\n
Recap<\/strong>: this post follows four others which explored the rapidly breaking \u2018issue\u2019 of plastic pollution.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve looked at them, skip this bit.\u00a0 If not, here\u2019s a summary:<\/em><\/p>\n The first (September 27, 2017), A Beautiful if Evil Strategy<\/em><\/a>, looked at the plastics industry strategy for avoiding controls on production, by framing plastic as litter and not \u2018pollution\u2019, and co-opting litter-picks, beach cleans and the goodwill they rely on.\u00a0 It described the classic \u2018Iron Eyes Cody\u2019, Crying Indian <\/em>advertising campaign as \u2018the greatest communications dis-service ever done to nature\u2019 and noted:\u00a0 \u2018The pure genius of this highly emotive campaign was that it bought a social licence for mass production of disposable packaging, by championing action to clean up the pollution it led to\u2019.<\/p>\n It pointed out that \u2018the exact same strategy still sustains the plastics industry\u2019 and is today being used by groups like http:\/\/www.plasticseurope.org\/<\/a> through projects such as https:\/\/www.marinelittersolutions.com\/<\/a>.\u00a0 So successful is this misdirection and deception that scientists, politicians and many NGOs routinely use the \u201clitter\u201d frame without a second thought, even though the discovery of microplastic fragmentation means plastic pollution is quite unlike litter, and we are eating plastic pollution.<\/p>\n The second (November 16, 2017) Do Some Good and Shop Before Black Friday<\/em><\/a>, delved further into microplastic, how its eaten by plankton and flows out of washing machines before draining into the sea, now that most of our clothes are made of synthetic plastic fibres (eg nylon, polyester, acrylic), which continually shed microfibres.\u00a0 Visible plastic containers or fragments big enough to pick up are only a small part of the problem, meaning that beaches or anywhere else can\u2019t really be \u201ccleaned\u201d without removing plastic microparticles and even nano-particles.<\/p>\n It featured the Guppy Friend <\/em>fibre-trapping wash bag and other \u2018end of pipe\u2019 fixes which won\u2019t cure the whole problem but may, like the catalytic converter for vehicles, help spur awareness as well as reducing emissions.\u00a0 It proposed that Frans Timmermans and the European Commission could require manufacturers to put filters on all washing machines.<\/p>\n The third blog (December 7, 2017) offered a concept:\u00a0 A Two-Track Tool for Issues Development and Campaign Design<\/em><\/a>, which is applicable to any issue not just plastic.\u00a0 It argues that Kahneman\u2019s \u2018System 1\u2019 (unconscious intuitive) and \u2018System 2\u2019 (conscious, analytical) thinking are not simply choices for individuals (often involving instant substitution of System 1 to avoid the mentally arduous System 2) but our societies have developed whole social domains (eg science, economics, \u2018disciplines\u2019) specialised around System 2.\u00a0 This leaves the \u2018mainstream\u2019 and the \u2018general public\u2019 to get on with \u2018normal life\u2019, very much relying on System 1, which means decision making based not on analysis but things like framing, heuristics and motivational values. \u00a0The consequences for issue development, campaigns and any attempt to \u2018mainstream\u2019 a concern, are substantial.<\/p>\n The fourth (December 11, 2017) Why We Suddenly Have a Plastics Crisis<\/em><\/a>, traced the history of \u2018the plastics issue\u2019 in Track One and Two terms, from its fleeting appearance on Track One in 1970 (Thor Heyerdahl), through its long immersion in the research world of Track Two, until with Charles Moore\u2019s \u2018discovered\u2019 microplastic pollution in the vast Pacific garbage patch in a Track One way, around 2000.\u00a0 It shows that it was not a lack of knowledge of its hazards that kept plastic pollution from being recognized as a crisis but the effects of communications psychology, and the consequences of plastic being framed as \u2018normal\u2019, \u2018beneficial\u2019 and \u2018essential\u2019, even by scientists concerned to raise the alarm.<\/p>\n Subsequent pressure for action has come as much from scientists as NGOs or politicians, as they have completed analysis of the plastic pollution threat, from the most micro to macro levels.\u00a0 Now at least in the UK, it\u2019s on Track One.\u00a0 Newspapers like the Daily Mail<\/em> and TV programmes like David Attenborough\u2019s Blue Planet 2<\/em>, are taking Track Two research evidence into the mainstream.