Pristine Ocean Podcast: Recent Episodes
Peter Hall
The Pristine Ocean Podcast shares real stories about people fighting marine plastic pollution. Listen in for new insights how we are all connected in the task of keeping the oceans pristine.
Plastiskul
So Science
Conserve India
Precious Plastic
Fablabs
Plastic pollution is killing wildlife, strangling our waterways and ruining our beaches and is now seeping up through the food chain and, voila, being served with our food.
This is the Pristine Ocean Podcast. My name is Peter Hall. Each episode, we hear from change makers fighting the scourge of plastic pollution.
Let's talk about the circular economy. I think most people understand that if we are going to continue to benefit from the usefulness of plastic, that burning, burying or dumping is simply not sustainable. We need to feed plastic waste back into the plastic production chain, ideally to the point where we need little or no new plastic material to be created.
An interesting player in the circular economy space is Plastiskul. Plastiskul provides the tools and knowhow for entrepreneurs to create business models around upcycling plastic waste into useful products like furniture and tiles. The fascinating thing about Plastiskul, is that it is run by young professionals with experience in the waste industry and who live in the countries heavily impacted by plastic pollution.
We spoke to Kanika Ahuja about Plastiskul.
Transcript of interview with Kanika Ahuja, Co-founder of Plastiskul
Environmental Investigation Agency
United Nations Treaty to End Plastic Pollution
Get in contact
peter.hall@pristineocean.global
You are probably aware of some of the challenges in finding a solution to the plastic crisis the world is facing.
3 challenges in no particular order come to mind:
Challenge 1: Data. You’ve probably heard the phrase, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” which certainly applies to plastic waste management. But we can’t measure it because we don’t have the data about how much plastic is being produced, how much waste is exported, how much imported and after that it becomes a guessing game about how much actually lands in the ocean.
Challenge 2: Laws. Packaging companies need a level playing field so that if they improve the environmental friendliness of their products, that this does not put them at a commercial disadvantage.
Challenge 3: Finance. Waste management infrastructure will have to be expanded in the countries that can least afford it.
All these challenges would be complicated enough for one country. But to be effective, all countries need to be aboard. These challenges have to be addressed globally.
Did you know, that the United Nations is working on a treaty to solve these issues? In March 2022, the UN Member States endorsed the UN Environment Programme 5 which is a resolution to End Plastic Pollution with the intention to have a full resolution in 2024.
Today we are talking to someone who is deeply involved in the negotiations to formulate that resolution. She is Christina Dixon from the Environmental Investigation Agency or EIA. She is fighting for the planet.
We talked about the urgency of the treaty and the similarities to efforts to manage the climate crisis and whether the treaty can be thought of a type of Paris for Plastics.
Full Interview
Plastics For Change
Hasiru Dala
One day, a waste worker collecting plastic in his neighborhood in Bangalore in Southern India, was bitten by a dog. He fell ill and was not able to work for the following two weeks.
His only income was what the local scrap shop paid for what he collected. Without any savings, he was unable to put food on the table placing his family in a precarious position.
On the other side of the world, brands such as The Body Shop, are willing to pay for recovered plastic to include in their products. But they want plastic to be collected under fair conditions.
Today we were talking to. Almac from the organization, Plastics for Change.
He is making a change by applying fair trade principles to the collection of plastic waste in Bangalore.
Full transcript
Net Your Problem
Nicole Baker
Dutch Harbor is located in the Aleutian islands, which reach out in an arc into the Bering sea in the north Pacific west of Alaska. It is the home of a fishing industry, which harvests over a billion dollars worth of fish each year.
Nicole Baker was walking the docks in Dutch Harbor, when she got into a conversation with a fishermen
Her job as government fish scientist was to monitor fish stocks to ensure that the industry could have a sustainable future.
The conversation she had with the fishermen was about the problem he was having disposing of the fishing nets that had reached the end of their useful life.
Now, if we're going to live with plastic, we need to get better at collecting it and getting it to the recycler.
The recycling rate worldwide is about 8% This is something that we're not very good at. but it's not entirely our fault.
Recycling is either not available or getting it to the recycler is complicated. Think, for example, that time when you tried to get that Tetra Pak back to the recycling.
When it comes to fishing gear made of synthetic materials, well, the options are very limited
After the conversation with the fisherman, Nicole decided to be in the business of collecting fishing nets and bringing them to the recycler.
I sat down with Nicole and talked with her about her business "Net Your Problem".
Full transcript.
Nurdle Free Lanka Campaign
X-Press Pearl
On the 20th of May 2021, a ship called the MV X-Press Pearl, carrying a range of toxic goods, including nitric acid and over 1000 tonnes of plastic pellets, caught fire off the coast of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The world watched in horror.
As the crisis unfolded, I remember the feeling of powerlessness as the reports
came in of a bad situation getting worse and worse.
Ultimately, the ship sank while spewing thousands of tonnes of plastic pellets that will
lurk in the environment for years.
With each monsoon, pellets will pollute the beaches like a bad dream, recurring over
and over again.
To better understand the disaster I had the fortune of meeting Muditha from the Sri Lankan Pearl Protectors. The Pearl Protectors is an advocacy for the ocean.
I spoke to Muditha to guide me through the details of what happened and what the
situation is on the coast today.
Full transcription
RiverRecycle
What happens when an entrepreneur with a backgroundin shipbuilding watches, a documentary about rivers transporting trash into theocean and then goes to bed?
