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Transcript

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0:01Who are the characters behind science? This is Science Behind the Glass, Illuminating the Human Side. In this podcast, we unveil the human side of laboratories and science. Scientists share personal experiences and will discuss their meanings from different perspectives and fields of research. Welcome to Science Behind the Glass, Illuminating the Human Side. We explore the stories behind the science and the people shaping our world with curiosity, courage, and purpose. Today, we dive into a global crisis that becomes so visible, we almost stop seeing it. Plastic pollution.

0:41It’s in our oceans, in fish we eat, in the air we breathe, and yet the seasons behind it remain stubbornly unchanged. But what if we could see the problem clearly? Not just in the headlines of beach cleanups, but through science and data. and long -term visions. What if we can hold corporations and governments accountable, not just with the outage, but with facts and urgency? To help us do just that, we are joined by Lauren Leverton, head of research at The Ocean Cleanup, a visionary organization tackling the plastic problem at escape. Lauren is one of the leading researchers behind the science of plastic accumulation in our oceans. from the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the rivers feeding it. Lauren’s journey began with ocean’s physics and numerical models.

1:36But over the last decade, he’s turned that expertise towards one of the planet’s most urgent challenges, mapping and confronting plastic pollution at a global scale. His research has transformed our understanding of where ocean plastic comes from and how it moves and what it will take to stop it. Thank you, Lauren, for joining us to Science Behind the Glass. It’s a pleasure having you here. Thank you for accepting the invitation.

2:04To start off, you are from New Zealand. And how does those early years inspire you to or influence you to study or to work with the ocean? Yeah, so well, first, I am not from New Zealand. I’ve lived in New Zealand for nearly 20 years in a little place called Raglan. But originally, I’m French. With a name like this, you’d guess I’m from France. But I, yeah, so I lived in New Zealand for maybe 20 years by the sea, but before that I was studying in France. My family is actually from a small island called Rainier Island, which is in the Indian Ocean next to Madagascar. And yeah, so my whole life I’ve been spending a lot of time at sea. And my move to New Zealand also was motivated by the beautiful place called Raglan, which is a very famous surfing spot. And I’ve always had my hair salty. And yeah, it’s always been something very, very special to me. And when I was studying, I was always been attracted by science and math and physics. I always wanted to combine the both, right? So physics and the ocean. So I became an oceanographer. Great. Thank you, Laurent. So in 2010, you made a big change in your career from like oil spilling, modeling,

3:35plastic pollution. So my question is, what was it about the marine debris that grabbed your attention? And how did it feel entering a field that was still a blank canvas as you described it in your own words? Yes, I mean, I was a coastal scientist. Mostly I was modeling, so developing numerical models for oil spills, but other sort of pollutants or like sediment plume from dredging, fish larvae, those kind of things. And back then I was working for a company. We actually contracted, we were contracted by a non -for -profit in California that was interested to study the motion of marine debris. And I used our model that we were essentially developing for our spills and I changed it to make it a global scale model and to study the transport of marine debris at global scale and reproduce the formation of what we call garbage patches. So in subtropical gyros, five of them in the ocean, in the global oceans, there are areas where currents accumulate floating debris.

4:46And so, yeah, that was the beginning of it. I was pushed by one of my colleagues back then to publish those results, and I did. And yeah, that was the beginning of a real big adventure. And from there, I started to cooperate with other scientists. The field of plastic pollution and marine debris was existing already from the 70s, 80s. People started to report on this, but it really accelerated, I think. in the late 20s, early 2010s, and now it’s a very, very active field of research. But yeah, at that time, it really felt like there was a lot of things to do. And yeah, that just dragged me really into that career. And then you start working with Boyan just directly because Influence are your colleagues, or how do you find this opportunity?

5:44So I published my first paper was in 2012 and it was essentially a model that was reproducing the garbage patch formation. And Boyan at that time, I think he founded the Ocean Cleanup in 2013 and so had the vision of trying to remove plastic from the garbage patches. And so he got in touch with me asking me about data and results from the model. And so I’ve, I mean, I’ve always believed in open access science and so I’ve just essentially distributed my data to him and I said, well, here you go, good luck. And from there we started discussing and yeah, I started working for the Ocean Cleanup really in 2016.

