons. In 2019. So fairly recent data to 1200 31 million tons in 2060 based on projections. But we're talking about, you know, tripling the problem, assuming that our behaviors stay the same and don't get worse.
[00:31:35] Luke: Um, how can we possibly keep up with that?
[00:31:37] Matthias: That is a great question. And again, you, you supported the problem that we have. So, you know, if you have people arguing that we just have to recycle it all, uh, we'll have some issues. No, you cannot triple production and also, you know, keep up with recycling. So that needs to be some kind of regulation in, you know, making sure that this is, uh, done more sustainably.
[00:31:56] Matthias: Um, and that is one of the, you know, the aim of the plastic 3d, for example, that I know that we might have heard of it to try to, you. Kind of make work and maybe also look into capping that production because we cannot endlessly, exponentially increase production. And just claim, Okay, If you do, if you clean rivers and oceans and we look into better waste management and recycling, we can continuously, exponentially increase production.
[00:32:20] Matthias: At a certain point, you'll have issues. We, we, we've seen it with so many environmental problems in the past, and just think of CO2 as well. I mean, exponential increase is, is really tricky. And, and you know, the recent example of the Covid pandemic, I think now everybody knows what the exponential increase is.
[00:32:35] Matthias: It happens slowly and all a sudden it hits. And this is what's going to happen with the plastic production if we, if we don't get a, a grasp on, you know, on, on reducing that exponential increase in this production. Yeah.
[00:32:47] Luke: Yeah. What is your hope for the future? What would be your message to people, um, in, you know, helping solve this problem in the future without needing someone like yourself and your team to, to go in and, and clean up after
[00:33:02] Matthias: us?
[00:33:03] Matthias: Yeah, I mean, I could say my hope is to have a healthy ocean in the, in the future. And being that my sun can go diving like I did and see like all the, the fish and marine creatures and sharks and turtles and corals and all those colors, that would be my dream. Uh, but then, you know, I'm from Switzerland. I live in the mountains far away from the ocean, right?
[00:33:21] Matthias: So I very often get questioned like, why do. Care about it, it's so far away. And you know, we don't even have good fish here, so, Okay. If there's less fish in the ocean doesn't impact us. Um, I'm gonna say we, we need to start really appreciating what the ocean is doing for us. And my hope is that people start to appreciate and understand the key role the ocean is playing for all the.
[00:33:42] Matthias: No life on earth. And, and that includes everyone. People like me living up in the mountains, people living in coastal areas and on remote islands, you know, the ocean uses the oxygen, you know, it regulates climate. It's so essential. It's feeding, uh, significant part of the world population. Maybe not the space, but a lot of other people are being fed by fish from the ocean, right?
[00:34:02] Matthias: So, yeah. So my hope is that we really start to appreciate and understand what the ocean is doing for us.
[00:34:08] Luke: Now if, if we were to give people just a, you know, a simple bullet point of here's what you can do to have zero impact on the plastic problem in the future, by the sounds of it, we need to essentially eat no seafood, because that's contributing to the fishing fleets are, you know, a large problem for the Pacific garbage patch and not use any, so that, that seems like a almost insurmountable.
[00:34:33] Luke: Objective in today's, you know, consumptive environment. Um, what do you do personally, um, and what do you advise people to practice? Like, how can we just be better, more responsible citizens in our use of these, you know, products and resources? Yeah,
[00:34:47] Matthias: good question. I mean, I'm a vegetarian, so I could say stop eating meats and fish, but most people don't have the choice.
[00:34:54] Matthias: So, um, and in terms of, you know, use less plastic, I mean, very often there's no alternative if you go to supermarket. Yeah. I mean, you either buy the stuff wrapped in plastic or you walk out of supermarket essentially with no product, . Right. So there's, there's not really a choice you can make there either.
[00:35:09] Matthias: Uh, maybe if you're in a rich country and enough, enough money, yes. But again, if most people cannot. Choose. So I think there, it really comes down to, you know, um, if you live in a, in a democratic system, you know, with your vote, I think it can influence it a lot, uh, by educating people. Uh, I mean, know, it sounds so theoretical.