Well, nothing, actually. Certainly notsleep. Opportunities, problems, solutions swirl around in the entrepreneur'sbrain until finally sleep comes. In the morning, the world is different. In thecase of NC Mikkeller from the company, he rivers recycled that entrepreneur,woke up with a mission to rid the world of plastic pollution.
The price tag, a mere $2.5 billion.That seems a lot, but compared to the planned investment in new plasticinfrastructure, a drop in the bucket. I talked to Ansii about when he started, where they are now and what plans he has for the future.
Full transcript
Take 3 ForTheSea
This is the Pristine Ocean Podcast. I am your host, Peter Hall. In the podcast, I talk to people about the fight against marine plastic litter.
How do you talk about the environment without feeling totally powerless in the face of the enormous pressures on the ocean, on the climate on the environment generally?
Today we are talking to Sarah Beard. She is the chief storyteller at the environmental organization - take3 for the sea.
She is an environmental advocate, an educationalist and a filmmaker. She believes, actions, even small actions remind people that they possess the power to make real change.
She talks about the importance of hope and emotion in any story about the environment.
Here is the conversation I had with Sarah.
Beach Token
The relationship between the economy and the environment is not an easy one.
Most modern economies are based around the profit principle.
But this doesn't work well for environmental projects.
You can put a price on environmental degradation.
But without the intensive international deal-making and haggling over environmental pricing, it is difficult to place a dollar value on a clean beach or an intact coral reef.
What is the value of a kilo of rubbish removed from a beach compared to a kilo removed from the river that empties near that beach?
What is the value of that kilo of waste plastic that put in a land fill compared to the kilo burnt in a cement kiln?
What is the difference whether that kilo is in India or is in Africa?
These values are difficult to agree on just for a particular location. And they can be completely different from one location to the next.
Maybe the problem is not the economic value but the currency itself.
Maybe we need a currency more suited to the demands of environmental projects which are typically international and highly local.
Sounds like a crypto-currency right?
This week we're talking to Rob from the crypto token Beach which is designed to fill the needs of groups of people such as digital nomads moving through different locations exchanging services. These services may be delivered over the internet or locally.
Currently the organization behind the Beach token has funding available for ocean preservation projects and I applaud that.
Script of conversation with Rob Cobbold.
River Cleanup
Last week I was talking to Arno Doggen from a Belgian company called River Cleanup. He introduced me to a really interesting term : Trash Blindness
This is the condition of being desensitized to the waste we are standing in. One quick method of opening your eyes to trash is to take the 10 minute trash challenge: This means collect trash around your home for just 10mins. You can guess what happens. What you have seen, you cannot be unsee.
River Cleanup is founded on the idea that people want to cleanup their environment and provides the organization and the tools so that groups can get together, have some fun while cleaning up and celebrating together afterwards. They are active 57 countries and are well on the way to be collecting a million tons annually by 2030.
Here is the interview with Arno.
Plastic Fischer
This is the Pristine Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Peter Hall. We talk to people about projects around the world, tackling the scourge of marine plastic litter.
Imagine you're looking over a river covered with plastic refuse.
Plastic bottles, sachets, flip flops.
You might think that is unsightly. You might also think about the loss of quality of life for the people living near the river.
You might ask yourself, where is all this going and why doesn't somebody do something about it?
This is where the story of plastic Fisher begins from a hotel looking out over the Mekong River. Karsten Hirsch decided to throw in his career as a lawyer and do something.
River clean-ups have become a central tool in the fight against ocean plastic. It is now thought that about 1000 rivers are responsible for 80% of the plastic flowing into the ocean. This is both a challenge but also an opportunity.
To catch the pollution before it did disperses into the wider environment.
Carsten told me that his personal connection to rivers comes from his passion for a range of water sports, including sailing and rowing. He and his partner founded Plastic Fischer to clean Up rivers.
Along the way, they developed a trash barrier that floats on the surface to concentrate the plastic waste.
Working directly on site, they developed the three L principle of local, low cost and low tech.
Karsten told me the story about how Plastic Fischer began.
Nomad Plastic
Ecotoursim
You have probably heard the term.
You might be attracted to the idea that your personal travels could not just expand your own personal universe but could also have a positive impact on the environment of the place you are visiting.
You might wish that the people who live there would benefit by maybe expanding their view of the environment. This could happen by an exchange of information and ideas to address environmental challenges.
Imagine travelling with a group of 10 people onboard a traditionally built wooden boat, through far-flung islands in Indonesia. The boat is run on zero waste principles and at each stop, you explore the environment through the eyes of the local people.
I think that would be attractive to a lot of people. I personally would love a journey like that.
Today we are talking to a JB from the company Nomad Plastic
From spring 2022 Nomad Plastic will be running tours, like these.
JB graduate engineer who has just completed a masters degree into waste management at the Hong Kong university of science and technology.
I sat down with JeanBaptistte and talked about his studies and where he is going with the ecotourism project.
His vision is to become an entrepreneur in the waste management space. During his studies, he analysed over 70 existing waste management projects and established the three factors that determine whether a project succeeds or fails.
JB did a post-doctorate degree and studied over 70 different waste mitigation projects.
The main takeaways were
- lack of technological know-how
- lack of a business model
- lack of assessment of social impact
Cleanhub
Today we are talking to a german waste processing professional.
He is also a surfer and ocean evangilist
He is an entrepreneur who believes in the power of technology to create solutions to envionmental challenges
Joel Tasche from CleanHub wants to disrupt an industry where the margins are already razor thin.
In locations of high plastic pollution, his company finances local contractors to collect the non-recyclable materials that would otherwise land in the environment
To pay for these operations, he works with consumer brands who want to offset their plastic footprint.