6:28So there was a few years of just discussion and eventually got me to join the adventure. And that’s when your modeling just helped to predict the cleanups of the tech in these areas. and how these work and what areas get more attention thanks to the modeling that you use. At the moment at the Ocean Canop, we develop essentially two types of models. One is for the ocean, so trying to understand where persistent floating plastic pollution accumulates. Like I was saying, it was very offshore area, remote area in things called subtropical gyres. So there’s five of them in each major ocean basin at subtropical latitude. The largest accumulation of those is in the North Pacific in a place that we call the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. halfway between the state of Hawaii and the state of California.

7:26So this is where the ocean cleanup has been focusing their thoughts in terms of ocean collection of marine debris. The other part of modeling that we work on is trying to understand the emission of plastic from land to the ocean. So that’s the second part of the mission of the ocean cleanup is to try to intercept plastic before it reaches the ocean. And the rivers, we often say, are the arteries that bring plastic pollution from land to the ocean. So we try to develop models that predict how much plastic is coming from which rivers. And so that helps us essentially target locations where we want to deploy solutions, things called interceptors that are stopping the flow of plastic pollution before it reaches the ocean. Yeah, absolutely. And just going a little bit about your body of research, the rivers is a key path to the plastic pollution. So what has been the biggest misconception people have about plastic, where it comes from and how can science shift public understanding? What has been the misconception that you felt that the general public has had? I mean, you know, in terms of science and communication of results, there were early results of models that were predicting contribution of different rivers.

8:54And I think one of the first papers to come out was that there was about 10 rivers that were contributing 90 % of the problem. So people were just like, well, easy, just like target those 10 rivers and jobs done. But that was early research. And so we’ve started to really investigate the problem. And we realized that the problem was much more complex in terms of geographical diversity.

9:21And so now we estimate about 1,000 rivers contributing about 80 % of the problem of plastic coming from rivers. So it’s a bigger number, but also 1,000 rivers is less than 1 % of the total rivers in the world. um you know there’s still a small fraction of leakage points where we’re trying to to focus on and um and what we found is that this was not necessarily the largest river like big continental rivers that was contributing the the largest amount of plastic pollution but mostly coastal uh urban waterways in developing economies in Southeast Asia, in Central America, in West Africa. So those are really like the areas where we need to focus in the years to come to make sure that we’re not sort of spilling that much plastic into the ocean. Yes, because actually, it’s very funny because if you think about the coastal cities, we could say like a Well, most of the majority of the cities are coastal. For example, Australia. I’m not sure if developed countries have the same problems.

10:33I know that you mentioned that compared to South America and Central America. But what about the other cities or main cities that are in the coastal areas with developing countries? It happens the same or it’s not the same? What do you mean? What about the other coastal cities? For example, we developed countries, for example, in Australia or even in the U.S., in all the coasts. What about those coastal cities and the rivers that are contributing or falling into the ocean? What is that? Is it not significant amount of plastic or does it doesn’t matter compared to the other countries? There is definitely plastic coming from developed countries. We have an interceptor in Los Angeles that is regularly collecting quite significant amount of plastic. At global scale though, you look at different countries, you really see that the problem is in… regions that’s not necessarily like the poorest country, but countries that have known in recent decade, like a very fast sort of development, where sort of the middle class is developing, growing. And so people, you know, start to buy more things, but the waste management system is not necessarily following, you know, the same pace of the harder

12:04the middle class is growing, right? So those are like, countries like Indonesia, like India, like many countries in Latin America, right? Where the infrastructure needs to follow, right? So in those countries, there’s, you know, some places like major part of the population don’t have access to any sort of like waste management system. So, you know, there’s the whole system to bring them the goods, bring them plastic and other consumer goods. But there’s no sort of system in place, infrastructure in place to actually take the waste, the resulting waste, right? And that’s one of the main, main problem. That’s not saying that plastic pollution doesn’t occur in regions where waste managements are more developed, like Australia or the U.S. or in Europe. But at scale… It’s really in those developing economies where the work needs to happen in the years to come. And if we put in context when we talk about the great Pacific garbage patch, it’s more like a 500 jumbo jet’s worth of plastic floating in the ocean. So this is the amount of plastic that we have in this garbage patch. And so what does that say about this patch and what it doesn’t say? What is hidden between all these rubbish, patch of rubbish? I’ll speak mostly about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch because this is where

13:35we’ve done most of our research. We estimate about 100,000 tons of plastics or 100 million kilograms of floating plastics accumulated in this region. When you study plastic, there’s concentration of plastic pollution, there’s two units that you can use. One is the number of pieces per surface area. And so if you look at that unit, you will see the majority of plastic is microplastic, small little fragments, up to millions of little fragments per square kilometers.

