.The mass communication of the problem of plastic pollution in the North Pacific Gyre has been overblown for several years now.
Scientist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olson has given permission to repost this from his blog.
L – Dr. Angel White, Microbiologist, Oregon State University; R - Floating plastic debris, but would you call this a patch or an island? (Photo: Drew/Algalita)
Many of us have known this. It just took Dr. Angel White, a microbiologist from Oregon State University,to finally come along and publicly set things straight. If you’re an environmentalist, you need to know that she is NOT the enemy…. She is merely the voice of truth and reason “” which is exactly what scientists are supposed to be.
On Monday of last week, Oregon State University put out a press release titled, “Oceanic ‘garbage patch’ not nearly as big as portrayed in media.” It was the truth. It’s been picked up by over 100 media outlets. For at least 8 years there has been a sound bite that, “There’s a Texas-sized garbage patch floating around in the North Pacific.” It’s been an effective communications device and has served it’s purpose. Bill Maher talked about it on his HBO show in 2009 and Oprah’s website says the following:
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches from the coast of California to Japan, and it’s estimated to be twice the size of Texas. “This is the most shocking thing I have seen,” Oprah says.
That’s a statement that’s incorrect on several levels. But it’s worked. People are now talking about the problem of plastics in the ocean. I was at a gathering of my USC film school buddies yesterday “” none of whom have any environmental or science background. I began talking to a group of about a dozen of them about the problem of plastics in the North Pacific. Every one of them already knew about it. The mass communication of this issue has been impressive (much of it thanks to the pioneering efforts of Captain Charles Moore appearing in everything from Rolling Stone to The Colbert Report).
The use of the word “patch” and “Texas-sized” to grab attention matches the “arouse and fulfill” principle I espoused in the second chapter of my book. It has perhaps been a necessary evil in today’s noise-filled media world (as Dr. White talks about below). And while I stated clearly in my book that I would never support anything short of 100% accuracy in the communication of science, I have to say that once inaccuracy has happened, the next step is to correct it.
No need to dwell on who’s guilty for propagating the inaccuracy. Just move on to the next level. Which is what Dr. White is doing “” offering up the “mid-course correction” that is needed. So I contacted her to do this short interview “” to let her tell about it in her own words. I hope that environmental organizations will eventually reward her “” in the same vein as “whistle blowers” “” rather than vilify her.
Randy Olson: Are you now or have you even been a card-carrying member of the American Plastics Council?
Angel White: No. And I’m not an industry shill.
RO: Are you willing to make public statements about the need to reduce the amount of plastics entering the oceans?
AW: Absolutely. There’s no place for plastic in our marine environment “” in our rivers, in our waterways, on our coasts or in our oceans. I say this every time I’m interviewed. It’s interesting to see where this message comes out, in terms of priority, in each interview. Sometimes it’s buried in the article. But definitely, I think we should be reducing the amount of plastic that we use, and we should be making concerted efforts to make sure that plastic doesn’t end up in marine systems.
RO: Last week you issued a press release titled, “Oceanic ‘garbage patch’ not nearly as big as portrayed in media.” What was your motivation for doing that?
AW: The problem of plastics in the North Pacific has really captured the public’s imagination. There’s been a lot of public interest and a good deal of misinformation. Since returning from the my initial cruise in 2008 to the North Pacific gyre, I’ve given several talks in Oregon with the same message that is in the OSU press release.
The motivation for the press release is that I went on this cruise to the North Pacific in 2008 where I thought I’d see a plastic patch. I was really kind of surprised when I didn’t. So when I started putting together my latest talk and I looked at the degree of hyperbole in the media, I was just surprised that no one had said, “Ah, you know, it’s not the size of Texas “” in fact, it’s not even a patch.”
RO: But you’ve now said it’s only 1% the size of Texas “” don’t you think that does a disservice to the public’s understanding just as much as calling it a “Texas-sized patch” because it overly minimizes the problem?
