Maui’s Ark founder Stephen Harris retrieves reef rubbish at Fagaloa Bay, Samoa, September 2019. Photo: Emma Luke
The next International Negotiating Committee towards a global plastics treaty will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, in November. This elephant and giraffe - on display in Nairobi during the Blue Economy Conference in 2019 - were made from recycled thongs. Photo: Stephen Harris
Anemone from the deep rides on plastic
A trawl from the New Zealand research vessel, Tangaroa, hauled these anemones, fixed to a sheet of plastic, from one kilometre down in the Chatham Rise, east of the North Island.
Expedition members (L-R) James Beard, Pitcairn Islands Deputy Governor Robin Shackell and Pew Trust-Bertarelli’s Johnny Briggs harnessed their energies to clean up Henderson Island’s foreshore.
One of the remotest islands on Earth also has beaches with among the highest concentrations of plastic flotsam of any stretch of coastline. This three-part feature describes what happened when a special expedition by the British Government and the Pew-Bertarelli Trusts tried to clean it up:
https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2019/07/henderson-island-rubbish-plastic-ocean-waste/chapter1/index.html#section-3udxvGQIBV
And how the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported it:
Rough seas prevented the expedition from removing the collected flotsam - but it’s hoped a team may return in April 2020 to finish the job:
A Dutch innovator claims to have overcome earlier setbacks in scooping up plastic flotsam with floating booms. Boyan Slat’s Ocean Cleanup expedition last year failed when the boom system broke up in the Pacific when he attempted to mop up part of the Northwest Pacific Garbage Patch (see map opposite and below), but now he believes his team has mastered the technique:
The boom at work - but the Pacific isn’t always this calm.
news
Global plastics treaty racing against the clock
A dozen Pacific nations have been at the heart of negotiations to agree a treaty by next year among at least 130 countries to dramatically reduce the use and harm of plastics.
The ‘One Pacific Voice for a Plastics Treaty’ grouping is urging the treaty enshrine legally enforceable ‘upstream’ measures to stem the uncontrolled tide of plastics choking their far-flung island homes. They made their voice heard at the Second International Negotiating Committee (INC2) meeting in Paris, which ended on 2 June.
Nauru’s representative, Joanie Hartman, said her country had just one landfill, and despite laws such as a ban on single use plastic, Nauru couldn’t cope alone. “Under this new treaty being discussed, we are hoping to receive technical and financial assistance, as well as help from the international community and partners to build the capacity of our communities to dispose and clean up the waste and reach the goal in end plastic pollution,” Hartman said.
New Zealand is among participating nations targeting government subsidies for fossil fuels, from which almost all plastics are produced. The subsidies incentivise plastics production and make virgin plastics artifically cheap compared to recyled or compostable alternatives.
The next negotiating round, INC3, is scheduled to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, in November (see photo opposite.)
Whangarei Native Bird Recovery Centre founder Robert Webb with the grey-headed mollymawk, restored to health. Photo: Tania Whyte
Rare albatross left flightless - by a balloon
A rare grey-headed mollymawk - a type of albatross that nests only to the far south of New Zealand - has been restored to health after trying to eat a fishing balloon and getting tangled up in nylon.
A walker on a Northland beach found the mollymawk tangled in nylon and caked in sand in early June. Taken to the Whangarei Native Bird Recovery Centre, the mollymawk was freed, cleaned and fed by founder Robert Webb (pictured.)
Webb believed the mollymawk became tangled when it tried to eat the fishing flotation balloon while ranging far from its nesting grounds on either New Zealand’s far-south Campbell Island, or on Macquarie Island, which marks the maritime southern boundary with Australia.
Despite its massive wingspan, this mollymawk is thought to be less than a year old.
Balletic ballaena ‘throws free’ ensnaring fishing gear
A humpback whale snared by fishing rope off the coast of Canada astounded rescuers by freeing itself as they tried to work out how to cut it loose.
The whale, escorted by three others, showed both agility and intelligence in freeing itself in a maneouvre never previously witnessed - let alone filmed. Canada Fisheries and Oceans staff filmed the episode near Texada Island, British Columbia. See clip on the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63353569
New zealand extends ban in wider range of plastic products
A New Zealand ban on polystyrene packaging, PVC food trays and plastic cotton bud stems came into effect on 1 October.