14:08The other unit you can use is the mass, right? So the kilograms per unit of surface area. And if you look at the mass of plastic, really the majority of the mass is contained in larger objects. things that are bigger than several centimeters to several meters, like giant ghost nets. We call it big fishing nets. And one thing that we’ve identified over the years is that the majority of that mass of plastic is actually coming from fishing activity. So fish nets, I was saying, but also crates, buoys, fish traps, oyster spacers.

14:44So fishing aquaculture is one big… contributor to plastic in this specific area. One thing that we try to do then is to understand where is that plastic coming from. And we understand the source, like it’s like it’s fishing and aquaculture, but then we try to understand the origin in terms of geography and then also the reason why this plastic is lost in the ocean and accumulates later in the ocean. And so when we look at the catch that we collect, we see that, you know, About half of it is made of nets and the other half is made of rigid hard plastics. The hard plastics are quite useful because often, especially the big one, they have markings on it. So they have language, brands. There’s also production dates. Quite often you find production dates.

15:38So production dates will tell us about… the age of the plastic and whether it’s persistent or not. We find plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that was produced in the 60s, in the 70s, from the last century. So it tells you how persistent that pollution is and that it’s just not going away by itself. The other thing that we find is the origin in terms of language and, you know, different markings. And we find that, yeah, as expected, because we find a lot of debris from fishing, most of the origin that is found in the garbage patch is coming from countries that have large fishing fleets. So that would be Japan, China, Korea, the US, Taiwan.

16:22So that tells us, you know, a little bit about, you know, who is, you know, sort of like responsible for that pollution. things that we don’t really know for instance fishing nets like a large like I was saying like half of the collection is made of fishing nets we still don’t really know where those fishing nets are coming from because fishing nets will not have any markings will not have any clues of where it’s coming so that’s something that’s quite an active sort of field of research at the moment we’re investing quite some resources in trying to understand why are those nets like what type of fishing techniques they are coming from. So is it like trawling, purse lanes, long lines, and then which fleets are sort of like discarding those. And then I use discarded because that’s also another thing we’re trying to understand is like, what is the reason for those nets to end up in the ocean? They are, you know, those nets, like they are costly, like, you know, we don’t want to like assume that, you know, fishermen just like release the nets and they’re like, we don’t care, right? So we’re trying to understand the reason why those nets are being lost. Are they lost? Are they abandoned? Are they discarded?

17:31So we take those giant bundle of nets and then we try to detangle them all the way till like we have something flat. And then we look at the way it’s being cut. And so sometimes it’s sort of tear apart. Sometimes it’s cut. So it tells us whether it’s like intentional or not intentional. And so we’re working on this at the moment, but this is some of the questions we still have to solve. Yeah, that’s fascinating, Laurent. In regards to like these cleanup, what’s a question that was arising for me is like your team, when you approach these, uh, at the, uh, these, um, these cleanup processes, how do you go about with the marine life, the protection of it during these cleanups and how do you ensure that they don’t become part of this problem? What’s the, you guys steps that you guys take? There are different steps we take. Obviously, we are collecting plastics mostly to leave the environment a better place. So we don’t want the cure to be the source of the problem. It’s quite interesting because when we develop our cleanup system, we are working with people that have… a lot of experience in the fishing industry, right? But they always tell us it’s interesting because you’re developing a system that actually doesn’t want to fish.

18:53We want to fish plastic, but we don’t want to remove any sort of marine life. So the way the cleanup system works is that it’s a giant 2.5 -kilometer -long C -shaped system that is pulled very slowly by two… vessel. So the vessel is essentially sort of moving at 1.5 knots. So just to give you an idea, if you’re walking, 1.5 knots is about half the speed of, you know, about half the speed you are walking, right?

