previously i made a video about team seas the initiative from mr beast and mark robert to raise 30 million to remove 30 million pounds of plastic pollution from the ocean the point of that video was a general overview of the project while offering a few criticisms something that i didn't talk about for the sake of brevity however was one of the key aspects of the initiative which is that the money he raised was being split between two different not-for-profits the ocean conservancy a very well-respected not-for-profit that focuses on conservation and the ocean cleanup a different charity that uses interceptors the interceptors are a series of semi-autonomous vehicles that float on the surface of rivers funneling and collecting plastic waste for subsequent disposal the ocean cleanup originally used similar technology to collect plastic waste in the open ocean now the big criticism that myself and experts in plastic pollution shared about team seas was its emphasis on cleanup and not preventing more plastic being added to the oceans which is what the interceptors seem to do mark rober actually made a video showcasing how the interceptors aim to turn off the tap of plastic that currently pours into the ocean but while on first glance the interceptors seem to turn off the tap of plastic pollution the real picture is a bit more complex and the fact that it is complex is one of the issues here [Music] the interceptors work by collecting plastic that floats on top of rivers very sensible but yeah my name is dr tim van emerick i'm an assistant professor in hydrologic sensing at the vagranga university in the netherlands and i lead the plastic team that focuses on river plastic pollution and it's basically a project that focuses on developing the right tools to be able to quantify river plastic pollution in any river around the world well i mean if you just look around you how many different kinds of plastics you find in your daily life well multiply that with two three five or ten and that's what they find in rivers basically everything that you can imagine that's made out of plastic i think we found it in a river somewhere what we find here in the makong is an incredible amount of foams that's very different from rivers in for example ghana or the netherlands in ghana a lot of drinking water is sold in plastic sachets rather than bottles than the european rivers or we find completely different items again so there we find mainly food packaging cigarette butts bottles and bottle caps in our in our work we differentiate between different river compartments especially say you have the the plastic floating at the surface you have the submerged plastics in the water column but you can also find them on the river bed you can find them in the sediments you find them under river banks on the floodplains in the vegetation but also in biota or entrapped in vegetation so you find it everywhere so you might say well fine but if the largest proportion of plastic pollution on a river is that which isn't floating at the surface then it makes sense to concentrate your efforts there right unfortunately however each river around the world has its own unique ecosystem of plastic pollution no two rivers are alike last december we've been collecting data in the oda river in ghana the amount of pollution is more or less the same but the river itself is completely different where the odor river is a river that is at most maybe 60 centimeters wide comparing that with the mekong river which ends up in at least i think nine branches each branch can be up to a kilometer wide when it enters the sea both in terms of collecting data and collecting plastics before it enters the ocean it requires a completely different approach in my opinion so the interceptor's effectiveness will vary wildly depending on the river they're deployed on but will still result in a reduction in ocean plastics well i have to say i cannot really confirm that because there are situations so one of the rivers we've studied we estimated that more than half the plastics can actually be submerged in the water column so if you're only focusing on the top on the floating part both as scientists but also as i guess stakeholders or those planning interventions um yeah you miss out a great deal specifically when we look at the larger items we actually think that most of the plastic pollution that leaks into the into nature does not end up in the ocean so a recent recent study that was published in science advances uh estimated that less than two percent of the total amount of plastic that is leaking to the environment makes it into the ocean meaning that 98 of the plastic pollution stays somewhere else could be either on land around the liver systems or within the river system themselves interceptors simply aren't going to stop plastic pollution in the ocean even if they were floated on every single river on the planet and furthermore aren't even going to stop plastic pollution in rivers due to just focusing on one part of a complex system and as we'll see later this isn't because the problem is unsolvable and the interceptor is the best but imperfect solution we have in fact they're an extraordinarily bad way to stop ocean plastic pollution so why are they being proposed as a solution even a temporary solution which is to be fair what the ocean cleanup says they are in the first place well partly because they collect the plastic at the surface which is the easiest to see how to collect but more fundamentally because of how we think about technology and solving problems [Music] the interceptors are a top-down one-size-fits-all solution using exciting new technology a conveyor belt of trash solar panels water collection it's like something tony stark would design for a not insignificant number of people especially those who are vocal online this use of new technology is the most appealing aspect of projects like this one but also others like the spacex starship project they represent the forward-thinking technological modern society driven by science and how we should be doing things across all sectors this is a whole philosophical thing that i am not qualified to talk about abby thorne can make a video about this and its problems if she wants though i am not going to stand here and complain about people following science and wanting to see more of it but we do need to talk about the difference between science and technology science is the process of identifying something that we do not understand collecting data about it and then using that data to answer our questions it's vulnerable to the biases of the people doing the science but when analysis of carefully collected data is objective it's the least worst system we've come up with technology on the other hand