The move is the first against ‘problematic’ plastics since a ban on single-use bags in 2019.
The products covered by the new ban are:
Polystyrene takeaway packaging for food and beverages
Expanded polystyrene food and beverage retail packaging (eg foam takeaway containers or some instant noodle cups)
polyvinyl chloride (PVC) food trays and containers for meat, produce and baked items
Plastics with additives that make them fragment into micro-plastics
Single use plastic drink stirrers
Single use plastic use cotton buds
In mid 2023, the next group of single-use plastics to be phased out includes plates, bowls, cutlery, produce bags and non-compostable produce labels.
Not very yummy, really. Photo: Getty Images.
Petitioners urge NZ Govt to ban plastic waste exports
A petition with 11,000 signatures has been presented at Parliament calling on the Government to ban exports of plastic waste. The organisers claim millions of tonnes continue to be exported, mainly to Malaysia - see below - despite Government claims it would block the trade.
See full story here:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/07/28/petition-urges-govt-to-ban-plastic-waste-exports/
New Zealand signals national standards for waste collection
In a major overhaul New Zealand will require standard nationwide kerbside waste collection and will offer a 20 cent refund on empty bottles.
Environment Minister David Parker announced the changes on 13 March, calling for public submissions - but implementation may not be complete until 2030.
Key aspects of the changes are:
A national model for kerbside waste collection, to improve consistency and efficiency and reduce consumer confusion;
Collection of business food waste, and eventually separate collection of household food waste, estimated to make up a third of all kerbside rubbish and, taken together, a fifth of landfill methane emissions;
Councils would have until 2030 to meet a requirement that half of all the kerbside waste they collect would be ‘diverted’ from landfill as either food waste or dry recyclables;
A bottle deposit scheme by 2025, offering 20 cents for every bottle returned, except milk.
Full details of the reforms can be found at: Ministry for the Environment Waste Reforms
Baled plastic bottles - seen here at the Visy collection site in Sydney - will become more numerous once a 20-cent deposit provides a monetary incentive to return them. Photo: Stephen Harris
New Zealand fishing company Sanford Ltd has been an industry leader in reducing its use of plastics. These cooler bags are part of its efforts. Photo: Stephen Harris
cradle to grave management planned for major pollutants
Mandatory product stewardship for plastic containers will force producers to account for the resulting waste, the New Zealand Government announced in late July. Five other “priority products” will be required to institute whole-of-life stewardship: tyres, electrical and electronic products, agrichemicals and their containers, refrigerants, and farm plastics. The Associate Environment Minister, Eugenie Sage, explained the step: “Regulated product stewardship helps put the responsibility for waste and what happens to products at the end of their useful life on manufacturers, importers, retailers and users, rather than on communities, councils, neighbourhoods and nature.” Read more:
https://www.nspackaging.com/news/new-zealand-plastic-packaging/
Oscar winner Olivia Colman has given voice to threats to our ocean - by playing a turtle in an animated video. ‘Turtle Journey’ is a collaboration between the makers of Wallace and Gromit, Greenpeace UK and several famous actors including Colman, showing what happens when a turtle family encounters human impacts to the marine environment.
See video and Greenpeace news release here:
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (centre) and Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage (right) at the launch of ‘Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa New Zealand’. Others are (L-R) Dr Abbie Reynolds, Sustainable Business Council; Dr Mark Staiger, Canterbury University; Maui’s Ark founder Stephen Harris; Dr Olga Pantos, Institute of Environmental Science and Research; Prof. Juliet Gerrard, Chief Science Adviser; and Dr Rachel Chiaroni-Clarke, chief author of the report.
‘Make best practice standard practice’ is the catch-cry of the most thorough study yet of the causes, consequences and possible solutions to reduce plastics pollution in New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage launched the study in Auckland on 7 December. Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa New Zealand is the first major report by the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor (OPMCSA), Professor Juliet Gerrard. It begins with how New Zealand would look in 2030 having taken the bold decisions needed to reduce the wanton use of plastics, and ends with recommendations how to achieve that. The Government announced it would phase out food packaging made from polystyrene foam and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), among difficult-to-recycle plastics. See the Prime Minister’s speech, the report, and a film about New Zealand’s plastics challenge and the work of Gerrard’s panel and its report below. Then go to the ‘Ideas’ page for more of the extensive news coverage of the report, the launch and the reaction from affected parties - which include everyone.