19:24So the system is moving very slowly. And then, so first, like, you know, most animals can come in and out of the system. It’s not kind of like sort of like raking everything out. And we have different sort of mitigation measures to make sure that marine life doesn’t get trapped in it. We have light beacon, we have sound beacons, we have observers on board mostly for marine mammals. I mean what we see is like, you know, marine mammals are like smart enough, like sometimes they’re curious, but sometimes they just, you know, they just look at us and then they go away and like that’s not a problem. One of the problem we have more is mostly with sea turtles because they are a little bit more stupid, you know, and they just come and so at the end of the the sea shape there is a sort of long kind of a soak that we call a retention zone where plastic accumulates.

20:13And the biggest problem is you don’t want sea turtles to be caught in that, right? So one thing that we know is that sea turtles follow certain currents depending on temperature. So we try to avoid those zones. Sometimes we still have some sea turtles coming, right? So what we have on the retention zone is cameras that can work at day and at night. And we have observers in the vessel, but also we use artificial intelligence to automatically detect if there is a sea turtle approaching the retention zone. If there is a sea turtle approaching the retention zone, we have a system to actually lift up. the retention zone and there’s actually a hole under where they actually can swim out. So we’ve tested that at CN actually works pretty good. So that’s one more mitigation measure. And so yeah, we have different steps and environmental monitoring plan and environmental impact assessment in a way that we are trying to mitigate as much as possible our impact on marine life. So do you take samples when you collect from these? sea shape, you take samples, water samples that in that way yet you are not, for example, filtering the marine water, for example, collecting phytoplankton or microplankton and then avoiding that kind of filtering the water or other animals. Yeah, that’s correct. I mean, on top of our collection, we collect data with like smaller little nets

21:45which are used. At first, they were actually used to study plankton. And this is how things started. with oceanographers, they realized there were like more and more microplastics and more microplastics than plankton in this nets, right? But we kept conducting this collection. And yeah, we study an ecosystem called the Newston, which is a free -floating, an ensemble of animals that are free -floating just like plastic. And so we’re trying to understand like, what are their relation with the plastic, but also a cleanup system. So we collect data in front of the system.

22:24collect data at the back of the system, and we try to see whether there is an impact. So far, we’ve proven there’s actually not much of an impact, whether we’re in the front or at the back. The system that we are using has a net mesh size of 1.5 centimeters. So it’s actually quite big. So we’re really trying to go for the larger plastic and not the really small microplastic, which will be really hard to collect in the future. Now, what I was telling you before is that most of the plastic accumulated in the garbage patch is contained in larger plastic. That larger plastic will degrade into microplastics over time. So we want to remove it as soon as possible. But we’re not going for the little microplastics.

23:04And the new stone essentially passes through that system. Earlier this year, we published a study trying to look at the environmental benefits of cleaning the great plastic garbage patch. So we look at different aspects. How is plastic pollution impacting the ecosystem in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? How is our cleanup impacting the ecosystem in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

23:32And we try to weigh what is the positive or negative benefit over a different sort of species. Overall, what we found, the results were published in Nature Scientific Reports. the cleanup far outweigh the benefits and the risk of plastic pollution that has on this local ecosystem. And that you mentioned, this is very, very important because actually you have the, with doing absolutely anything and the damage that we already see and the impact that we see in wildlife in general.

24:09and marine life but also there’s also the afterwards that you are doing with this with the company. But also I remember that there’s a researcher from New Zealand that she was explaining that some birds, marine birds, that they were flying around the patches of a plastic and they were consuming this one because when these patches started composing of plastic. They started releasing some type of compounds that are similar to fish.

24:47So they were like a dummy for them and they were attracted to that and they end up consuming this type of plastic. So the populations were plummering because the consumption of this plastic. So that’s one of them. like a highlights. And then when they were removing, of course, the plastic was trying to prevent this damage to these birds. They saw the differences in the population. This is one of the studies I remember. Yes. And then now let’s talk a little bit about something uncomfortable.

25:22That is the global plastic treaty, which was unfortunately the negotiations collapsed this year. and there wasn’t any binding agreement in place. So what this means for the ocean cleanup sport and how do you continue pushing up when actually not only corporations but developing countries don’t want to compromise what can be done and what can be changed or incorporated.