The story starts in Lake Constance in the south west of Germany where Joel grew up. The fishermen there complain of too few fish. The water is so clean, the fish have little to feed on.
You get the picture. Very, very clean. Growing up in an environment like this, leaves a mark on person.
When Joel moved away to study, he ended up spending a lot of time in the water surfing.
He worked for a while at a startup but then he hit a crisis of meaning for this life.
Read the transcript here
Empower
Welcome to the Pristine Ocean podcast. I'm your host Peter Hall. In the podcast, we talked to people and projects around the world, tackling the scourge of marine plastic litter.
You may have heard the term circular economy. It means feeding waste materials back into valuable products.
But the demands of circularity create problems for the waste collectors. The waste collectors will need to document and track their work.
They will want to make the claim “I collected this material at this place and at this time”. But as in any business transaction, it comes down to trust and the only way to gain trust is transparency. You need some kind of book or ledger where you can enter your claim.
Other stakeholders should be able to look into this ledger and importantly, nobody should be able to make changes like adding or removing a few zeros.
In this episode we are talking to the founder of Empower. Empower is a Norwegian company which has created the digital infrastructure to account for collected plastics and currency transactions anywhere in the world.
It's all based on blockchain technology. You've probably heard about the blockchain, but if you still don't get it, you are not alone.
Think of it as an Excel spreadsheet somewhere in the Internet. You can add a row to this spreadsheet, but you can't change the data in the existing rows. This makes it great for recording transactions.
With different materials and currencies with different players.
All around the world.
Empower has projects in over 30 countries of the world and has gained unique insights into how to solve the plastic crisis.
Here's the interview with Wilhelm, the founder of Empower.
Sustain Credits
We are talking today with the founder of sustained credits Mahasen Gunawardena or simply Lanks.
He wants to create a currency to heal the world. The healing will be done by Earth Doctors who will not only be collecting plastic from the environment but also planting tree or doing some action to reduce the pressure we're putting on the planet.
The funding comes from the marketing or environmental budgets of large and small corporations.
There's a lot to do, but Lanks has a background in business and has the know-how and determination to overcome the challenges.
Have it listen to the interview. See what you think.
Pangea
Rivers. They are nature's conveyor belts powered by the pull of the moon. They run tirelessly day and night pumping not only water but also trash into the ocean. They are thought to be the source of 80% of marine plastic pollution.
Even up to 2018, it was thought that just ten rivers in the world were responsible for that. These were large rivers connecting cities to the oceans.
More recently, it has been found that this model seriously underestimates the influence of smaller rivers.
Nowadays the science is reporting about 1000 rivers, bringing 80% of plastic to the ocean.
This leakage needs to be plugged to stop ocean plastic litter, but how?
One tool that is showing promise is something called river barriers.
The one’s that I've seen are made by hanging a grid on a series of floaters and stringing them across a flowing waterway.
They are passive devices that use the power of the water to concentrate the waste 24/7.
Volunteers or contractors come and clean them out regularly.
But how will these structures be financed? What financial models will pay for scaling up and catching all this trash?
Pangea is a startup which not only plans to scale up river barriers, but they also have the know how to generate the necessary funding.
I had the pleasure of talking to the founder of Pangia, Marcos Bulacio.
His story is both inspiring and heartwarming. I hope you enjoy it. I certainly did.
Full transcript of interview
OpenLitterMap
Pristine Ocean
Full transcript
I was always fascinated by maps. As a child, I loved opening an Atlas, finding a remote town or city, and imagining what life was like in that place.
What did these streets and buildings look like?
Exploring the world with my fingers was always a thrill.
When Google Maps arrived on the scene in 2005, I was hooked.
Google Maps is OK, I guess if you have an Internet connexion, you know what Google Maps is.
Having all those free maps in an easy to use interface.
Technologically, it was a world wonder, a moon shot. It was like having your own personal pyramid in your pocket.
But Google did not create maps for the fame, they were in it for the fortune.
Data is the new oil.
Google uses maps to collect data which they then own to earn money for their advertising business.
We, the users provide the data, but Google owns it.
A lot of people were imagining a universe where the data remained in the public domain.
The open data movement crossed the technology of Google Maps with the principles of Wikipedia. The result, something called OpenStreetMaps.
Today we’re talking to a geographer who’s taken the idea of OpenStreetMaps a step further he has created a tool called OpenLitterMaps.
He wants people like you and me going around into the world and collecting images of litter using an app on a smartphone.
When you do this, you are engaging in citizen science, also known as crowdsourcing.
OpenLitterMaps is still a work in progress. There are still some essential aspects to be done, mainly making the data entry more fun and more rewarding.
But for municipalities, for scientists, for anybody working for a clean environment, the opportunities are enormous.
I was really looking forward to the interview with Sean and he displayed a level of passion and knowledge that really just knocked me over.
Effekt Footwear
Fashion might be a statement about who you are, but mostly it's about feeling good with yourself, feeling good, not just in your skin, but in the clothes you're wearing.
For a lot of people, feeling good means that the materials also have to be sustainable.
Will consumers buy clothes and shoes that make the statement:
“I care about the environment”.
The simple answer is: we don't know.
But a startup in Austria wants to find out.
They are creating a sneaker which they claimed to be the trashiest sneaker on the planet.
It's made almost entirely from materials recovered from the waste stream, including ocean plastics.
It's great idea, but will customers go for it?
If they had an enormous budget, they could have designed and produced the shoes and checked outthe market reaction, but a big budget was just something they didn't have.
Instead, they created a crowdfunding campaign on a site called Kickstarter.