Video of the PM’s speech from the launch, along with links to press items: https://www.pmcsa.ac.nz/our-projects/plastics/rethinking-plastics-press-gallery/
The OPMCSA’s plastics website including downloads for the PDFs of the short and long reports: https://www.pmcsa.ac.nz/our-projects/plastics/rethinking-plastics-in-aotearoa-new-zealand/
‘Science and the Plastics Problem’ film by Shirley Horrocks about this project: https://vimeo.com/377413439
https://www.pmcsa.ac.nz/our-projects/plastics/rethinking-plastics-in-aotearoa-new-zealand/
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/govt-pledges-next-steps-plastic-waste
The sperm whale at Seilebost Beach on the Isle of Harris, Scotland. Photo: SMASS
A whale stuffed with plastic has washed up dead on a Scottish beach, Stuff News reports. The 14-metre sperm whale, weighing 26 tonnes, was found to contain 100kg of plastics: fishing nets, bundles of rope, plastic cups, plastic bags and other garbage. The Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme (Smass) buried the whale carcass at the site, on the Isle of Harris. Read more:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/117885984/whale-found-dead-with-100kg-of-trash-in-its-stomach
Washout: From 2023 California will ban hotel toiletries like these, which in most cases are thrown out after being used once.
Hotel California - no pink shampoo on ice, no warm smell of conditioner rising up through the air…..
Hotels in California - the most populous state in the US - will have to stop giving guests small plastic shampoo bottles under a new law set to take effect starting in 2023, Stuff news reports.
Governor Gavin Newsom has announced he had signed a law banning hotels from giving guests plastic bottles filled with shampoo, conditioner or soap. It takes effect in 2023 for hotels with more than 50 rooms and 2024 for hotels with less than 50 rooms.
Violators could be fined US$500 for a first offence and US$2000 (NZ$3177) for subsequent violations.
The law follows similar actions by some of the world's largest hotel chains. Marriott International has said it plans to stop using small plastic bottles in its hotel rooms by December 2020. IHG, which owns Holiday Inn, Kimpton and other brands, said it will eliminate about 200 million small bottles by 2021.
Plastics pollution is fast growing to rival threats from climate change to the Pacific, one of the region’s top diplomats has warned. Kosi Latu, Director-General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), told the Moananui - Te Paepae o Tangaroa (Open Ocean) Symposium in Gisborne, New Zealand, on 7 October that these and other environmental threats to the Pacific demanded a transformation in thinking. Despite the many forums and institutions already grappling with these challenges, these lacked coherence and none was equipped to reverse the damaging trends, he said. “We’re embedded in a philosophy of extraction; we need a paradigm shift….A transformative approach would be to consider the needs of the ocean itself and the creatures that live in it.”
Kosi Latu, Director-General of SPREP, in Gisborne/Tairawhiti on 7 October. Photo: Stephen Harris
Coming to a beach near you…The Pacific has three of the six known ocean gyres of plastics waste. These comprise thick fields of plastic ‘smog’ covering areas bigger than most countries. The north-west gyre is the size of New Zealand or Texas.
Bags gagged! Throwaway plastic bags became outlaws in New Zealand on 1 July.
Sign on a Wellington beachfront park. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, when launching the public consultation process that has led to the ban, that she received more letters expressing concern about throwaway plastic bags than about any other issue, and most of these letters were from children.
Fish migrate from warming waters. This effects not only their breeding patterns and distribution in the ocean, but also deprives the countries whose waters the fish leave from of food and from earning a living by catching them for export.