25:57Yeah, so a few things here. First, I don’t think it’s the developing economy that don’t want to compromise. I think there’s actually like a coalition of the willing and many of this country actually like willing to have a robust trade in place. I think it’s mostly the petrochemical countries, the people that produce the plastic that is actually like dragging back a little bit. And so, I mean, yeah, the negotiation haven’t sort of landed a meaningful treaty. So that was the INC 5.2 a few months ago and I think there will be INC 5.3 early in 2026. So yeah, we’re all hoping that something meaningful will come because it will impact our mission but also generally like the state of the ocean which is what we’re working for. For the ocean cleanup, really, at this stage, things don’t change. Because even if a treaty was landed this year, those things will take time to get in place. And so our work has to continue. And this is quite often what we are portraying. We are a solution right now. uh that is temporary like you know like it is not our ambitions to be a garbage man of the the ocean for you know the next century and intercepting plastics in all the rivers of the world eventually we don’t want plastic to enter this river to enter rivers we don’t want plastic to enter the ocean and so That requires strong political will

27:27and legislation upstream. It will take a lot of time, I think. If that happens, it will take a lot of time to be implemented. In the meantime, plastic is flowing into the ocean at an increasing rate. And so it’s important that we try to mitigate that crisis as much as possible. We also see that solutions that we put in place like the interceptors in rivers. I mean, they have a great impact in terms of, you know, removing plastic and preventing plastic from entering the ocean.

27:56But we also see it as a very strong monitoring tool and something that can help us sort of measure the efficacy of upstream measures, right? Depending on the regions where we deploy interceptors, the type of pollution is different. And so we are studying that plastic, we document everything, and then we can go back to policymakers and say, hey, with finding this type of plastic, maybe you can put something in place here. And if something is being put in place, over time we can see whether our catch and the concentration of that plastic is actually decreasing, right? So it’s a really good way to sort of monitor the efficacy of those political measures. But then to finish, yeah, in terms of our mission, like right now, I mean, we rely a lot on… on philanthropy and donations from people like we would hope that one day we actually get access to more sort of institutional funding and governments and cities and regions to buy into helping us into our mission and so I think like the treaty you know could sort of enable those kind of funding so you know we’re being active in following what’s happening. But yeah, I think solving the plastic pollution crisis will take a lot of will and also many, many different aspects. There’s not one solution. We’re not by far a silver bullet solution. We have to look at the problem in different angles. So that’s what the treaty should do. Have you seen differences

29:27in policies in the countries that you have been working with, for example, in Central America? Yeah, there is definitely. I mean, for instance, we’re working in Rio Motagua, which is in Guatemala. This is one of the most polluted rivers we’ve seen so far. I mean, we’re talking about tsunamis of waste that just come after every big rain event. And so, you know, like putting a stop to that flux just makes that pollution very visible.

30:02And so it’s sort of like engage a certain discussion and said, like, where is that plastic coming from? And you actually go back, and this is very specific case that one, because I was telling you about coastal cities before, but that’s river there, Rio Motagua. Actually, most of it comes from Guatemala City. And that’s like 300 kilometers in length. And actually, you figure out that in Guatemala City, there’s a large sort of landfill that is built very close to the river. and putting that sort of like interception and showing like, hey guys, like look at what’s flowing into the Gulf of Honduras every day. Spark the discussion and so like improvement is being made now upstream to actually make sure that sort of waste is collected and managed in a more appropriate manner. So that’s one example. But yeah, we saw that in many different regions where we work in, the, you know, government’s buying into the solution.

31:03It’s like, you know, you have an interceptor, but it’s part of a, you know, of a larger projects, like, you know, local communities are being involved. Like, I mean, we, we are a small organization. We’re about 200 people. The mission is global. Like, you know, we don’t have the pretension to be sort of like solving the problem, like globally. Like the, you know, I think what’s important to see is that, you know, we are sort of in all those different countries and they are different stories and different sort of specifics, every location for every location, but the local communities are being involved, right? So you have an interceptor, but you have cleanups and then you have a recycling projects that are being put into place. And then like people are just getting involved, right? So it’s a, it’s more movements than just like saying like, hey, we’ll put a buyer in the river. And so we’re seeing change happening and yeah, much faster than Uh, you know, any change that is being negotiated at UN level, that’s for sure at the moment. Wow.

32:02Fascinating. Uh, just, you know, like a lot of activists that are quite passionate about this topic, they’re saying that, you know, governments and corporations are moving too slowly from your perspective. You highlight a little bit your perspective for your, your, you guys on what the perspective should be. regulations need to take place, but what do you truly believe needs to be implemented at this particular moment?