[00:35:27] Matthias: So I mean, if, if you would say that to someone, listen to this podcast, they would just say, Okay, that's just a standard thing to say and you know, okay, there's not much I can do about it. Um, there's, I think, Yeah, it's, it's, I don't wanna like sound pessimistic, but at the moment there's, there's a lot of stuff you can do on an individual basis.
[00:35:44] Matthias: Like, you know, um, be aware of what your consumption has on the environment that goes beyond plastic pollution, but more in the environment in general as well. Uh, be aware of how you vote. You know who you want to be representative, uh, in, in, in your government, and, and know what their, what are their. aims to protect the environment or the oceans.
[00:36:03] Matthias: So, but for me, I mean, one thing is buy less stuff and really think of, you know, do you really need that? Uh, and, and if so, you know, it doesn't really add any value to you. Uh, could you maybe also buy it second hand, look into that kind of options. Only because it's cheap doesn't mean you need it. I know.
[00:36:19] Matthias: Even if marketing is saying you need it. Really? Yeah. Buy less stuff. I think it's as simple as that. And be more aware of your con. Well,
[00:36:26] Luke: how much of the, uh, the river problem, because obviously that's something that is affecting, you know, each country individually. How much of that is the single use plastics?
[00:36:36] Luke: So people use so much, you know, the coke bottles and things like that? A
[00:36:39] Matthias: lot. Almost all of it. In the rivers, it's mostly packaging, single use plastic. It's, it's, it's the bottles, it's the wrappers. It's not the, the food containers. Yes. That's what we see in those rivers and also in the coastal environments close to those river.
[00:36:53] Matthias: Esthers.
[00:36:54] Luke: So I think it'd be fair to say to people that, hey, if there is something you wanna do, buy less or zero of that single use plastic stuff. Um, which may be an impossibility, but you might be able to make some, you know, let's say luxury choices of, Yeah, sure you need to buy the. The food that comes in plastic because that's the thing that you need, but maybe you don't need to buy, you know, a single use Coke bottle.
[00:37:20] Luke: You know, carry a water bottle, drink more water. Might be a simple thing that people can do to reduce that type of waste, you
[00:37:27] Matthias: know? Yeah. Your coffee mark. I have my own coffee. Mac mark. I bring, I travel a lot, so, you know, um, I just have that ready with me and just ask them to fill that one up. I have my own water bottle.
[00:37:36] Matthias: I, I, I refill. Uh, certainly don't. Plastic cut three and, and no plates. That's just ridiculous. I mean, just through your dishes, and, you know, um, so that does certain, yeah, try to use less plastic, uh, where it's avoidable, uh, and, and reuse, you know, things that you can reuse. It can even be a plastic bottle that you reuse, but reuse it more than once.
[00:37:58] Matthias: So there you already have an impact. So even if, if you are, sometimes, if a guide your. You use a bottle, you usable bottle, and you end up buying a Coke bottle. You know, maybe filled up a few times with water before you throw it away, so at least it gives it. A little bit of a, a life before thrown away.
[00:38:13] Matthias: Yeah. I think there you can already on, on a large scale make quite an impact on based on these individual
[00:38:18] Luke: choices. And where can people donate to you guys to, to help in your ocean cleanup? Yes.
[00:38:23] Matthias: Uh, good question. Go check out our website. It's the ocean cleanup.com and in there there's a, just a button you can click and say donate and you can give you donation there.
[00:38:34] Luke: Awesome. Well, Matthias, I, I wish that this was a, uh, an end of the podcast. We were like, Here's the solution, here's how we solve it. And, you know, we can all feel good that in the next, you know, 30, 40 years everything's gonna be fixed and corrected and so much better. But, you know, it sounds like we are just kind of scratching the tip of the iceberg of a problem that is bearing down on us and gonna crush us unless we do something drastic about it.
[00:39:03] Luke: So, Without it sounding too pessimistic. I, I know that it's a massive problem, but I'm, uh, extremely grateful that there's people like yourself and your organization out there actually doing something about it. And what sounded like a massive, massive problem is at least getting some attention now. And, uh, I, I wish you all the best for helping mitigate that over the next decades of time.
[00:39:25] Luke: Um, and I'll be following it with interest. Thank you so.