<\/p>\n It argues that for Track Two policy-makers, in terms of \u2018risk\u2019, plastic pollution poses a \u2018Pandora\u2019s Box\u2019 type problem, similar to Persistent Organic Pollutants, and in order to tackle the crisis, we must \u2018rethink\u2019 plastic:<\/p>\n \u2018if scientists governments, the UN, EU and campaign groups working against plastic pollution want to make rapid and effective progress, they have to stop using the \u2018litter\u2019 frame for plastic, and start thinking of it as inherently dangerous stuff, and acting and communicating accordingly.<\/em><\/p>\n Perhaps more challenging, the reality is that \u2018recycling\u2019 and conventional waste strategies are not only incapable of taking plastic out of circulation to the point where plastic pollution actually declines and stops, but they, like \u2018litter\u2019 framed beach cleans, have been heavily co-opted by the plastics industry, whose simple objective is to maintain the flow of plastic production\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n This blog picks up that thread and makes suggestions for strategies for dealing with the plastic pollution crisis.<\/p>\n \u00a0Communications and Strategy Challenges Of The Plastics Issue<\/strong><\/p>\n Marine styrofoam from a fish box on the strandline.\u00a0 Plastic pollution about to go off and spawn more pollution.<\/em><\/p>\n Dumping the L-Word<\/strong><\/p>\n What\u2019s the difference between Litter and Pollution?\u00a0 Essentially that pollution is bad stuff, and litter is just untidiness.\u00a0 It\u2019s embedded in the litter frame, the set of mental rules that constitutes\u2019 the frame\u2019, that litter can be easily remedied by clearing it up.\u00a0 This has long attracted politicians, for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n Mrs Thatcher arrives for her infamous <\/em>litter-pick<\/em><\/a> photo opp of March 1988.\u00a0 Litter was <\/em>collected from St James\u2019s Park in London (man left) and then redistributed<\/em><\/a> for Mrs Thatcher to be seen to pick up.\u00a0 Thatcher was good at dodging calls to control pollution.\u00a0 Litter was ok as it was a question of personal, not industrial-corporate responsibility.\u00a0 A Guardian journalist <\/em>reported<\/em><\/a>: “This is not,” she insisted, “the fault of the government. It is the fault of the people who knowingly and thoughtlessly throw it down.” That tells you a lot about why the plastics industry likes dealing with \u2018litter\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Categories matter, including whether or not something is a pollutant, and thus a \u2018bad thing\u2019.\u00a0 During his 2000 campaign, G W Bush pledged to control emissions of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, alongside others such as sulphur and nitrogen oxides.\u00a0\u00a0 Once elected President, Bush reversed this commitment in March 2001.\u00a0 Officials said it had been a \u2018mistake<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Mr. Bush had made his decision in consultation with his cabinet.<\/em><\/p>\n ”The president is following through on his commitment to a multipollutant strategy that will significantly reduce pollutants,” Mr. McClellan said. ”CO2 should not have been included as a pollutant during the campaign. It was a mistake.”\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n (New York Times<\/em>, 14 March 2001).<\/p>\n In the US, acknowledging that CO2<\/sub> was a pollutant had important legal implications as it potentially led to an obligation to control it under clean air legislation.\u00a0 Two weeks later, Bush walked away from the Kyoto Protocol.\u00a0 He\u2019d been fixed by the oil, coal and gas industries.\u00a0 The rest is history: American foot-dragging over CO2<\/sub> pollution has undoubtedly consigned the world to far worse climate change.<\/p>\n We are now at a similar point with plastic, although campaigners should not get hung up on a legalistic route for bringing about change.<\/p>\n Legal specifics aside, the more important point is that pollution is bad.\u00a0 There is no good amount of pollution, only less is better, and none is best.\u00a0 The word has many derivations including cultural and moral defilement as well as over-flowing into a wrong place but it\u2019s never a good thing.<\/p>\n Seeing as CO2<\/sub> is invisible, the \u201clitter strategy\u201d was not available as a diversion for the fossil fuel lobby but for the users of oil making plastic, it is, and every time scientists, NGOs, politicians or advocates of less-plastic-in-the-environment use the \u2018L-word\u2019, they are helping sustain the problem, not cure it.\u00a0\u00a0 As George Lakoff has pointed out, you cannot argue with a frame from inside it: doing so only makes it stronger.