is the use of knowledge acquired through science to do well whatever you like really modern technology is just technology constructed through modern science when people look up to the activities of the ocean cleanup or spacex or tony stark they're not idolizing science they're idolizing the outcome of recent science the use of new technology crucially however that new technology while the product of science can be applied in such a way that is informed by scientific methodology or not for example based on a recent paper i could invent a device that tells you how many amphibians there are in a 10 meter radius great new technology based on other scientific papers that i could then put this invention into action to help monitor the spread of chi-tridiomycosis a disease that's devastating amphibian populations in central america or i could send it to the moon because that would be cool the cool new technology was informed by science but my use of it was not informed by science in fact it consciously rejected data that we had available we know that there are no amphibians on the moon so with all that being said and the technology of the interceptors being undeniably cool are they the solution to this problem in fact is new technology really the solution to this problem i think that solving ecological problems is often less about the exact tech you have and more about the people and the initiatives and the attention that you have going into it so in that case there are definitely problems that can be solved by tech but so many of our problems are problems of attention and priorities that's dr virginia schutte an ecologist and science communicator whose phd was in coastal ocean conservation in other words about the perfect person to talk to about tmc's in general i have a positive reception to cleaning up plastic before it gets scattered in the great wide you know deep sea kind of area the funny thing about the interceptor though is even though it's marketed as brand new technology shiny just developed it is as far as i and others can tell nearly an exact copy of technology that has been in operation for decades already the closest match to the interceptor is called mr trash wheel it's in maryland and it's been operating scooping trash for years out of a harbor not the middle of the river where wildlife needs to travel but a harbor where river currents naturally gather things like they do in in the great pacific garbage patch the current sweep things into the harbor area this tech has been used before in a different context and is not appropriate for this use case especially because the environments that it needs to operate in vary so wildly something that the science very clearly says but the ocean cleanup are willfully ignoring like looking for sick amphibians on the moon the interceptor is cool technology used in a way not guided by the scientific literature both in the boats themselves but also in the ocean cleanups plan to use the same solution on dozens eventually hundreds of rivers you need to customize you can have the same idea that you take to different communities but you have to customize it to fit the people that live there there's that justice component to make sure that their needs are being met while also working with local customs local culture manufacturing a single solution and saying i will drop it into areas across the world it's just not an approach to conservation that i agree with and furthermore the ocean cleanup is so secretive that it's difficult to work out how effective they're really being without wishing to drag the organization unnecessarily a few questions have emerged about the way they do things for example pre-sorting plastic waste for photo opportunities over-egging how effective their devices are a lack of transparency in how effective the devices are the evidence seems to indicate they're really not effective ignoring data and the advice of experts on how to best solve the problem and acting as a green washing front for large corporations a cynic not me of course would say that the ocean cleanup was never about trying to clean up plastic pollution instead being more concerned with a self-sustaining cycle of publicity and funding pursuing this technology because it's cool and generates headlines not because it actually solves the problem this is my main problem with team seas they don't have a bad idea getting plastics out of the ocean is a great idea they don't have bad methods for executing this idea getting people globally to be excited about this issue drawing awareness that's great my issue is when it comes to the ocean cleanup no problems with the ocean conservancy they're wonderful but when it comes to the ocean cleanup there are better proven systems that already exist so there is no need to settle for a solution that is not the best there is a report written by a global organization saying that we already have all the tech we need to accomplish reducing plastic by it's something ridiculous like 80 and we can accomplish this in the next i think it's 20 to 30 years so if collection of floating plastic isn't going to fix this problem what will well fortunately we have a methodology that allows us to identify problems and then answer questions about them in the least worst way we can science it's defining and quantifying your problem if you don't know what the problem is it will be extremely difficult to tackle it and demonstrate that you have solved the problem that if you would just compare the concentration of floating plastics in the great pacific garbage patch to i would say any riverbank in europe you already see that the concentration of plastics on the riverbanks are about 200 times higher than in the middle of the great pacific garbage patch now of course if you then go closer to the source if you go from the riverbanks to let's say the the places where plastics are supposedly entering river systems sewage outlets or urban water systems the concentration can get even much higher so stopping this thing at the source does not mean the source of going to the ocean it means the source of plastic waste getting into the environment in the first place instead of looking at intercepting plastic on rivers then evidence-based practice indicates that we should be stopping the plastic from entering rivers in the first place the gate in mark's video should be all the way over here but i want to be clear that we don't have all the data on the problem one of the big issues in this field is actually a lack of data about what the optimal solution in a given location will look like it's why researchers like tim are so important to help us better understand what we're up against but what we do understand based on the data available is that solutions need to be