[00:39:28] Matthias: Thank you, Luke. It was really nice talking to you and thanks for your kind words, and it is a pessimistic problem, but I'm also very optimistic because, you know, you just said we tripled the production, so we, we are not there yet. It could be even worse.
[00:39:41] Matthias: So it are still time to act and I think we can still solve it and I'm optimistic that we can solve it eventually.
[00:39:47] Luke: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thank you Matthias. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Look,
[00:39:55] Luke: So this is Shark Week, the podcast, and this is kind of an unusual episode for us because we've spent the whole time talking about plastic and you know, a few comments about sharks and their consumption of plastic as they're cruising through their lives. The reason that this is such important episode for us all to focus on is that plastic is such a monumental problem.
[00:40:20] Luke: Every citizen of this planet has, whether you are landlocked or ocean bound or whatever, there is just so much for it in our system, and the science is clear. It's affecting us heavily. It's very likely that you right now, Have microplastics in your system, whether it's from the, the plastics that aspire to grading and entering your water, or from plastics that are actually leeching out of plastic products that you're having.
[00:40:49] Luke: It's a growing problem that we're becoming more aware of that. Is actually affecting our health and definitely affecting our economies, and it's something we all need to focus on. Now, if we say, Look, we really only care about sharks, well, it's absolutely affecting sharks. Almost every shark that gets caught out there and sampled now has plastic inside it, and that's coming from fish that they're.
[00:41:19] Luke: Eating these small piece of plastic that are in the ocean. Now, if you imagine where that's coming from, if you can think of a Coke bottle that gets discarded, goes through a river, enters the ocean, eventually breaks down to sort of soft, mushy stuff that is fairly small. And the little fish eat it. It gets stuck in their stomach, gets stuck in their tissues.
[00:41:39] Luke: Then a shark eats it or the next fish up in the TRO food chain eats it. And this stuff bioaccumulates in their bodies. And we are finding sharks and turtles and all kinds of marine life with pounds and pounds and even kilos of plastic in their gut system and in their tissues, it's making them sick.
[00:41:57] Luke: It's killing them, and it's certainly affecting the quality of the meat of the fish that you are eating, if that's all you care about. So this is a problem for our marine life, for our ecosystem, and for us and our health, which will eventually cost us money. So this is something that we really need to pay attention to.
[00:42:16] Luke: And like I said to Matthias, I really wish this was a podcast where were like, Here's the easy solution, but there really isn't an easy solution right now. But what we can do is try to make better, more responsible choices every day in reducing our single use plastics and making sure that we're reusing products as much as we can.
[00:42:34] Luke: Discarding less waste, less waste in our landfills means less microplastics and plastics in our rivers and oceans. It's a pretty simple calculation, so that's something that you can. Today that can help. But then also supporting initiatives, fundraising, politics that promote organizations like the ocean cleanup and the work that they're doing.
[00:42:57] Luke: Because even though, like we say, it's just kind of like chipping away at an iceberg, at least they're actually doing that. Because if we don't have groups like that, then those forecasts of tripling our plastic and tripling the problem will occur , unless we mitigate. And it's groups like that that may just help at least stem that flow and maybe one day optimistically help reduce and reverse the problem that plastics are causing on today's civilization.
[00:43:30] Luke: Okay. That's it for today's episode. Now, next week, I want you to all set your calendars. Tune in for this one because we've got a big podcast coming up for you that you really won't wanna miss. Now, if you remember, in July, in Riviera Beach in Florida, there was a shark fishing tournament where they went out and targeted bullocks, bringing a whole bunch of 'em back to the dock, and there was death threats at all types of craziness going on, and at the head.
[00:43:53] Luke: Was a guy named Robert Fly Navarro. Now he was the spokesperson for the tournament and he's an advocate for shark fishing and we've got him on our next podcast. I promise you this is one that will both surprise you and he really, really interesting. So there's gonna be some fireworks that's absolutely guaranteed.
[00:44:11] Luke: Make sure you're tune in for the next episode coming up on Monday. Thank you for listening to Shark Week, the podcast. Be sure to rate us five stars and subscribe for more shark fun. Until next time, I'm Luke Temple. I'll chat to you soon.