AW: I think calling it “a patch” minimizes the problem. It’s not a patch. Here’s what I think are the three most important points. 1) Plastic is widespread in the global ocean (not just the North Pacific), 2) plastic is small in size and 3) dilute in nature. It’s not a patch “” to say it’s a patch of any kind gives a false impression.
On the other hand, there are people who have decided to use the word “patch” “” if you’re using the word, I think of “a patch of grass” “” a cohesive patch. So then let’s take the highest observed concentrations and move it into a single, cohesive patch. I’m sorry, in the North Pacific it adds up to less that 1% the size of Texas “” actually 0.20% to be precise.
It’s not a patch. It’s a “dilute soup.” I believe that is the way Captain Charles Moore has described it. And that is actually a very good way to put it. Unfortunately, it’s not as powerful as “twice the size of Texas.” That was a wonderful word picture that really gave people some pause when they purchased plastic “” it made them think, “Man, there’s this island out there and I don’t want to contribute to it.” I think it’s a very sad commentary on the state of the U.S. that you have to be made to think of an island of trash in the oceans before you can be convinced to change your day-to-day actions.
RO: What sort of flack have you gotten since the press release came out?
AW: Well, for starters, a number of emails from people suggesting that I should work on my resume “” that surely I must be paid by the American Chemistry Council. More than half of the emails I’m getting are negative. The positive emails I’m getting are mostly from scientists “” from people who are even in the conservation world saying, “Thank you for saying this.”
I’ve gotten a few emails from people who have done work at Midway who say, “It doesn’t matter if it’s the size of Texas or the size of France or the size of your backyard, it’s still a problem.” Actually, I fundamentally disagree with that. The oceans cover 70% of our planet. If it’s only the size of my backyard then I really don’t care about it.
We need to find new ways to conceptualize this problem without hyperbole.
And by the way, I don’t have any funding to do this work. My funding is to investigate elemental cycling and develop optics-based models of primary productivity in the North Pacific. I was only on one cruise where we dealt with plastics. I’m not applying for any funding for this, and I certainly don’t have any non-profits offering me money, that’s for sure. So I’m not financially tied to this problem either way.
.RO: Has the misrepresentation been only from the media?
AW: I don’t think so. A reporter from Canada pointed out to me on the phone yesterday that there are a few sources of confusing messages. A group of graduate students from Scripps went to the North Pacific in 2009 as part of their SEAPLEX project. When you look at the blog of their cruise you see they’re saying the same thing we’re saying “” the plastic is small, it’s widespread. But the title of one of their press releases was, “Scientists Find Pacific Ocean garbage patch.” It doesn’t matter what they say after that. It doesn’t matter that they are entirely accurate in the text. The title was “Scientists Find Plastic Patch.”
The title of my press release is basically, “It’s not a Patch, and it’s not as big as Texas.” I say the exact same things as they said in the specifics of the text. But we know that the only thing most people ever see is the title.
RO: Why do you think this is such a difficult environmental problem to communicate?
AW: At the core of the problem is that this is a case of being doubly “out of sight, out of mind.” Few people are able to even visit the vast open parts of the ocean where this occurs, and when you finally get there, the plastic is so dilute you rarely see it without towing a net.
On the other hand when you force it to that image of looking for plastic islands you’re asking for problems. I just did a talk show interview the other day with a group of people whom you and I probably wouldn’t agree with if we were sitting talking over a beer, but they said, “Look, they keep saying it’s twice the size of Texas, and I know the size of Texas, and I know how to multiply by two, and I know that would be several hundred thousand square miles. So if there’s this patch out there, show me the pictures. Since no one’s showing me the pictures, I read about the research and saw that they had to tow a net for a few hours to fill the bottom of a mayonnaise jar with some confetti, and “¦ that’s not a patch, is it?”
So they’re asking for a response to a very legitimate question. And now we’re stuck with coming up with visuals that appropriately scare people. That’s a tough situation to be in, particularly when we’re all on the same page that the plastic doesn’t belong in the marine environment.
RO: Do you have a report or paper associated with this press release?
