Why the Great Pacific Garbage Patch CAN'T be Cleaned Up — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Most people imagine the Great Pacific
2. 0:02Garbage Patch as a giant floating island
3. 0:05of rubbish, a solid massive plastic
4. 0:08drifting somewhere [music] in the
5. 0:09Pacific Ocean. You've probably even
6. 0:12heard that you can see it from space.
7. 0:14But, what you've been told is almost
8. 0:17entirely wrong. What's actually there is
9. 0:19far worse. 1.8 trillion pieces of
10. 0:23plastic weighing 100,000 tons dispersed
11. 0:28across 1.6 million square kilometers of
12. 0:31open ocean, an area about three times
13. 0:34the size of France. And the issue is,
14. 0:37it's not a solid mass that you can
15. 0:39locate and remove. Much of it is barely
16. 0:42visible from the deck of a boat. It's
17. 0:45scattered across the open ocean with no
18. 0:48fixed borders and no straightforward way
19. 0:51to clean it. Essentially, it's a plastic
20. 0:54soup. Even with modern cleanup methods,
21. 0:56like those deployed by The Ocean
22. 0:58Cleanup, they simply can't remove
23. 1:00plastic faster than the rate that it
24. 1:03enters the ocean. This is why the Great
25. 1:05Pacific Garbage Patch can never truly be
26. 1:08cleaned from the ocean and why the
27. 1:10solution doesn't involve the ocean at
28. 1:13all.
29. 1:17The most comprehensive survey of the
30. 1:20Garbage Patch ever conducted was carried
31. 1:22out by The Ocean Cleanup. They deployed
32. 1:2530 boats, 652 surface nets, and two
33. 1:28aircraft simultaneously. What they found
34. 1:31was considerably worse than anyone
35. 1:34expected. The total mass of plastic in
36. 1:37the patch had been underestimated by a
37. 1:39factor of between 4 and 16, 100,000
38. 1:45tons. But, what makes the Great Pacific
39. 1:47Garbage Patch so uniquely difficult to
40. 1:50address is the fact it's not a solid
41. 1:53mass. It's a concentration zone of
42. 1:55microplastics, fragments smaller than a
43. 1:58grain of rice, suspended through the
44. 2:01upper layer of the ocean, largely
45. 2:03invisible from the surface. And those
46. 2:06fragments are still breaking down under
47. 2:08the effects of sunlight and wave action
48. 2:11into pieces so small they're absorbed
49. 2:14into the tissue of the fish that
50. 2:16encounter them and eventually into us.
51. 2:23When scientists conducted large-scale
52. 2:25surveys of the hard plastic recovered
53. 2:28from the patch, specifically pieces
54. 2:30larger than 5 cm, they found that
55. 2:33between 75 and 86% of it, by mass, came
56. 2:38from the fishing industry. Abandoned
57. 2:41nets, lost ropes, buoys, and crates.
58. 2:45Not the plastic bottles and packaging
59. 2:47most people imagine, but fishing gear.
60. 2:50And the biggest contributors are Japan
61. 2:52and China, who account for about 33%
62. 2:55each, South Korea about 15%, and the
63. 2:59United States about 5%. Part of the
64. 3:01reason Japan's figure is so high is the
65. 3:042011 earthquake and the tsunami that
66. 3:07followed swept [music] an enormous
67. 3:09quantity of coastal debris directly into
68. 3:13the Pacific. A single event contributing
69. 3:16to a problem that had been accumulating
70. 3:18for decades.
71. 3:23The Ocean Cleanup, the most ambitious
72. 3:25attempt ever made, has now removed
73. 3:28around 50 million kilograms of plastic
74. 3:31from the ocean.
75. 3:33By any measure, that is a remarkable
76. 3:35achievement. But, the issue is, every
77. 3:37single minute more than 3,300 kg of new
78. 3:41plastic enters the ocean. So, that means
79. 3:44by the time you finish this video, more
80. 3:46than 33,000 kg of plastic will have
81. 3:50entered the ocean.
82. 3:51That's about the same weight as five
83. 3:53double-decker buses, or if each empty
84. 3:56bottle weighed 10 g, it would be the
85. 3:58equivalent of 3.3 million plastic
86. 4:01bottles entering the ocean in 10
87. 4:05minutes. The debris is dispersed across
88. 4:081.6 [music]
89. 4:08million square kilometers of remote
90. 4:11water, increasingly broken into
91. 4:14fragments too small for any barrier
92. 4:16system to catch. Even the most advanced
93. 4:19technology currently deployed is
94. 4:21collecting less than the ocean is
95. 4:23receiving. And that gap is widening.
96. 4:27Cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
97. 4:29from the sea is, in effect, attempting
98. 4:32to empty a bathtub while the tap is
99. 4:34running at full pressure. And before any
100. 4:37real progress can be made, somebody
101. 4:40needs to turn the tap off. Just quickly,
102. 4:42if you're enjoying this video so far,
103. 4:44I'd really appreciate it if you hit the
104. 4:46like and subscribe button. It really
105. 4:48helps me out. But, anyway, where is that
106. 4:51tap?