If the project got funded, they figured then there might be enough interest there to build a business around creating this sustainable shoe.
Setting up the Kickstarter project was the easy bit, then began the nail biting.
Would the project reach its funding target or would it just fizzle out and be forgotten?
Ben grew up in Australia, but he is now settled in Austria with his Austrian partner and their new baby.
During the day he studies packaging technology. After hours, he follows his dream of creating footwear that won't trash the planet.
July, the fifth was a big day for Ben. It was his birthday and he just turned 34 but maybe more even more importantly, his Kickstarter project had reached its funding goal.
He and his team at Effekt Footwear want to change the way that people think about what is fashionable.
He thinks that wearing footwear made from virgin fossil fuels is not cool.
Ben's dream is to create a sneaker that people would love to wear because it's made of recycled materials. But marketing a good idea successfully requires a lot of drive and determination. Is Ben made out of there right stuff to get this over the finishing line?
Clean Ocean
Pristine Ocean
You might have heard about some amazing stories about crypto currencies in the last few months. Stories about a currency shooting up to the moon and then falling back to Earth.
Criminals using cryptocurrencies for their payments and maybe most disturbing of all, the environmental footprint associated with cryptocurrency mining, and then came their tweet from Elon Musk causing the market to drop dramatically.
I can imagine that you're thinking that the whole market is bad, but there are some good people looking for applications that will have a positive impact.
That's why when I heard about a cryptocurrency that are being created to fund ocean preservation projects, I wanted to know more.
The term they use is charity token. It's a cryptocurrency, but it's got charity baked into it. The idea with charity tokens is that part of the transaction fees associated with trading are donated to ocean preservation projects like Sea Shepherd or Ocean cleanup. These are famous ocean preservation projects that constantly need donations to keep their operations running.
I decided to contact the founder of the company that had launched this charity token.
But transparency is not something associated with the crypto world. I was wondering which part of the darknet I would have to access to get in contact with this crypto king.
As it turns out, it was pretty easy. There's a picture of him and his contact details on the website cleanocean.io
Jan, the founder of Clean Ocean was interested in talking, but he was busy.
He and his team were out in the field cleaning up after the recent German floods.
I thought this is not your typical cryptocurrency operation.
When he got back to the office, I sat down with him and asked him about whether or not clean ocean is an environmental organisation with a crypto side, or it's a crypto operation with an environmental side. Have a listen to the interview and decide for yourself.
... continue here
Offset your plastic usage
Breaking the Plastic Wave
Pristine Ocean
This is the Pristine Ocean Podcast. The podcast that showcases people, projects and ideas that address the problem of marine plastic litter.
Plastic has a Jekill and Hyde character. Before the moment of consumption is a model citizen providing hygiene, longer food life and lower transport costs.
A moment after consumption, it becomes a worthless. Owned and loved by no one.
It might land in the environment where it stays as pollution, poisoning waters, affecting tourism and stealing people’s quality of life.
In just one generation we have created this monster. Can we, in our own generation, kill the beast?
continued here ...
Carter Cleanup
Eco-Friendly Wedding Planning
Pristine Ocean
I remember an incident that happened to me sometime ago. I was walking down the shopping street in a large metropolitan city. It was in fact London and the street was Oxford Street, but it could have been anywhere.
It was late in the day on a Saturday and I was literally up to my knees in trash.
Trash that shoppers had thrown away into the street.
I was shocked, but more than that I just felt so helpless.
I felt so alone.
Everybody must find this normal to be wading through trash, I thought.
But if someone spoke out, I'm sure the people would sign up.
Something was missing.
A catalyst, a lightning rod, someone with the flag calling.
“Follow me. Together we can solve this.”
We're talking today to a catalyst, lightning rod, a flag carrier.
As a little boy growing up in Mumbai in India, he dreamed of making waves. When he grew up, he became a master mariner. A sea captain in the merchant marine.
One experience while he was travelling changed his view of the world forever.
A patch of plastic the size of France, right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Ashwin – Carter Cleanup
Most people don’t know about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Unfortunately I came across it and it was as horror scene. to see a huge patch of plastic waste in the middle of the Pacific.
Continue reading ...
We spoke to Andrew Sinclair from GTM Trash Management about setting up a pyrolysis reactor on Lombok, Indonesia.
Full transcript of the interview.
Andrew Sinclair
The company revolves around this idea that we can turn the plastic into something with value, so that at the moment it's not of any value to anyone. So if we can put a price on it and turn it into a resource for the local people, you can't change people's mindsets over this sort of stuff. You need to change the the plastic.
Pristine Ocean
Before the age of modern chemistry, alchemists dreamt of turning lead into gold.
In the age of plastic waste, the new alchemists dream of turning old shoes into black gold.
A process that converts waste plastic into oil. This is the promise of pyrolysis.
Although the chemistry of pyrolysis is well understood, the commercial application is still in its early days.
Entrepreneurs are asking the question can we make money out of pyrolysis while preventing plastic from destroying the environment?
Can pyrolysis be the solution to the plastic waste crisis?
I talked to one entrepreneur who is launched, a pyrolysis demonstrator on Lombok, an island in Indonesia.
He and his team have set up a pyrolysis reactor. The Will digest one tonne of plastic waste per day and convert this into oil.
This oil can be further distilled to diesel.
On May the 29th, 2021, to great fanfare and with many dignitaries, his pyrolysis demonstrator was fired up and started devouring plastic waste.
The aim of the demonstrator is to convince investors to get aboard.
What seemed like an overnight success was years of toil and trouble in the making.
The story starts in Tasmania, Australia.