32:28And let’s say in the next five years, uh, that for this crisis that is happening, you know. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, about policies and laws and, you know, things take time. I mean, five years, maybe for five, 10 years, you know, but I think. You know that you look at countries like there are different legislation depending on the country some are like more useful than others I think you know, I mean Removing plastic from society It’s you know, it’s not going to happen, you know, like we have to like face that But I also believe that, you know, limiting production in some ways is very important. Like there’s a lot of plastics that, you know, don’t need to exist. And so, you know, we’re going to be smarter than that in how we handle our food, our transport. So there’s work to be done there.

33:18There’s a lot of like sort of very toxic plastic. Plastic is a big word, right? Like there’s so many different types of plastics. And then even in a can of plastic. depending on whether you want it blue, red, yellow, shiny, flexible, hard, you will have extra compounds that are being added to that plastic. I think there needs to be some strong regulation on what is allowed and what is not allowed in terms of plastic production.

33:44There are a lot of things that are not necessary. I’ll give you a good example. For instance, when we collect plastics in rivers, One of the most valuable plastic that we collect is the water bottles, like the plastic PET bottles. And why is that? Because this is probably the one that is the most easily recycled. And it is most easily recycled because they are all the same components, the same products, right? They’re all made of the same thing. Some years ago, I mean, I think it still exists in some countries, but I’ll talk, for instance, in Europe. You know, we used to have PET bottles that were like somewhere blue or somewhere green or some red and so on. Now they are by law, they all need to be sort of like made transparent. And why is this is because if they are all made transparent and they all have the same sort of like chemical composition, when you collect them, you can recycle them much more easily. If you collect some transparent blue, red and yellow and you try to make a new plastic bottle with it, the result will not be as good. Right. So I think there is also an easy win there. If we cannot get away from our addiction to plastic, at least we can try to standardize plastic objects, like packaging and so on. You go to supermarkets, you don’t need to have 25 different designs of bottles and colors. talk about shampoo like you’re interested about what’s in the shampoo and I mean I’m not saying we should all have the same shampoo I understand that we

35:15can have like sort of like different products but the containing like the you know the recipient could be sort of homogenized at least in terms of like chemical signature it would make recycling sort of like much more easy um yeah I mean that’s you know that’s one aspect of the thing again like you know don’t want to fall into like recycling and is the solution like I was saying that I don’t think there’s any silver bullet to the plastic pollution problem. But yeah, we want to look at sort of like all those different sort of like easy win and there’s a bunch of easy win that we can really like access. Really to have an impact at global scale, I think like there’s a lot of investment that needs to happen in developing economies for waste management system. That’s really like where the work needs to happen before anything else. Bioplastics, of course, it depends. Some of them are made of starch or all the ones of coconut. Of course, they have like polymers, still a percentage.

36:14Do you think they still work? They’re less pollutant, less damaged? Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I mean, yeah, bioplastics, I think, again, like, you know, there’s a problem of definition. What is bioplastic and what is, you know, like, I mean, Yeah, I think there is some innovations that are coming that are very interesting. People growing plastics out of seaweed or out of waste like seafood waste and so on. I think it’s very, very interesting as long as there is no extra chemicals that are being added to it. But then there’s the question of like, yeah, what is…

36:56the long -term, like, you know, is bioplastic degrading? Like, how is it degrading? And is it creating, like, a bunch of microplastics? I mean, if you still have some polymeric chains, you’re still going to have the same problem, right? And so that’s the whole problem with plastic because on the one side, it’s such a revolution. We love plastic. Why do we love plastic? It’s because you make something out of plastic. you add water in it or you leave it outside for the night, you come back the day after, it’s still the same shape, hasn’t moved, it’s completely inert. So that’s actually why we like plastic, right? But then at the same time, if you discard that into the environment, that is actually the problem. It doesn’t go away by itself, right?

