Filmmaker's Journal: CNN's Plastic Wars goes looking for ocean plastic pollution

In early September, I had the opportunity to join Amber Lyon, investigative journalist for CNN, to film evidence of plastic pollution along the Southern California coast. Amber and her producer, Ken Shiffman, were working on a news report about the impact of single-use plastic bags on the environment and on our own potential health. The report, Plastic Wars, will air on CNN Presents this Sunday, October 30th at 5:00pm and again at 8:00pm PST (8pm & 11pm EST).

Many people know about the eyesore on our streets and coastline caused by discarded plastic, or are aware of areas like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where a complex system of ocean currents traps huge quantities of floating plastic debris. However, while the images of floating water bottles, Mylar balloons, and strangulated marine life, can provoke emotional responses, those familiar with ocean conservation know that there is an even greater danger in what we don't see - the minute particles of plastic broken down by sun and wave action that can make for a toxic soup that is capable of working it's way through the marine food chain right to our dinner table.

Read prior post on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

I met up with Amber and her production crew in San Pedro, California, where we boarded the Mr C dive charter boat. We were joined by marine scientist, Dr. Marcus Eriksen, CEO/director of the 5 Gyres Institute and researcher with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. Marcus has been studying ocean pollution by plastics for nearly 10 years. The captain of the Mr. C probably thought we were all a bit odd, chartering his boat not to locate some illusive shark or fish or to unlock the secrets of some exotic marine behavior. No, we were looking for floating shopping bags - that was our quarry, our quest.

We first began by cruising around within the Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor breakwater. We positioned ourselves between the Los Angeles and Santa Ana river outlets - basically dry concrete river beds that funnel rainwater and enormous amounts of trash right out to sea. City and state agencies try their best to net and scoop as much of the accumulated trash as possible before it enters open sea, but plenty escape and enter the harbor and eventually the open ocean beyond the breakwater.

Weaving around large freighters anchored in the harbor, we came across floating congregations of kelp and sea grasses, cups, water bottles, and plastic bags of all types. Not in any massive quantities, mind you; there have not been any major rains for several months and a weekend change in wind and weather patterns were making things a bit more difficult to find trash in the usual places.

At one point, I decided to jump in and film a white shopping bag floating several feet below the surface. It would make for an arresting image - this ghostly piece of pollution moving gracefully along like some man-made sea jelly.

Well, it would have made for an arresting image if I could only have seen it once I jumped into the harbor! The waters of Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor, like most major commercial ports, are a witches brew of floating sediments, ship oils, and other nasty things I don't even want to think about. When I first jumped in, I felt like I was diving in a pint of Guinness and I couldn't see the bag even when it was a foot in front of me. As we had planned to have Amber and Dr. Ericksen enter the water, when I came back on board (feeling like I needed a Hazmat crew to clean me off) I recommended we head south along the coast where the visibility would be better. Not all plastic trash finds its way to the sea via storm drains; it can also be found off of many of Southern California's beaches, thanks to careless beach goers.

We headed for the popular sandy coves and beaches of Laguna Beach where, during beach dives, I had found various trash items that would get stuck against the thin kelp beds and low-lying rocky reefs. While underway, Amber interviewed Dr. Eriksen, who had brought along some alarming and convincing evidence of plastic micro-particles found in some of the fundamental building blocks of the marine food chain - a chain that can lead straight to commercial marine species destined for the dinner tables of unsuspecting seafood consumers.

I had the Mr. C anchor offshore at an area in Laguna Beach called Picnic Beach - part of Heisler Park and a popular spot for having a picnic and sitting out in the sun. We all jumped in and although the visibility was not great due to a heavy surge and tidal action brought on by an upcoming full moon, it didn't take us long to find our specific quarry. Plastic bags in various states of decomposition gave us the visual evidence we needed to illustrate that plastic does not biodegrade and magically disappear - plastic is forever but continues to break down into smaller and smaller bits, often giving off many of the toxic chemical and petroleum-based ingredients used in its manufacture. A gift that just keeps on giving.

After we finished our dives and headed back to home port, I spent some time talking with Amber about the news piece she is working on. Amber is no "bubble-headed bleach blond" (to quote songwriter Don Henley), she is a dedicated journalist who has put herself in harm's way on more than one occasion (although diving in L.A. harbor water could have been the ultimate test of her bravura). I'm looking forward to her news piece as she examines not only the problem at hand, but also the heroes and villains involved in this important drama, and what lies ahead if we take action now or choose to do nothing.

Here's a video preview of Plastic Wars from CNN.com.