Full transcript of the interview.
Pyrolysis explained
Lombok Ocean Care
Asmara Restaurant
Pristine Ocean
Welcome to the Pristine Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Peter Hall. The podcast talks to people around the world fighting the scourge of marine plastic litter.
Sakinah
My God, people hate me because I'm always posting this pictures of of the rubbish container and send it to all government officials and all these WhatsApp groups and complaining too.
Pristine Ocean
Maybe you've been thinking of visiting the country of Indonesia.
Although Bali is the destination of choice for many people, you might also consider the island of Lombok right next door.
Not so many tourists with friendly and relaxed locals.
You might be interested in pink sand beaches, old temples, rain forests, animals to observe, and the best snorkelling and diving, then Lombok might be your dream destination.
But like many item locations in Southeast Asia, Lombok’s waste disposal systems are just not up to the job.
Plastic waste is swept into the waters.
Turtles, birds, fish and even large mammals such as dolphins might eat the waste or become entangled in it and drown.
Backyard burning of plastic waste and groundwater contamination are health threats. Incomes from tourism are affected if the visitors see pollution as a reason not to visit.
Were you talking today to someone who is fighting back?
Sakina runs a zero waste restaurant on Lombok. The Asmara. The restaurant is rated highly by tourists and locals. It has something for everyone.
In the early 90s, Sakina had two small children and a problem.
How to take care of her young family.
She decided to start a restaurant to cater for the increasing number of tourists coming from Europe, the Italians, the Germans.
She herself was born in Germany but has converted to Islam. Thus her Indonesian name.
The restaurant, she decided should be upmarket and give visitors peace of mind and not be worried about the infamous Bali belly.
The restaurant is located in a village called Senggigi.
Which is the main tourist location in West Lombok.
The restaurant did well serving 50 guests a day in the Good Times.
But Sakina had to constantly deal with new challenges.
Sakinah
Uh, you know it was good. I mean tourism was good, but then we had all these problems.
Every two years something major happened, and then lately then there was the earthquake and now covet, so it was always like struggling.
Pristine Ocean
The earthquake struck Senggigi in Aug 2018 at the height of the tourist season. Hundreds were killed and thousands injured.
Sakinah
So the restaurant was packed. It happened just when people either were already eating or just ordered.
And then suddenly it started to shake like crazy and all the tyres falling from the rules and people.
Running out, screaming, knocking over chairs and tables, and it was really it was really bad.
Despite the chaos in the disruption, something good began.
Sakinah
Um the beach cleanups especially that started in after the earthquake about five months after the earthquake.
When everybody was out of business and everything looked terrible and people needed something positive so it was really nice to go to do something out on the beach and clean up.
Complete transcript
Impactlution
Eco bricks - with Faisal Abdur Rani
When ocean plastics first came up on my personal radar - I heard the following number over and over again: 3 million tons plastic waste entering the ocean each year. At that rate we will have more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050.
And then I started taking notice of the pictures. Corals entangled with plastic bags. Beautiful beaches covered in PET bottles. And then next thing I found out was that plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, ultimately feeding toxins into our own food chain.
I can still remember when and where I was when I first saw the picture of the turtle with a plastic straw being remove from its nose. I don't consider myself highly sensitive but that seemed so wrong.
I am the type of person who sees a problem and reaches for the nearest search engine. I had a quick trawl for solutions.
And I found plenty of them. Of course, no single solution works without some drawback or limitation- each had a fatal flaw that prevents it from being the silver bullet that will solve the plastic crisis. The solution that so many people are searching for.
Something, that I learnt, was that most experts seem to agree on, is the 3r framework - reduce, recycle, reuse
A solution can be assessed by whether or not it fits the framework.
Things like calculating your personal plastic footprint get the thumbs up because it supports reducing part of the 3r's
Solutions like biodegradable-plastics fit none of the 3r's and might be regarded with skepsis
Along the way, I heard about this solution called - Eco bricks. The name sounded familiar - some kind of environmentally tolerable building block, I supposed
I was curious and wanted to find out more
According to the internet, an Eco brick is a plastic bottle packed tightly, and the emphasis here is tightly, with plastic waste.
The Eco brick can be used as a component in building structures such as walls or even furniture.
I found an excellent resource at ecobricks.org which has a fun and interactive app for getting involved in the international Eco brick movement
I was lucky enough to find someone who could help me with a few of the questions I had about Eco bricks
Faisal Abdur Rani is the Program Director of Impactlution Malaysia which manages the activities of Eco bricks in Malaysia
He organizes beach clean-ups, river clean-ups and urban clean-ups and is a zero-waste practitioner
He is a trained chemical engineer from Montana state university and worked previously in the oil and gas industry
Eco bricks is a technology and Faisal has a deep understanding of how to apply it - and not just in an engineering sense but also how Eco bricks can be used as an educational tool
Faisal, you have a lot of experience with Eco bricks: what is an Eco brick?
Faisal Abdur Rani
An Eco brick is a plastic bottle packed with single use plastic. Non-recyclables are packed into the bottle.
Ok I want to make an Eco brick. I have a plastic water bottle. I have washed and dried some plastic packaging - what next?
Complete transcript
Beach Cleanup Kedah
Pristine Ocean
Welcome to the Pristine Ocean podcast. I'm your host Peter Hall. Each week we talked to people around the world fighting the scourge of marine plastic litter.
Kim
And I must say I have a few friends who are what you call, armchair critics. The only people always have this thing. They should do this. The schools should do that. The government should do this in.
The authorities should do that as well. You can see all that to the cows. Come home. The trash is still there.