\u00a0\u00a0 So when plastic escaped being framed as pollution<\/a> in the popular mind, it had long-lasting consequences.<\/p>\n How the \u2018litter\u2019 frame works:<\/p>\n When plastic (on the beach) is framed as \u2018litter\u2019, it is a question of personal responsibility, not corporate, or political, consumer or retail or even social responsibility.\u00a0 To drop is bad, to pick up is good.\u00a0 Down is bad, up is good (as it so often is in frames, heaven hell etc).\u00a0 The problem action is elegantly reversible into the solution.\u00a0 It\u2019s binary, either\/or, tangible, visualisable, bounded, human-scale, resolvable and discrete: all factors which make it an appealing causal story.\u00a0 Applied to the story of a beach clean, <\/em>the challenge is overcome, beauty is restored, good people prevail, the problem is solved, the arc of the story is completed. <\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Any frame functions by its rules.\u00a0 It\u2019s a mental metaphor, usually triggered by or triggering an image.\u00a0 What does not fit gets filtered out or ignored because it is not \u2018relevant\u2019: it cannot fit.\u00a0 There\u2019s no point in raising it.\u00a0 Arguing with the frame merely strengthens it as we mentally refer to the rules and confirm them.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Seeing plastic-on-the-beach now triggers the long-established clean-up litter frame.\u00a0 This is why plastic-on-the-beach works so well for the plastics industry which does not want anyone to talk about questions such as sources, need, how much, consequences, risks or social benefit.\u00a0 And why continuing to use plastic on the beach as the primary visual in environmental campaigns about plastic, is perhaps not always the best idea.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Right and wrong from the world of litter<\/em><\/p>\n How the \u2018pollution\u2019 frame works:<\/p>\n In the pollution frame, it escapes.\u00a0 It over-flows.\u00a0 The source producer is responsible.\u00a0 There\u2019s usually a victim: it hs a bad effect for the surroundings and those in them.\u00a0 The responsibility is bigger than individual.\u00a0 It is by definition, not easily recovered and put back so emission has to be controlled.\u00a0 No amount of it is good.<\/em><\/p>\n Clip art and official warning sign of pollution.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n If you need political and corporate action, you face a big difficulty if responsibility for the pollutant in question is framed as personal and individual.\u00a0 As Mrs Thatcher pointed out decades ago, companies and government literally do not fit in the litter frame and so are out of sight, and out of mind.\u00a0 And as an earlier blog established, in the case of plastics, this is no accident<\/a>.<\/p>\n Anyone who wants to bring the plastics pollution crisis under control needs to avoid framing it as about \u2018litter\u2019 for this reason.\u00a0 Although perhaps inconvenient, it\u2019s the quickest and easiest first step that the relevant policy communities can take, and they should do everything they can to make sure that pollution rather than \u2018litter\u2019 appears in the title and texts of any government or corporate policies ostensibly intended to tackle the plastic crisis..<\/p>\n Some examples of advocates trying to cut plastic pollution while at the same time calling it \u2018litter\u2019:<\/p>\n The European Union routinely frames the plastics problem as \u2018litter\u2019 rather than as plastic pollution. So do many governments, and so of course does the plastics industry.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n EU policy report (left), EU funded project with aquaria (right) and \u2018Marine Litter Solutions\u2019, a plastics industry greenwash \u2018NGO\u2019 with 69 plastics industry members<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>EU policy <\/em>on marine plastic pollution is currently framed as about about \u2018litter\u2019.\u00a0 For example<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018T<\/em>he Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) sets the framework for Member States to achieve by 2020 Good Environmental Status (GES) for their marine waters, considering 11 descriptors. One of these descriptors (descriptor 10) focuses on marine litter<\/strong>, stating that GES is achieved only when “properties and quantities of marine litter<\/strong> do not cause harm to the coastal and marine environment”.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n (My emphasis)<\/p>\n This illustrates the considerable success of the plastics industry in hijacking \u2018the issue\u2019 and rendering it as about individual responsibility (for littering) rather than control of corporate pollution.