107. 4:56The majority of plastic that enters the
108. 4:58ocean, not just the Garbage Patch, but
109. 5:01the ocean as a whole, comes from land,
110. 5:03specifically from rivers. Between 1.15
111. 5:07and 2.41 million tons of plastic enters
112. 5:10the sea from rivers every year. That's
113. 5:13approximately 4.7 million kilograms
114. 5:16every single day, funneled from cities,
115. 5:19towns, and rural communities through the
116. 5:22waterways that drain them. In cities
117. 5:24like Mumbai, one of the fastest-growing
118. 5:27urban centers on Earth and home to more
119. 5:30than 20 million people, this problem is
120. 5:33huge. Mumbai sits just above sea level,
121. 5:36so to prevent flooding, it's threaded
122. 5:38with storm drains, dozens of channels
123. 5:41running through its most densely
124. 5:42populated areas, designed to carry water
125. 5:45away when the monsoon season arrives.
126. 5:48But, they carry everything else, too.
127. 5:52Plastic that isn't collected, whether
128. 5:54it's swept from a pavement, blown from
129. 5:56an overflowing bin, or dumped near a
130. 5:58drain, enters those channels. And those
131. 6:02channels lead directly to the sea. If
132. 6:04nothing changes, ocean plastic pollution
133. 6:07is projected to quadruple by 2050.
134. 6:11The only benefit of it starting on land
135. 6:15is that it can be intercepted before it
136. 6:17reaches the ocean. And that's where my
137. 6:20friends at Planet Wild come in. Planet
138. 6:22Wild is crowdfunding, but for nature.
139. 6:25And it has a growing community of over
140. 6:2722,000 nature enthusiasts funding real,
141. 6:31on-the-ground conservation missions
142. 6:33around the world. One of those missions
143. 6:35was in Mumbai, tackling this exact
144. 6:37problem.
145. 6:39They partnered with Plastic Fisher to
146. 6:41stop the plastic from reaching the
147. 6:42ocean. They funded barriers called trash
148. 6:45booms. Essentially, they're floating
149. 6:47barriers with a net skirt installed
150. 6:50directly across Mumbai's storm drains.
151. 6:53They intercept drifting plastic waste
152. 6:56before it can reach the sea. It requires
153. 6:58no heavy machinery to install, which
154. 7:01means it can be deployed anywhere, from
155. 7:03a tiny village stream to a 42-m storm
156. 7:07drain in one of the world's largest
157. 7:09cities. Fish and other aquatic life can
158. 7:12still pass freely underneath. According
159. 7:15to Planet Wild, the Plastic Fisher
160. 7:17project has already prevented 2.5
161. 7:19million kilograms of plastic from
162. 7:22reaching the ocean. Whether it's saving
163. 7:24endangered species, restoring forests,
164. 7:27or stopping plastic pollution, Planet
165. 7:29Wild is huge on transparency, and they
166. 7:32document all of their work in monthly
167. 7:34videos right here on YouTube. The
168. 7:37community gets to see real, visual
169. 7:40evidence of what their contributions
170. 7:42achieve on the ground. For their
171. 7:44membership, you can give whatever you
172. 7:46can. No amount is too small. You can
173. 7:49start for as little as the price of a
174. 7:51sandwich, because every single dollar
175. 7:53counts in protecting nature. I've
176. 7:56personally been a member for over half a
177. 7:58year now, as it feels like you're
178. 8:00actually making a difference. And it
179. 8:02gets better than that. The first 100
180. 8:05people to sign up using my code
181. 8:07explained4, which you can either find
182. 8:09the link to in the description or scan
183. 8:11this QR code, will get their first month
184. 8:13paid for by me. There's no catch, and
185. 8:16you can cancel easily at any time. Even
186. 8:19if we stopped every new piece of plastic
187. 8:21today, the Garbage Patch would still
188. 8:24take decades to shrink. The
189. 8:26microplastics already there will persist
190. 8:29for centuries.
191. 8:30But, the rate at which it grows is not
192. 8:32fixed. It's the product of decisions by
193. 8:35industries, by governments, and by all
194. 8:38of us through what we choose to support.
195. 8:41And while changing global policy can
196. 8:43feel distant, backing community-driven
197. 8:46efforts, like those of Planet Wild or
198. 8:48The Ocean Cleanup, is something anybody
199. 8:51watching this video can do right now,
200. 8:53helping to create real, measurable
201. 8:56protection for a future that is still
202. 8:59ours to shape.
203. 9:01On screen now, or in the description,
204. 9:03you can find Planet Wild's mission in
205. 9:05Mumbai, or there's also a different
206. 9:08video of mine if you have time for
207. 9:10another.