AW: Right now the preliminary data can be found on-line on the C-MORE SUPER HI-CAT web page. The manuscript that is in preparation has a focus that is very different from just looking at the abundance of plastics. The paper will be about microbial diversity and activity on plastic pieces, so it’s not exactly a match to the press release.
RO: Are you aware that the plastics industry will use your statement to fight efforts to reduce plastics throughout the U.S.?
AW: If you are communicating to the public about a fire in a National Park and you initially say that 90% of the park is on fire, but then revise it to say only 50% of the park is on fire does that mean the crisis is over with? The public will lose a little bit of their sense of urgency with the revision, but it’s then up to you to restate the problem in new terms, sticking with the revised, accurate assessment. That’s all I’m asking for here when I say we need to end the hyperbole and shift from patch/island to dilute soup.
We can look at all the published values of plastic concentrations. The highest published rate is a million pieces of plastic per square kilometer. That’s the value I used to make the calculations of a hypothetical patch size. So while it may seem unfortunate that they would use these data, they are accurate data. To everyone who contacts me, I say, “Look, I’ll send you the spread sheet. You can do the calculations yourself. It’s not very complicated.”
I’m not a policy-maker; I’m a scientist. I’m trying to be very clear about this. In Oregon, people are considering a ban of sorts on plastic bags. I think that these efforts are well intended and could help reduce plastic in our waterways, but it’s also important to make people aware of how much plastic is in their daily lives, and how plastic bags are still only a small part of the overall plastics picture. Just look at the plastic on your keyboard, in your pens, on your clothes, in your car “” it’s pervasive in the environment. I personally don’t see the downside to reducing our plastic consumption, and I think plastic bags along with water bottles are a really logical place to start.
RO: What are the top three most serious ramifications of the plastics in the ocean problem?
AW: First and foremost are the things that are visual such as entanglement of marine animals. Second, ingestion of plastic by birds and other animals. Third, the introduction of toxins in the marine environment. And I would add-in transport of invasive species. And one more “” the entire problem of plastic is that it occurs in very dilute concentrations spread out over an extremely wide area. The problem is difficult to study. There is also a segment of plastic debris that is in size ranges that we cannot see and we’re not capturing in net tows, and there may be a whole range of consequences, both positive and negative, for marine food webs that we don’t fully understand at the moment. So there is an insidious nature to the problem that comes with the plastic that is not visible to the naked eye.
In Portland, at the last ASLO Meeting, there were a few talks about nano-plastics that are put into detergents and skin care lotion as exfoliants and abrasives. Researchers are finding extremely high levels of these micro-plastics in urban areas. We can now ask the question of how these nano-plastics impact microbial processes, elemental cycling, and perhaps the more standard question of whether these plastics are being ingested by higher organisms. I think there is a whole range of consequences for plastics in the environment, many that we are not studying at all.
The bottom line is that, as many people say, “Nature is just not natural any more.”
RO: How do you think today’s ocean compares to the ocean before human impacts?
AW: I’m not sure that the plastic problem is severe enough so far that there have been any significantly negative impacts for the base of the food chain: Marine microbes (speaking only of what I study). If we were to continue adding plastic I can think of a range of things that might happen. You might see shifts in the amount of light that would be available to deeper depths. You might be introducing more toxins to the marine environment. You might have increased deaths of organisms due to entanglement or ingestion.
Those aren’t experiments that we want to do. I think the more relevant comparison is not to some pristine ocean of the past, but to what we want the oceans of our future to look like. From that perspective I think we can agree that we don’t want to leave plastic islands for future generations. And it’s a good thing that such islands aren’t out there yet.
So I say let’s keep working on eliminating plastics from the ocean so one day we can say the worst it ever became was a dilute soup, not islands.
______________
(NOTE: A huge and sincere thanks to my good friend Chad Nelsen of Surfrider Foundation for his help in crafting these questions)
– Randy Olson, in a repost from The Benshi
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
The 8th continent. A video from April of last year…
Riz khan – The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
A look at the floating collection of garbage known as the Plastic Vortex, located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
http://www.newslook.com/videos/205012-riz-khan-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch?autoplay=true
I had wondered why I was never able to find this plastic twice the size of Texas using Google Earth. Thanks for the article!