37:37And bioplastic is the same, right? either you have something that is sort of degrades very easily but then it doesn’t have the property of plastic like you like it because you want it durable and you want something that can resist you know water air everything sunlight or you have something very durable made of you know plants or whatnot and and then you have the same problem you know so it’s i think you know maybe it’s not necessarily about the material itself but it’s about the use we have of it, you know, like the relationship with that material. You know, like plastic bags was invented for environmental reasons, right? We used to have like, you know, tub bags or paper bags and the cost to make a paper bag in terms of energy, water is like so much bigger than a plastic bag. And so the inventor of the plastic bag was like, well, you know, for like, you know, a 10th of the cost and the 10th of the energy, I’m going to make you something that is much more durable. The problem is like so cheap. that we ended up like having a plastic bag and be like cool I just throw it away and I’m gonna have a new one you know and that’s I think for me that’s the problem you know it’s the relation we have with a plastic bag why don’t you just because a plastic bag is so durable why don’t you just have one plastic bag and then you just like you know just use and reuse you know so it’s a societal problem I think and uh and it’s much bigger than just saying like hey like we’re gonna replace you know all the coffee cups with coconut or bamboos or whatever it is you know it’s like it’s about like the that culture

39:07of the you know the quick and and convenience and uh you know i drink something i straight away i’m gonna buy a new one because it doesn’t cost me anything and i don’t care about that coffee cup that i just drank this morning you know so yeah yes i also will add that it was in the rio convention in the 92 if i’m not wrong when they said that who was polluting should pay, I think that was the worst thing that could ever happen because it’s easier and cheaper for the corporations or the polluters to pay, but they are not paying for the total accumulation for years. It’s not long lasting, but they’re paying like a day what they found. And that I would say that was one of the worst thing that could have ever happened because that just, it was like an incentive for the corporations to like out for me cheaper to just pay the pollution instead of just having a plan or a treatment of my waste. And just to finalize, you have said that your work is about shifting the question from what is the state of the ocean? to what can we do about it? What does that shift mean to you personally as scientists and as citizens of this planet? I mean you know I’m still interested to study you know what is the state what’s happening

40:38and so on but sometimes you know we know enough to know that you know we have to do something about it and I mean you know here we’re talking about plastic pollution but there’s you know like the environment like the ocean is facing this so many threats, climate change, overfishing, ocean acidification, and so on. There’s time for science, but there’s also time for action.

41:05That’s one thing I’ve always liked about the ocean cleanup is that you value science. It’s the cornerstone of what we do initially trying to understand the problem, but eventually it’s about… defining solutions and innovating and trying to do something about it. And so, yeah, I mean, for, you know, general public and people in general, just get involved, you know, just get involved in some ways or another. There’s so many things like I’m not saying like, you know, you should do everything and try to fight every battle. Like if you try to do everything, you don’t do nothing. but just do something that you like and just get involved. Like I was saying, we work with local communities. People are willing, people want change. So it’s about trying to change on a daily basis. We can put responsibility on the consumers and the citizens, but I also think that it comes from a systemic… uh problem right so it has to come from like larger spheres governments industries so vote you know that’s a great you know uh go vote and and and act you know ask for change and if change doesn’t come like make it up on yourself innovate and do things you know and so yeah i mean you know if you take the case of boyan who founded the ocean cleanup i mean you know his idea like a lot of people came and they were like, you know, very skeptic.

42:34And me the first, when the first time he contacted me in 2013, I was just like, wow, great, still crazy, but great, you know? And then, you know, 12, almost 13 years later, we’re still there and things happen. And then, you know, it was a rocky road with highs and lows, but things are happening and we’re seeing change, you know? So I have the hope that, you know, within my lifetime, we can see positive change. And I think we are seeing many, many positive changes in many sectors. So I’m hopeful. I agree. Just everything add up. Just every tiny little action counts.

43:12Yeah, absolutely. Yes, and it’s small changes that we can do. So I agree. Thank you very much, Loren. It has been a pleasure having you here. This episode was inspired by Loren’s dedication to turning data into action, and by his tireless work to make the invisible visible, the currents of plastic that move through our rivers, our oceans, and ultimately, our lives. His story is a call not just to clean, but to change, to ask better questions, to demand more from systems, and to hold onto hope, even when the politics fall short. because the science keeps showing us the way forward. We’re also excited to share that Science Behind the Glass now lives on a new platform that connects the podcast to all major streaming services via RSS. Just click the link in the description to find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, YouTube and wherever you love to listen to. Science Behind the Glass is an independent podcast created and host by me, Linda Hernández Duran, together with Daniel Esguerra, with the invaluable support of our dedicated and today co -host, technical director Rafael Giordano, and original music by our colleague and friend, Bernardo Águila. Don’t forget to

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