tailored to a specific geography to a specific river that's generally speaking the closer to the source of plastic action can be taken the more effective that action will be and that many strategies are already known and understood and we know they will work there's already so much work that people have done saying this is exactly what we need if we have money and attention going to the right places in the life of waste on our planet stopping plastics as they go into the ocean is kind of like a last resort the amount of plastics entering the seas is so large that scooping up a tiny amount of it will not make very much of a difference at all those solutions that already exist include organizations similar to the ocean cleanup but more based on evidence-based best practices such as the river cleanup and water witch mostly however the solutions are systematic preventing companies from producing single-use plastics substituting plastics with alternatives and improving the availability of recycling and waste collection more broadly crucially what this means on the ground will vary depending on where you are higher income countries should focus on reducing plastic usage and improving the availability of recycling while lower-income countries should focus on improving waste collection and reducing leakage from waste sites into the natural environment and those actions must be taken in collaboration with and in such a way that empowers local communities rather than just having a bunch of rich white guys turning up and telling you what to do i made some new friends who after i introduced myself kept pronouncing my name as gringo for some reason the way to generally fix this problem is with systematic change engaging with the factors that cause plastic to enter river systems in the first place so that means the corporations that produce the plastic the communities that use the plastic and the waste disposal or lack thereof available to those communities once it's in the river it's kind of too late to stop the plastic with any degree of efficiency the literature is very clear the closer you can take action to the source of plastic the better that means at the point of manufacture use or disposal not whilst it's already floating down a river so it's pretty clear that the ocean cleanup isn't acting based on the literature either in its method or in its top-down approach of applying the same solution everywhere and i'm aware that the ocean cleanup says this is a temporary solution and that they want the systematic change that i've talked about as i stressed in my previous video on team seas and the previous previous video on team trees this is more of an issue than just picking the wrong sub-optimal solution when the campaign receives so much publicity forcing an illiterate inappropriate solution to a problem just because it makes for a more effective public relations campaign means that you will under deliver on what you promised and have basically no impact on the environmental problem at hand take up all the oxygen in the room for other environmental campaigns which would have been more effective and implant your ineffective methodology in the public consciousness damaging future campaigns which would again be more effective i don't want to come across as too negative in this video but i don't think it's unreasonable to hold the most high profile environmental campaign in the history of youtube to a high standard we deserved better if the tmc's campaign had taken 15 million and invested it in improvements in local waste management we'd be much further on the way in fixing this problem and be better equipped to progress further in the future as it stands we're simply not going to see any significant environmental impact from this campaign as i also said in my previous video though if you donated to team c's then you did a good thing you took some of your hard-earned money and gave it away to try and make the world a better place and i am not and this video isn't criticizing you or your choice these are two very famous people at the head of team seas and they are sparking people to really care and the ocean conservancy is a wonderful partner and so i think the potential for people to direct millions of dollars and use huge fame to do good things for the world that is a trend that i hope continues forever i think the change that i'd love to see is just making it not a marketing campaign but giving it a little bit of oversight by working with scientific organizations to have them at the advisor level for the campaign there's no reason if you have all this money in power that you can't ask people for input that are have expertise in this what this video is saying is that the tmc's partnership with the ocean cleanup was fundamentally flawed and a cynic would argue was never really about trying to fix plastic pollution at all instead just being a marketing campaign as a result the problem is still out there but so is the solution it was there all along so let's listen to the scientists embrace the complexity and put our money and effort and attention into a solution that will actually make a difference it may not be as sexy or involve new technology or be as easy to market but at the end of the day follows the science what we are trying to accomplish here is nothing less than trying to keep our planet habitable for us and for the myriad species we depend upon for survival and when this much is at stake can we afford to do anything less than the least worst option this video was only made possible with the support of my patrons at patreon.com forward slash simon oxfiz if you would like me to make more videos like this one that are a bit less sponsor friendly then please do consider pledging in return you get early access to videos and you get some patreon exclusive content including a monthly behind-the-scenes vlog thanks must also go to doctors van emerick and shooti for helping with this project they were so generous with their time please do check out their work linked in the description and last but not least thank you so much for watching this video was so hard to put together because there are just so many factors you have to balance when talking about team c's and not all of them even made it into the video in the end so if you did enjoy the outcome and probably the outcome of the most difficult writing process of my life then please do pop the video a like and let me know what you thought in the comments here's some recommended videos from me to watch next if you haven't already you can subscribe to the channel down here and if you haven't already you can also support me on patreon with one of these links that just leaves me to say thank you once again for watching i'll see you in the next one
2022-08-06