I really wish the media would report things accurately!
One way to describe the plastic perception problem would be the amount ingested by a large filter feeding whale in a day, week, month, or year. Species? Compared to the amount of food needed for survival? The equivalent amount a person would consume?
Thanks for this post. I’ve wondered about this for a while, suspecting there might be some hyperbole involved.
I was also surprised to learn the first time (in a documentary called Addicted to Plastic)that the Garbage Patch wasn’t an actual floating landfill. But that didn’t mean there was no problem of course.
The only thing missing from the Olson interview IMO is a better quantification of the problem. So instead of Two Texases something like X million tons of plastic debris. Now it’s mainly about how ‘patch’ doesn’t accurately convey the physical shape of the problem.
This is from Wikipedia:
Charles J. Moore, returning home through the North Pacific Gyre after competing in the Transpac sailing race in 1997, came upon an enormous stretch of floating debris. Moore alerted the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who subsequently dubbed the region the “Eastern Garbage Patch” (EGP).[8] The area is frequently featured in media reports as an exceptional example of marine pollution.[9] Moore’s claim of having discovered a large, visible debris field is, however, a mischaracterization of the polluted region overall, since it primarily consists of particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye.[10]
and
The size of the patch is unknown, as large items readily visible from a boat deck are uncommon. Most debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite. Instead, the size of the patch is determined by sampling. Estimates on size range from 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) to more than 15,000,000 square kilometres (5,800,000 sq mi) (0.41% to 8.1% of the size of the Pacific Ocean), or, in some media reports, up to “twice the size of the continental United States”.[14] Such estimates, however, are conjectural based on the complexities of sampling and the need to assess findings against other areas.
Of course, there is also a North Atlantic Garbage Patch:
The North Atlantic Garbage Patch is a newly discovered area of marine debris found floating within the North Atlantic Gyre. The patch is estimated to be hundreds of kilometers across in size,[1] with a density of over 200,000 pieces of debris per square kilometer.[2][3] The debris zone shifts by as much as 1,600 km (990 mi) north and south seasonally, and drifts even farther south during the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, according to the NOAA.[1]
And some more ‘patches’ as well (Indian Ocean).
I think this short Youtube clip is very informative.
Thank God it’s only a “dilute soup”. Now I can sleep a lot better at night.
The urgency for putting out this press release by OSU cannot be overstated.
Not all plastic in the ocean is in the form of those tiny pieces… I just saw the last episode of the “Tropic of Cancer” TV series hosted by Simon Reeve. They went to some beach on the big island of Hawaii where there really was a high concentration of garbage. My mind immediately connected it with what I’ve heard about this debris in the North Pacific. I have seen some beaches with a lot of rubbish now and then and others (most I’ve been too) with nothing more or less. So it’s variable and it does seem to be a real problem in some areas.
PS I found a very interesting piece on the 5 Gyres blog:
Media is sometimes the tail that wags the dog of science. One oceanographer described finding plastic in his relatively tiny Texas-size study area of the North Pacific Ocean, while another began describing these areas of concentration as “garbage patches”. A mis-information frenzie birthed a mis-conception of an island of trash. Hurry, someone plant a flag – sell real estate! Disappointing to the entrepreneurial spirit that aimed to fix it for a fee, there are no such islands. They do not exist. Having traveled 20,000 miles across 4 of the 5 subtropical gyres, returning from crossing the South Atlantic Gyre in December 2010, I assure you that reality is much worse.
[...]
In the recent decade of rogue-science, media spun mis-information, a new revitalized science of synthetic pollution at sea has emerged, replacing confusion with clarity and commitment by many to solve the problem. The idea of cleanup at sea is no longer a sensible option, knowing that an island twice the size of Texas is actually a thin soup 2/3rds the surface of the planet. Sensible solutions now focus on preventing the flow of waste to waves in the first place.