<\/p>\n The EU clearly understands the issues of microplastic and plastic beneath the waves that you can\u2019t see.\u00a0 It even produces this ingenious if slightly weird graphic:<\/p>\n But note the child: visually it still says \u2018litter\u2019 and personal<\/em> responsibility, not the need to control plastic pollution at source, even though the accompanying text states:.<\/p>\n Cleaning up the oceans is one option, it is however not the most efficient method against marine litter. You could compare it to scouring the sand in the desert and this is simply something that no country could afford. The solution is to tackle the problem at its source.<\/em><\/p>\n Nor does it stop there.\u00a0 One of the most active and respected research groups is the International Marine Litter Research Unit<\/a> at Plymouth University, led by Professor Richard Thompson who first coined the term \u2018microplastic\u2019 in 2004.\u00a0 Thompson was one of the authors of this compendious 564 page report \u2018Marine Anthropogenic Litter<\/a>\u2019,\u00a0 produced in 2015.<\/p>\n Even some NGOs conducting vigorous campaigns against plastic pollution are also still using the \u2018litter\u2019 frame:<\/p>\n Surfers Against Sewage<\/em><\/p>\n Some scientists and others familiar with \u2018the issue\u2019 on Track Two may feel that it simply does not matter because the term is just a \u2018technicality\u2019 and what matters are \u2018the facts\u2019 but it does matter because on Track One, in public and political communication, reference to plastic as \u2018litter\u2019 neutralises the impact of plastic pollution.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also true that some may use the terms interchangeably and some researchers have framed papers as about \u2018pollution\u2019 for instance [examples] but that only strengthens the case for avoiding the L-word.<\/p>\n In my view the long-established custom and practice of framing policy and even research in \u2018marine litter\u2019 terms undoubtedly delayed recognition of plastic pollution as a crisis.<\/p>\n Going going but never actually gone<\/em><\/p>\n Less Can Be Worse<\/strong><\/p>\n In communications terms there\u2019s another more counter-intuitive reason why the \u2018litter\u2019 frame is problematic and no longer matches the plastic problem.\u00a0 That\u2019s because with items <\/em>of litter<\/em>, more = worse, and that can be confirmed visually.\u00a0 On the other hand, with microplastic caused by fragmentation, unless you are using a microscope, the visual signal is the opposite<\/em>.<\/p>\n As described<\/a> in an earlier blog, a single coke bottle can fragment to produce 17,000 1mm microplastic particles.\u00a0 So if you find half a coke bottle, and 8,500 microparticles have got free, that\u2019s worse<\/em> than a whole coke bottle. Once you take fragmentation into account, a beach with \u2018less litter\u2019 may not be one with less plastic pollution: less can be more.<\/p>\n Moreover litter as items large enough to hold (macroplastic in Track Two jargon) is tangible, and microplastic is effectively intangible.\u00a0 This makes plastic pollution more like any widespread and spreading threat which multiplies.<\/p>\n Plastic pollution sorely needs reframing, and to do that, the key question is what other bad things work like this, things, which get more dangerous as they become less<\/em> visible. ?<\/p>\n A plague perhaps, or a biological weapon formed of a dangerous virus or bacterium: safe when trapped in a sealed container, more threatening when it escapes, especially if it can go on multiplying.\u00a0\u00a0 Or a fragmentation weapon, or a lump of radioactive waste, or toxic chemicals, or a sheet of asbestos which can break up into hazardous dust.<\/p>\n This is the unfortunate reality of plastic. It\u2019s inherently dangerous stuff, and it takes us into the politics of the invisible.<\/p>\n The lynchpin requirement to stimulating effective change on plastics is simple: to recognize that it\u2019s inherently dangerous and send unambiguous signals to that effect. Without that, the psychological impetus and political space necessary to restrict use, change behaviour, tighten those material \u2018loops\u2019 and rapidly develop alternatives, will simply not be there.<\/p>\n Signifying Risk and Hazard<\/strong><\/p>\n If someone walked into your kitchen with a jar of white powder, you\u2019d expect to be \u2018told\u2019 if it was hazardous.\u00a0 Or perhaps to be able to see that from the label.\u00a0 And if it was \u2018really dangerous\u2019, we wouldn\u2019t expect it to be in our kitchens at all, nor indeed in our homes or shops: anthrax or asbestos for example.