The only thing is you get out of the chair going. Pick it up, then you see a difference.
Pristine Ocean
The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that somebody else will save it.
This quote from Robert Swan, who was the first person to walk to both poles, resonates with many people because it rings so true.
Even if people are concerned about the environment, they often wait for someone else to act. Or maybe they're waiting for someone else to lead the way.
Today we're talking to Kim Yip from the Beach Cleanup Kedah in Malaysia.
Kim spent her professional life teaching schoolchildren. Nowadays she is retired and has more time to concentrate on her passion: caring for the natural environment.
Although retired, she is still teaching. Teaching by leading.
She says that people want to help but need a platform to contribute.
So she created one.
She scouts out areas needing clean-ups and then flexes her social media muscles to organise volunteers to spend their free time on the beach removing trash.
Talking to her, she tells you that she is driven by a sense of responsibility for the environment and for the next generation.
Let's go back a few years when she was a school teacher. In those days she was already involved in clean-ups.
Kim
The schools used to do clean-ups to collect data for our call International Studies. So they would rope in schools to help them and we would do that. That's my first exposure to clean-ups.
You teach the kids how to recycle upcycle in school, so which clean-ups was just one of the many activities that we had.
Pristine Ocean
The school provided the structures needed to organise the clean-ups as well as the helping hands of the students.
So as she started transitioning away from her life as a school teacher, she started looking around for inspiration how she might organise clean-ups outside the school environment.
She found what she was looking for in an existing beach clean-up organisation led by Doctor Vala in another state of Malaysia.
It looked perfect. The only problem was the distance. It was a long, long, way away.
Kim
So we used to travel once a month 400 kilometres one way.
To help them out and show my colleagues how it can be done.
Pristine Ocean
It was a long way to travel, but there were rewards along the road and on the beach.
Kim
That's how I found out that they actually reach out to volunteers using the social media. Well, I'm 62. We are not so active in using social medias but till much later.
So that's how I learn from the group Doctor Vala’s Group, how it can be done.
Pristine Ocean
And they were able to combine the cleanups with weekend trips.
Read the remaining transcript here
Kuching Beach Cleaners
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Pristine Ocean Podcast
How would you compare what kids nowadays experience on the beach compared to what you had when you were a child?
Alcila - Kuching Beach Cleaners
I had I had a good one. Children of these days, I don't think can enjoy what I had.
Pristine Ocean Podcast
That was Alcila Abby talking about how she feels about beach pollution.
She is the founder of the Kuching Beach Cleaners. Since 2013 they have been cleaning beaches around Kuching in Malaysia.
Kuching is the capital of Sarawak and is located on the northwest coast of Borneo looking out into the South China Sea.
Kuching attracts tourists for its food and tropical scenery and its wildlife.
Alcila - Kuching Beach Cleaners
Kuching is so amazing because you can get different types of forest in just less than two hours.
In two hours you can go to the beach. You can go to the forest in two hours.
Pristine Ocean Podcast
If Kuching is surrounded by tropical forests and access to wonderful beaches, how did the people of Kuching relate to all that?
Alcila - Kuching Beach Cleaners
Natural beauty, we have this at our back door. We don't really appreciate it, so there's a lot of things that could be better in Kuching.
We have nice space we have. We are so blessed with natural things, but we don't really appreciate it.
They don't really take care of it.
Pristine Ocean Podcast
Tell me what the beach meant to you as a child.
Alcila - Kuching Beach Cleaners
When I was young, I used to go to the beach with my family. My parents. At that time they weren't so much of marine debris.
The beaches was very clean, so that was my memory. My childhood memory.
Ten years later, when I had a drivers licence, I went back to the beach to rekindle to reminisce some old memories and it was just a lot of trash.
Pristine Ocean Podcast
How bad was it?
Help me imagine what you saw. What kind of items were they?
Alcila - Kuching Beach Cleaners
Daipers with presents. You get a lot of that.
It is just everything. Cigarette butts too.
Beach cleanups don't keep beaches clean. People keep beaches clean.
https://www.facebook.com/weloveourbeachandwildlife/
https://www.facebook.com/BeachcleanupK/
https://www.facebook.com/beachcleanuppenang/
https://www.facebook.com/teamupandcleanup/
Dr. Valarmathy (Vala)
Doing nothing and just complaining about it, you know, looking at a photo where turtles being strangled with a piece of plastic. Like all this is a sad photo and OK next photo. No, I'm not going to do that. You know, I'm actually going to go and do something about it. I'm going to engage my friends and family. So I think I have the satisfaction actually doing something about it.
Pristine Ocean
Doctor Valrmathy is a medical doctor and an eye surgeon.
Doctor Valrmathy, or Vala to her friends is a social activist and spends her free time running six different beach cleaning organisations.
I asked her to help me imagine what I would see on a typical Malaysian beach.
Dr. Valarmathy (Vala)
When I go to the beach, the first thing that obviously we look at the water and the sand right? We have this beautiful picture of how families are having their picnics. And then sometimes you see something that attracts my attention. Maybe monkeys in the trees. We have a lot of dogs and cats in our beaches here in Malaysia.
Pristine Ocean
There is also trash lying around. Food wrappings drink containers.
Of course, some of it comes washed in from the ocean, but mostly it's from careless beachgoers.
Dr. Valarmathy (Vala)
I think we we can just wait for a huge NGO or leave it to the government to do something. I think you can always do voluntary work no matter what you are doing. You know, feeding the homeless or environmental group or even feeding the stray. I think each of us individually, we can do something and its our responsiblity to make change.