Plastic Wars airs Sunday, October 30th, 5pm PST & 8pm PST (8pm & 11pm EST) on CNN.
For more information on ocean plastic pollution, visit 5 Gyres Institute or Algalita Marine Research Foundation.
Check out Amber Lyon's work at CNN.

Ban the Bag: California moves toward eliminating single-use plastic shopping bags

Plastic bags - in particular, the flimsy grocery store variety - have become the target of a wave of anti-bag fervor as more and more people become aware of plastic bags as an unsightly blight, a pollutant, and a threat to ocean sealife. In several California cities, the bags have been banned from use and now there is legislation moving forward that would eliminate the plastic grocery bags statewide.

First introduced in February by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, AB 1998 passed the Assembly and is headed for the Senate Environmental Quality Committee for review before moving to the Senate for a vote. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has expressed interest in signing it. The bill currently provides for the elimination of the single-use plastic shopping bag and a 5-cent charge to the shopper for each paper bag used (a concession to the grocers as paper bags cost more than the plastic variety).

The single-use plastic shopping bag has become the dark iconic symbol of our growing plastic pollution problem. It is a very visible component of the ocean's plastic pollution problem, exemplified by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but it must take its place in the ocean with a long list of other plastic items that break down into micro-particles that leach chemicals into the water and disrupt the fundamental food chain when ingested by embryonic sealife all the way to adult animals. Many plastics are supposedly "biodegradable" but do so only in the right set of conditions - circumstances that often don't exist in reality. So, to "ban the bag" is a step in the right direction, but only a step.

Without the single-use shopping bag, we still must be mindful of these:

• Eliminate or recycle as much plastic as possible. Or turn it over to recycling centers so that it doesn't end up in landfills where little if any biodegrading takes place.
• Use paper bags instead of plastic. I've been saying "Paper, please," in my local supermarket for years. But be sure to recycle or dispose of properly - remember, landfills have been dug up only to find 50-year old newsprint intact and readable.
• Use reusable shopping bags, typically made of canvas or burlap. But be sure to occasionally disinfect them as they can have trace moisture from meat products that can produce bacteria which can be later transferred to other perishables like fruits and vegetables.

Read LA Times article about AB 1998.

Ocean Poison: chemical pollution from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Many of you have probably heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the mid-Pacific where the clockwise circulation of currents slowly works discarded plastics into a central area (about twice the size of Texas!). You may have visualized it as a floating garbage dump of plastic bags and discarded water bottles that we could, in some herculean effort, scoop all up.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

While there certainly are large pieces of plastic that make their way into the Garbage Patch - drawn in by the North Pacific Gyre (the famed "doldrums") and this material can pose a threat to ocean mammals and other animals like sea turtles that will sometimes mistake it for food, what constitutes a large portion of the garbage patch is "microplastic." These are minute pieces of plastic, the end result of being battered and ground by the action of the sea. It makes for a polluted soup that is ingested by a wide range of sea creatures, often unintentionally.

From seabirds all the way to larval fish, microplastic enters the marine food chain and as it does, it releases a variety of polluting chemicals as part of the process of breaking down - this breakdown we have come to call "biodegradable" but plastic doesn't really ever disappear; it simply continues to separate into smaller and smaller components, releasing chemicals into the water and into the tissues of many ocean species, many of which end up on our dinner table.

And this environmental threat is not being confined or contained within the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. After all, the plastic that is there did not just drop out of the sky. It came from the coastlines and spent weeks, months, and maybe even years, floating about, slowly disintegrating and discharging pollutants throughout the ocean, on its way to the ultimate plastic graveyard.

What to do? Well, the obvious answer would be to use less plastic and to dispose of plastic in a manner that keeps it out of the ocean. Both are challenging because the ubiquitous material has become a mainstay of our lives for the past century. And our sewage/trash transport infrastructure is still predominantly designed around the idea that the ocean is our convenient dumping ground. But, we must do what we can to minimize our "polyethylene footprint." (Are you bringing your own cloth bags to the supermarket or at least asking for paper bags over plastic? That's a start.)

Scientists are looking into methods of treating plastic, breaking it down into its base components and producing hydrocarbons - an alternative fuel source. But, currently, it requires more energy than the process produces - much like the problems with the production of ethanol, and the logistics of turning this technology towards such vast areas as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and others worldwide is truly enormous.

To get a handle on the scope of this problem, read An Ocean of Plastic by Kitt Doucette in the latest print issue (No. 1090) of Rolling Stone (yes, Rolling Stone). I could cite several studies and technical papers, but this article puts the issue into language that everyone can understand. Right now, it's not a pretty picture and we can only hope that our actions to curtail discarded plastic combined with a future breakthrough in technology can stem the tide.