\u00a0 Yet asbestos was once treated as harmless enough to be used around the home, and we were taught about its many benefits, alongside plastic.<\/p>\n Likewise, when I was growing up, tobacco smoking was accepted as normal, and it was considered polite to provide ashtrays even in houses where nobody smoked. \u00a0Right up to the 1990s if you were very polite, you might even keep cigarettes just to offer to visitors.\u00a0 As recently as 2006 cigarette smoking was still legal in UK workplaces (see \u2018smoke and mirrors\u2019 in Campaign Strategy Newsletter 26<\/a> on campaign strategies which changed attitudes and the law).\u00a0 Now smoking is so thoroughly desocialised that it is being restricted outdoors, and every time we comply with one of these measures, we reinforce the idea that smoking is hazardous.<\/p>\n If products or substances are dangerous, we expect to have our attention drawn to that by a symbol, usually in an orange box.\u00a0 These have become so familiar that they are part of our visual language.\u00a0 Such symbols and restrictions now need to be applied to plastic.\u00a0 The good news is that in Track Two world there\u2019s a whole industry of designers and cognitive psychologists ready to nudge<\/a> us into changing behaviours (and hence attitudes, opinions and potentially politics: see VBCOP<\/a>), if only they are given the brief to do so.<\/p>\n The bad news is that like the tobacco industry, the plastics industry will move heaven and earth to stop this from happening.\u00a0\u00a0 After generations in which their business has boomed without control, they now see the first signs of sunset on the horizon, and they will not go without fighting tooth and nail, every inch of the way, not least by lavish use of money.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s imagine that somewhere the first company or government starts putting warnings on plastic (if they have already done so, please let me know<\/a>).\u00a0 Our comms designers face an interesting problem: given that plastic poses so many different types of risk and hazard, which ones should we depict on a warning label?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s one for starters:<\/p>\n It has the advantage of familiarity, for instance found on DIY and gardening products which should not be let out.<\/p>\n What about plastic\u2019s inbuilt ability to fragment, and break down into micro-particles\/ fibres, which is a multidimensional risk-magnifier in itself?\u00a0 In some ways this makes it a danger because it is very small.\u00a0 Hazardous dusts fall into this category and have their own symbols.<\/p>\n I looked up fragmentation as a hazard and found it also has a symbol to itself \u2013 an orange hexagon \u2013 although usually associated with explosive force.\u00a0 Perhaps this could be adapted something like this:<\/p>\n Plastic applications also differ in their propensity to end up in the environment.\u00a0 For example many plastic car parts are now supposed to be recovered when a car is scrapped and presumably (I have not checked) are therefore at a low risk of ending up dumped, or in the Track Two jargon, \u2018as leakage\u2019.\u00a0 At the other extreme, packaging for on-the-go foods are highly likely to \u2018escape\u2019, or become \u2018feral\u2019 plastic.\u00a0 In the technical world of hazardous gases like CFCs these escapees are called \u2018fugitive\u2019 emissions.\u00a0 All examples of framing (as in a fugitive from the law, etc).\u00a0 So it could make sense to label plastic things to recognize particularly high probability of escape<\/em> (escape risk if you like), and this might please users of lower-risk-of-escaping plastic applications.<\/p>\n Volatile substances are escape-prone and have their own sign, although it doesn\u2019t quite do justice to plastic:<\/p>\n Plastic also poses a problem because it\u2019s very long lived in the environment, in some cases with a half-life of centuries or longer (it\u2019s even arguable that the \u2018half life\u2019 concept isn\u2019t fully applicable to plastic).\u00a0 Perhaps it needs labelling like radioactive waste for similar reasons ?<\/p>\n Does plastic merit a new version of this ?<\/em><\/p>\n But then cycling in food webs as it does, plastic also behaves like a biohazard, which has its own established sign:<\/p>\n Given that plastic poses a multiplicity of risks and hazards including transport of toxic chemicals, I suppose you could settle for the simple \u2018harmful\u2019 catch-alls:<\/p>\n So where might these be applied?\u00a0 Plastic packaging and clothing see two obvious starting points but they should be on all plastic.