The ocean is warming at an ever-faster rate, a leading global weather watchdog says. In its annual State of the Global Climate report, published late March, the World Meteorological Organisation says the four years 2015-18 were the warmest on record, and oceans are a key indicator, absorbing nine-tenths of all heat trapped by greenhouse gases. The Southern Ocean has warmed the fastest, and an area of the Tasman Sea west of New Zealand’s South Island recorded 5 degrees Celsius above average - a world record. These trends have grave implications for life on Earth. See full report:
Meanwhile, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) warns that overall CO2 emissions from the plastic life cycle are expected to increase by 50% by 2030, while the CO2 increase from plastic incineration is set to triple by then, due to wrong waste management choices. See full report:
http://wwf.panda.org/?uNewsID=344071
Depleted oceans could threaten the future of our planet, the President of the Seychelles has warned in a speech delivered underwater. See full story from the BBC:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47925193
A whale beached in the Philippines was found to have eaten around 40kg of plastic, including 16 rice sacks, four banana plantation style bags and multiple shopping bags. See full story:
http://www.climateaction.org/news/dead-whale-found-with-40kg-of-plastic-in-its-stomach
Nearly three-quarters of New Zealanders are concerned about plastic waste, a major study shows. The Colmar Brunton annual ‘Better Futures’ study revealed that 72% of respondents rated plastic waste as a significant concern, more than any other issue. The survey, which polled 1000 people online in early December, showed 9% more people concerned about plastic waste than a year earlier. The result was ahead of the cost of living (68%), protection of children and suicide rates (both 67%) and other environmental issues, notably polluted lakes, rivers and seas (64%) and climate change (55%). See full results here:
https://www.colmarbrunton.co.nz/news/better-futures-report/
Disposable plastic bags will be banned in New Zealand from next July. Following public consultation the New Zealand Government has decided to ban single-use plastic bags from July this year. See summary of submissions:
We’re eating plastic, says a study reported in the New York Times. The research, led by a medical university in Vienna, found an alarming prevalence and range of microplastics in samples taken from human gut contents. See report:
The NZ Parliament’s Environment Committee has heard from Maui’s Ark founder, Stephen Harris, about the scale and complexity of marine plastic debris. The Committee is holding an inquiry into coastal plastic pollution in New Zealand - but Harris says the problem is a global one:
https://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018662434
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/the-house/audio/2018662434/plastic-not-so-fantastic
Beware of greenwash! New Zealand's Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has investigated the sometimes-loose use of terms claiming packaging is 'biodegradable' or 'compostable'. Here's the Commissioner's guide to sort the green stuff from the brown stuff:
https://www.pce.parliament.nz/publications/biodegradable-and-compostable-plastics-in-the-environment
Somalia's Islamist movement, al-Shabab, has decreed a ban on single-use plastic bags. Al-Shabab - which means 'The Youth' in Arabic - says they are dangerous to human and animal health. The penalties for non-compliance have not been spelled out.
Britain is contributing nearly $17 million (9 million pounds) to spearhead a Commonwealth drive to protect marine environments in small island states. The initiative recognises the connection between climate change and marine vulnerability:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/foreign-secretary-announces-9m-to-save-our-oceans
A bug that eats plastic could offer a solution to attacking much of the world's plastic waste build-up, scientists say. The enzyme is able to break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) - a form of plastic used in millions of tonnes of plastic bottles:https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/103194694/scientists-accidentally-create-plasticeating-enzyme-that-could-help-fight-pollution
Cambodia's coastal town of Sihanouk is suffocating under drifts of plastic waste, the UK Guardian newspaper reports. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/25/mountains-and-mountains-of-plastic-life-on-cambodias-polluted-coast
Not in my back yard? Plastic waste on the Cambodian coast at Sihanoukville.
New Zealand's Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, has pledged his country's support to helping Pacific nations address the problems of plastic waste. New Zealand's government recently joined the UN-led CleanSeas campaign which aims to rid the seas of plastic waste.
Henderson Island. Photo by Jennifer Lavers
New Zealand's most successful global politician and its most famous actor have backed calls to ban single-use plastic bags. Helen Clark - a former New Zealand Prime Minister and until last year head of the United Nations development programme - plus actor Sam Neill have both recently added their voices to calls to ban the bag, as has primate researcher Jane Goodall: https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/101773516/helen-clark-joins-sam-neill-and-jane-goodall-in-campaign-urging-nationwide-ban-on-plastic-bags
A New Zealand company has developed the world's first solution for converting all grades of plastic waste into valuable building materials. See more on this TV3 News item:
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2018/01/could-this-be-the-answer-to-plastic-waste.html