Another claim that I have heard is that there is supposed to be more plastic than plankton in the ocean, which is ridiculous; the claim is even repeated by Wikipedia (see Neven’s comment at 5):
Surely there are more than 11 pounds of plankton per square kilometer of ocean! That said, I have always seen it as being an area with a high concentration of plastic particles in the water (aside from the occasional large intact object) and not something you can actually see from space.
Thin soup. Correct. However, most of the oceans can be compared to a very, very thin soup of life diluted in a whole lot of saltwater. Much of the life; phytoplankton and zooplankton, live in the lighted surface waters and eggs and larvae are especially concentrated in a thin film on the water’s surface. When biologists study this thin soup they use a sampling device that looks like a plastic board which they dip into the water allowing the surface film to adhere to it and then wipe this off into a container. They do this repeatedly in order to get a large enough sample to study.
That in much of the ocean this surface layer now contains as much or more plastic than marine life is horrifying.
It is still the case that all plastic needs to be formulated so that it is biodegradable in water.
Wow. This is not a good look. From “a patch twice the size of Texas” to “dilute soup” is a huge climb-down and is only going to be used as a hammer to bang on scientists as environmental activists. Dr Benshi’s “necessary evil” language isn’t helpful either, and is only asking for anti-enviros to use it as a broad brush smear against all scientists. I’m not on board with Benshi’s apparent belief that we should just “move on” and not apportion blame here. The truth is that for years people have thought there was an actual garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and now we’re expected to just retcon the whole thing away? This a big PR fail.
Yes, I believe the problem of plastics getting into the marine ecosystem is significant, and all efforts to reduce plastic should be encouraged. But this. This is a bad look.
Not what I read! (Need to get my book). I’ll be back!
“But it worked.” The “necessary evil” worked. How can a advocacy expect to have credibility if the audience expects that the scientists are blowing smoke?
Politics through science does no one any good. Eventually there will be a boy crying wolf with nothing coming in return but his own echo.
I’m with pointer #12, in that this will be a Godsend to the denialists to trot out their ‘alarmist’ rhetoric again. I hope, however, naturally, that it is true and we have a lesser disaster here, so far, than we thought. Of course I thought a lot of the plastic was in the water column rather than on the surface. I can just see the denialist Dunning-Krugerites reciting some confected nonsensical garbage, as they did with the Himalayan glaciers non-scandal, and implying that there is, in fact, no problem at all, rather than a big one, somewhat overstated (if indeed it is). I’m also reminded that a survey of beaches in this country found the sand absolutely riddled with tiny bits of plastic (and micro-organisms, usually highly abundant, nearly totally absent in beaches upon which cars were allowed to drive).
“It worked” is not an acceptable justification for repeating a claim known to be wrong. Repudiating the false claim is the right thing, and the necessary thing to do, even if the PR folk think it is bad strategy. Misinformation does not aid decision making.
Agree with #16. Accurate communication is essential to public trust.
G’day,
Not sure if the Tipping Point meme is just popular right now or if I’m 100% convinced, but it does seem to describe social phenomena. Really we have a punctuated equilibrium of mimetic evolution I suppose. Technologies are memes as well and in the rush for profit and the rapid haphazard innovations that unfortunately could lead to big anti-green ‘green’ conglomerates in the future…there does exist a wild west of new products and designs and planning coming out.
Inevitably over time the businesses and people who adopt the most successful and efficient and cost saving of this new market will come to dominate the field, even through dense and intense resistance. Already that MSM and status quo business as usual crowd is switching from resistance to adoption and even claiming they’re the real green as the buy up or partner with small innovative people/businesses.
I think through all this muck, at some point and in many fields already the realization that the bottom dollar and the top dollars to be made lie in this next advance of our industrial revolution in terms of efficiency and awesomeness will be made. The dots will be connected and it’ll make good sense to pay a $1,000 ‘premium’ to get a vehicle that requires drastically reduced maitencence and that operates at 1/2 the cost per mile. That we are not there just yet in terms of mass production of electric cars and the strange microsecond fixation of the MSM with the details of EVs coming out right this second doesn’t matter. I have a bet with my dad that in 2020 we’ll see 80% of new car sales being PHEVs or pure EVs and/or that 50% of cars on the road will be hybrid or better. We’ll see if the point tips that far by 2020, but if the economy and nation-states don’t implode by falling into endless resource based warfare, which is quite a doubtful outcoming in my mind, then by 2030 we’ll definately see that happening.