Dr. Valarmathy (Vala)
Every time we engage with our volunteers, they come with a clean slate. They do not know much about single use plastic. They not do not know about environmental issues that's going on. So once they join our beach clean up, they they listen to us. They join us. If pick up trash, they go back and change their lifestyle, I've seen a lot of my friends who stop using single use. They now carry their own metal straws.
The MWRP project ‘Reducing/Minimising the Use of Polythene in western coast of Sri Lanka’ was a project operating in Negombo. Its main objective was to reduce marine environmental pollution through reduced plastic and polythene use and improved waste recycling. The main targets of the project’s initiatives were the supermarket sector, hotel sector and harbor and lagoon communities in Negombo. The MWRP creating awareness among these communities on issues concerning plastic and polythene pollution and established waste management systems to reduce open dumping and increase recycling of non-degradable waste.
Environmental Foundation Limited
Music from A New Day - the Laya Project
When you rank countries on the amount of plastic waste leakage into the ocean, Sri Lanka appears in the top 10. Maybe even the top 5. Maybe that is not surprising. 14 million people live near the coastline. Effective waste management is missing in many places. People get frustrated with the lack of alternatives to dispose of waste. This leads to dumping of waste in rivers and other waterways. The plastic trash them finds its way into the oceans with the next rainfall. Often the only option for many people is burning or burying the plastic. Given the health risks posed to the families involved, these seem to be very bad alternatives.
Apart from the direct health issues, plastic pollution also impacts the population economically. Tourism is a massive earner of foreign income in Sri Lanka. Visitors come for the pristine beaches. Pollution destroys the attraction for the paying tourist. I saw a google rating of one tourist beach with one star ratings with the comment “Beach completely ruined by plastic trash” Maybe next year that tourist will be visiting somewhere else.
The capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, lies on the east coast. Directly north of Colombo is the city of Negombo. A city of about 150 thousand people.
Negombo is known for its long sandy beaches and centuries old fishing industry It is attracts tourists because of its nearness to the international airport as well as its attractive location on the ocean. But it does have a waste problem. Negombo has a shallow lagoon which in old times provided safe harbour for seafaring ships. Nowadays it shelters mainly fishing boats and a whole lot of plastic trash. In 2017 a project called the Municipal Waste Recycling Program was started to look into opportunities to deal with marine plastic pollution. We talked to Damitha Samarakoon. Damitha worked in the program for 2 years starting in 2017. He told me that optics can deceive and was surprised by what you find by just reaching into the water.
The Municipal Waste Recycling Project identified a serious source of waste was the behaviour of the local fishermen. The lagoon is home to about 300 fishing boats.
Fishermen
Working with fishermen is perceived to be difficult. Most people would say that it is difficult to work with them. Damitha mindset was very much like that when he started dealing with the fishermen and talking to them about how they went about disposing of the plastic items they used when working.
At some stage he realized that formal education does not measure what people really are. When Damitha and his team interacted , they discovered that the fishermen were wholeheartedly into preserving the ocean that brings them their livelihood.
The sea is next to god for them. They wanted to do something to protect the seas so they became actively engaged once they understood the aims of the project.
Reflection: so you have these university educated guys working together with people who spend their lives out on the water, interacting with the tools of constructive dialog and finding that they both have the same goals and that something very good can come out of that.
Small Bottles
Damitha and his team narrowed in one specific item that promised the biggest win: small water bottles. The fishermen are at sea for some weeks and take with them hundreds of 500 ml plastic water bottles. These have the convenience that you can easily take a sip of water without interrupting the work. The problem is that after emptying, the bottle had no worth and was typically disposed overboard.
The solution which actually proposed by the fishermen, was to ban the small bottles and allow only larger bottles.
The aim of the Clean Surf Project is to create awareness to the devastating cause of littering especially plastic and polystyrene products and the impact it has on our ocean life.
Clean Surf ProjectInstagram
Sardine Run - Youtube
Amanzimtoti Taxi Rank in the Upper South Coast of Durban
Inkwazi Isu Launch and International Coastal Clean Up Day 2020
Far out with Malik
South Coast Sun
Twini Beach
International Coastal Clean Up Day 2019
Pristine Ocean
You're listening to the Pristine Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Hall. The podcast aims to inform, inspire and even entertain you about the serious business of ocean plastics.
Each week you will hear our guests, from around the world, talking about best practices, innovative ideas and financial models for fighting the scourge of plastic litter in the marine environment.
We're talking to Denzel from the Clean Surf project. Thanks for talking to us today.
Denzil – Clean Surf Project
Thanks first of all for having us on your on your show.
Pristine Ocean
I remember visiting South Africa quite vividly. The colours of scenery, the animals. But for me most important thing was the meeting of the Indian and the Atlantic oceans.
Tell us about one thing that you might see in South Africa that you wouldn't see anywhere else in the world.
Denzil – Clean Surf Project
We've got one of the greatest scenes, I believe in the world, which is called the Sardine Run. That is where a lot of sardines move down from the southern coastline coming up and they moving up this way because of the cooler water currents.
And then, obviously, well, whale sharks, dolphins. This is a yearly amazing miracle that happens. They will then follow these shoals and feed off them. And then obviously have a lot of people, communities that is trying to get these sardines.
For food purpose or for selling this fish.
Pristine Ocean
Oh yeah, the Sardine Run. I've only experienced it in YouTube, but the sardines have this protection mechanism where when they're being attacked by the predators, sharks and whales, they go into these balls of fish. These bait balls, and then you have these. And then you have these garnets divebombing into the water.
You grew up on the coast and spent a lot of time in the water in the surf.