\u00a0 So at the moment, clothing labels look a bit like this:<\/p>\n But maybe need to look a bit more like this:<\/p>\n And Coke labels maybe need to look more like this:<\/p>\n And so we could go on. Plastic Free Zones, Low Plastic Communities, Plastic Free Products: they all send a signal that plastic is a problem and<\/em>, that something can be done about it. Visual language, risk avoidance behaviour, flagging of responsibility, and social proof are all Track One communication dynamics.<\/p>\n Commercial or social initiatives to give up, ban or restrict plastic, or to offer alternatives, also send important signals.\u00a0 For instance the recent UK decisions<\/a> by the caf\u00e9 \u2018Pret a Manger\u2019 to offer glasses of filtered water rather than water in plastic bottles, and the decision by pub chain Wetherspoons to stop using plastic straws:<\/p>\n Report from The Independent<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Such moves are a target category with high leverage (supply chain) and high visibility, as well as being high-touch in Track One life, which makes them great intermediate campaign targets.\u00a0 On this issue \u2018plastic-free\u2019 lifestyle blogs are also hugely important gearing, and a test-bed for proof-of-possibility for substitution.\u00a0 I\u2019ll write more about that another time.<\/p>\n Can We Win By \u2018Fighting On the Beaches\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n A reality facing campaign designers is that plastic on the beach is already established as the iconic visual.\u00a0 The beach is emotional Ground Zero for most communications aimed at curbing plastic pollution.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what I got when I put \u2018plastic pollution\u2019 into a Google image search.<\/p>\n Beach plastic is where public motivation has long met public opportunity to take a chunk out of the problem.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s what gets us going but where to?\u00a0\u00a0 Getting the context<\/a> or battleground right or wrong can often make the difference between campaign success or failure.\u00a0 The beach has been a great location for showing there\u2019s a problem with plastic and for public engagement but can it now meet the needs of campaigns to end plastic pollution?<\/p>\n Call of the Beach <\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018Beach-combing\u2019, walking the strandline is an ancient activity, going back at least to the Stone Age.\u00a0 Today from Mumbai<\/a> to Hong Kong<\/a>, from Australia to the US, people voluntarily take to their beaches to try and combat plastic pollution.\u00a0 Let me be clear: I\u2019m all in favour of beach-cleans, and I do them too.<\/p>\n There\u2019s something awfully satisfying about cleaning the plastic from a beach, particularly a beautiful one.\u00a0 Restoring natural glory knocks emotional spots off a tidy-up of plastic behind a supermarket car-park.\u00a0 It also produces pleasing, visually definitive results, as with this beach-clean in Utila, Honduras:<\/p>\n Beach clean in Utila (Honduras) <\/em>by Ecodive<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Problem solved?<\/em><\/p>\n A beach of plastic bottles is the defining visual poster-child of the issue.\u00a0\u00a0 A plastic-covered beach counterposed with a \u2018pristine\u2019 beach provides a dramatic visual polarity.\u00a0 That makes it the first choice for news media imagery, and a choice emulated by millions of us on social media.<\/p>\n So as click-bait visual language and starting from where concern-is-at, a good plastic-littered beach is hard for campaigners to resist, and for the public, the relative presence or absence of beach plastic has become a critical visual indicator of the \u2018health\u2019 of the seas, and a social barometer of how we are doing on \u2018plastics problem\u2019.<\/p>\n Photo: Greenpeace<\/em><\/p>\n In 2016 a team of academic researchers<\/a> analysed a decade of UK beach-cleans and wrote:<\/p>\n The aesthetic impact of anthropogenic litter has implications for tourism and human well-being. For example, 85% of 1000 residents and tourists said they would not visit a beach with an excess of two litter items per metre \u2026 [and] ,,, beach choice was more strongly determined by clean, litter-free sand and seawater than by safety <\/em>[plus]\u00a0 the restorative psychological benefits ordinarily experienced by people visiting the coast were undermined by the presence of litter.<\/em><\/p>\n In other words we prefer clean beaches, and they make us feel better.<\/p>\n So sensitive are we to the visual signal, that any \u2018fiddling\u2019 with the beach plastic barometer is worth remarking on.\u00a0 Recently I was talking to a fisherman about plastic and he raised the \u201cunfairly blamed\u201d point with me.