Already there have been no new coal plants starting construciton for 2 years and despite all the wasted money being pumped into nuclear there are only a handful of projects that could have a shovel hitting the dirt 5 years from now.
My last comment is on a trend I think we’ll see. The low hanging fruit of efficiency will be ripe this year and every year from now on. I don’t think we’ll need to utilize some of our last fossil fuel energy building as much bridging technology as people think. As for the energy grid or land management and city planning and public infrastructure…there are only degrees of improvement. Cars really are in a bridging period, but I think we’re jumping striaght to EV cars and then our power plants will just have to be solar and wind. Cost competative if not cost-superior CSP and wind are already here minus the current massive subsidizes we give to coal, oil, and natural gas. From reading CP I learn almost every week about the massive breakthroughs going on in labs all around the world in terms of solar, wind, wave, hydro, etc sources of endless power.
Bridging technologies in my opinion are people who are like war profiteers, they could even have good intentions thinking they’re getting us somewhere, but in the end nearly ever war is a massive waste of resources where no one wins. If anything the biofuels and algea based production of jet fuel will be a small industry based 1/2 wedge at best and while important is not the lion’s share of the solution. While there are profiteers in solar and wind, I think the bridge technology faction is in it for the money and in some ways benefits and extends the time we’ll use regular fossil fuels and in that way is a delaying tactic so heavily supported by the likes of oil man Bush II.
This year we’ll get efficient, we’ll start going electric, and maybe over the next few years we’ll keep seeing the massive cost savings get bigger in solar and wind even with coal and oil’s subsidies which go from the blown mountaintop permit to the roads they drive on to the money paid out to ‘corn’ farmers ‘fertilizing’ their fields with petrochemicals all the way to the ‘$2.99/lb chuck’ on the supermarket shelf whose protein’s nitrogen comes straight from the oil field.
Cheers,
Spiritkas
I have been educated about the Garbage Soup for several years now, and my experience has been that every well-documented article has explained that the Patch is more of a soup, with small plastic particles spread out over miles rather than contained as one big island. The fact that the particles are small is one of the problems: we do not have an easy way to clean it up, as with an island that a few freighters and nets could just scoop up over the surface. These articles have also been clear that the size is indeterminate.
As much as Dr. White’s statements in the articles are accurate and she seems to mean as well as other scientists working in this field, I believe the headline of her press release is just as misleading, and it may do the issue some disservice. Already, other journals are picking up the headline “Oceanic ‘Garbage Patch’ Not Nearly as Big as Portrayed in Media” and my fear is that many people who DON’T read the articles (probably the same people who are buying the idea that there is an actual island of plastic out there) will be further mislead and either a) stop caring about the issue, b) see it as another environmentalist ploy, and c) stop listening to the environmentalists, or d) all of the above. If this happens, we will have another job ahead of us to convince people that there is a problem again. I fully agree with the substitution of “soup” for ‘patch’ or ‘island’. But why not name the press release: “Let’s call it a Garbage Soup, not a Garbage Patch” ?
Like I’ve said, most well-documented articles DON’T mislead. Certainly many media sources get it wrong, or even intentionally mislead to get a bigger audience. And now they will do it again.
Another thing I’d like to add is that plastics do NOT biodegrade, they photodegrade, which means they just get smaller and smaller to a molecular degree. Their presence harms the marine environment in ways that we are just starting to understand. If you recall a few years back, plastic #7 (hard, clear stuff, like old Nalgeen water bottles) was discovered to be a cancerous material, and leaching into the water. Is this the stuff that is in small particle form in the ocean? Is any amount of this okay? The fact that it is in smaller pieces is just as alarming, as the actual toxicity of the material is still present.