What kind of animals did you come in contact with?
Denzil – Clean Surf Project
We usually have a lot of whales coming past in the winter months because they come down this coastline for breeding purpose or with the calves.
So yeah, you see a lot of marine life.
Unfortunately that specific coastline is just very badly polluted.<
Interview with Rima from Trash Hero Indonesia
https://trashhero.org/
https://www.facebook.com/trashheroindonesia/
Pristine Ocean
The island of Bali in Indonesia attracts tourists and travellers from around the globe. A lot of them spend time at Kuta Beach. It may not be the best place in the world to get in touch with the magical Balinese culture, but for me it was my first taste of Indonesia. And I loved it.
We're talking today to Rima from Trash Hero Indonesia.
She told me something that was so shocking, a chill ran down my spine.
Rima from Trash Hero
You must know already about the Kuta Beach disaster last January, right?
Pristine Ocean
No, I had not heard about the Kuta Beach disaster of last year. Like many people, I had visited Kuta Beach in Bali.
Hearing that Kuta Beach was experiencing a disaster, was like hearing that an old friend had had to go to hospital.
This is how CNN Travel reported it:
Tonnes of trash of washed onto Bali's famous Kuta beach, prompting locals to spend the first day of the New Year staging a cleanup.
Residents from the Bandong area on the Indonesian island cleared 30 tonnes of marine debris from the beach.
And this is what the Guardian has to say about the situation:
Bali's famous speech is being strewn by plastic rubbish in what experts say is becoming an annual event thanks to monsoon weather, poor waste management and a global marine pollution crisis.
I guess you've seen trash on the beach before, but I would bet you have not seen anything like this. Every square metre contains plastic trash.
Mostly small plastic cups, as far as I can see.
Rima from Trash Hero
So even the government put it as natural disaster, which is actually wrong because it is not natural disaster, it's man-made disasters.
Pristine Ocean
Each year, during the monsoon season and tonnes of trash being washed up onto the shores and barley. But where is it coming from? There seem to be 2 ideas around this. One is that it belongs to a stream of plastic that moves through passed Indonesia into the Indian Ocean.
I asked Rima what was the idea behind it?
Rima from Trash Hero
The goal is to make the citizens or the community or the society to be empowered. They could decide what is best for them, but without being trapped in a false solutions.
Today we are talking to Emma from the organization Ocean Mimic which started in Bali and has plans to expand globally.
Ocean Mimic organizes beach clean-ups as a community activity.
Ocean Mimic wants everybody to be involved. They have a startup that sells designer swimwear that is made from textile that has been derived from ocean plastic.
https://ocean-mimic.com/
https://freeflowactive.com/
Today we are visiting a project run by our friend Geeva in Malaysia.
Geeva has created an impressive project to keep the beaches around Malaysia clean. But more importantly, she has been changing peoples mindsets about personal responsibility for marine litter.
Her organized clean-ups bring together volunteers for a few hours every month. Her social media is crammed full of group photos of smiling people who have attended one of her beach clean-ups.
Geeva tells me that Malaysia already has a developed waste management system but people themselves are needed to change their behaviour about trashing the coastline.
Her energy and passion for the mycleanbeach project is obvious. Talking to Geeva made me think about my own behaviour. I immediately noticed changes so I definitely believe she is moving the needle on changing other peoples perception by getting them involved in beach cleanups.
Website: www.mycleanbeach.org
Facebook: MY Clean Beach
Instagram: MY Clean Beach
Twitter: MY_Clean_Beach
LinkedIn: MY Clean Beach
https://www.pristineocean.global/blog/anna-clerici-no-trash-triangle
Today we are visiting Bangka Island in Indonesia. We will be talking to Anna Clerici from the No Trash Triangle Initiative.
The triangle in the name refers to the Coral Triangle which is a marine area bordered by the countries of Indonesia, the Phillipines and Malaysia.
Over 120 million people live in the Coral Triangle and they rely on the reefs for food, income and protection from storms.
The aim of the No Trash Triangle Initiative is to protect the area from the damage caused by plastic waste pollution.
https://www.no-trashtriangle.org/
Today we are visiting Hikkaduwa on the south coast of Sri Lanka. We are talking to Michael Jorgensen. He is the founder and chief beach cleaner at Pure Oceans.
Pure oceans is tackling marine plastic by organizing beach clean-ups and disposing the collected plastic responsibly. To make the operation sustainable they sell a variety of items made from recycled plastic such as iphone covers and sunglasses.
Links
Pure Oceans
Today we are visiting the Banda islands in Indonesia. The islands have an interesting history in spice production and are surrounded by an incredible marine environment.
The islands have 20,000 inhabitants as well as an undeveloped waste management system.
We will be talking to Dr. Mareike Huhn. Mareike, who has a doctorate in marine biology, organizes a project to collect and dispose of waste to prevent it landing in the coral reefs surrounding the islands.
Plastics are collected and sent to a recycling facility or put through a pyrolysis machine. The resulting fuel is used to power the boat which collects waste from the various island communities.
Links
https://www.bandasea.org/
Today we are visiting the town of Arugam Bay on the east coast of Sri Lanka.
Arugam Bay is a popular surfing and tourist destination.
The town was badly affected by the 2004 tsunami when many of the buildings were destroyed.
We will be talking to Henry Konzok. He is the founder of a company which is fighting plastic pollution in Arugam Bay.
The company WasteLessABay collects and recycles waste plastic. It also offers alternatives to one-use PET water bottles. And it provides educational programmes to school children and tourists.
https://www.riceandcarry.eu/de/