\u00a0 A piece in Fishing News<\/em>, he said, had pointed out that when the BBC visited Cornish plastics campaigners to report the amount of fishing industry waste (about 15%<\/a> of UK beach-clean items), they first piled it all up to make a \u2018better pitcure\u2019.\u00a0 Conversely, Jo Ruxton, formerly a producer on the BBC\u2019s Blue Planet<\/em>,<\/a> and now an anti-marine-plastics campaigner<\/a>, told the Daily Telegraph<\/em>: \u201cI\u2019ve known film crews spend two hours clearing up beaches before they can take shots of turtles.\u201d<\/p>\n [David Attenborough\u2019s programmes have been increasingly criticized<\/a> for giving an unrealistically positive view of the state of nature, including by me but to his credit, Attenborough used the latest, Blue Planet II,<\/em> to make a strong call for action<\/a> on plastic].<\/p>\n Beach Clean Ups \u2013 Do They Really Make a Difference?<\/strong><\/p>\n Now we know about microplastic, does a beach with little or no visible plastic give a misleading picture ?\u00a0 And might the act of beach-cleaning even function as a sink for public concern, and create a \u2018dead-end\u2019 stopping public concern from reaching the places where it really could help cut-off the problem at source?<\/p>\n At first sight, the maths suggest it is not even scratching at the surface of the problem.<\/p>\n The largest and best documented beach clean network is International Coastal Clean Up<\/a> co-ordinated by the US-based Oceans Conservancy.\u00a0 Starting in the US State of Oregon in 1984, it went nationwide by 1988 and now includes over 90 countries.\u00a0 In 2015 800,000 volunteers recovered 14m items weighing 8m kg, almost entirely plastic.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lot to pick up, weighing as the Conservancy says, \u2018More Than 100 Boeing 737s<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n 8m kg is 8,000 tonnes.\u00a0 By comparison, a 2015 study in Science<\/a> estimated that in one year (2010) about 8m tonnes of plastic entered the seas from coastal communities (ie including via rivers) and that is increasing.\u00a0 So even the heroic efforts of nearly a million volunteers only accounted for about 0.1% of all the plastic estimated to be entering the ocean.\u00a0 Even if we added in other (maybe imaginary) clean-ups and increased the Conservancy figure tenfold, we\u2019d still only be recapturing about 1% of the plastic getting free into the sea.<\/p>\n Oceans Conservancy\u2019s home page<\/a> features a striking image of a woman collecting beach plastic with the words:\u00a0 \u2018ending the flow of trash at the source\u2019, which is the right idea as a mission but exactly what beach clean ups do not<\/em> do because plastic is not made on the beach and 80% of the plastic in the sea, does not come from disposal at sea.<\/p>\n Is this the source of plastic pollution?<\/em><\/p>\n To be fair, if you drill down several levels the Conservancy does offer some educational<\/a> information on behaviours, such as a \u20186 week trash free challenge\u2019 including in week two: \u2018Use as few single-use beverage bottles and cups as possible\u2019 but it does not seem to propose anything intended to ensure corporations make less plastic.<\/p>\n The Conservancy argues that the data on types of \u2018trash\u2019 collected during beach-cleans enables others to \u2018divert solid waste\u2019 before it reaches the sea, or recycle it, for example<\/a> a scheme to recycle flip-flops in a Kenyan Marine Park.<\/p>\n The Conservancy\u2019s 2016 \u2018data release\u2019<\/a> on \u2018International Coastal Cleanup\u2019 does mention microplastic turning up in seafood and wildlife but regards it as a matter for \u2018further study\u2019.\u00a0 In short, the proposition of this global network is to do something good in itself, which is removing plastic from our beaches but it seems to be the same framing activities, described in A Beautiful If Evil Strategy<\/a>:\u00a0 one liable to reduce demand for effective regulatory action by drawing well-intentioned citizen consumers into litter picking rather than change campaigns.<\/p>\n Sponsored by Coca Cola<\/strong><\/p>\n Alarmingly to some<\/a>, the Conservancy\u2019s lead sponsor<\/a> for its beach cleans is Coca Cola, while Dow Chemical appears as a \u2018Healthy Bay partner\u2019, while Keep America Beautiful (see earlier blog<\/a>) is an \u2018Outreach Partner\u2019.<\/p>\n Actions attached to a beach-clean \u2013 Surfers Against Sewage<\/em><\/p>\n In the UK, the Marine Conservation Society is a contributor to International Coastal Clean Up.\u00a0 It\u2019s known for the Beachwatch<\/a> survey\/beach clean run since 1993<\/a>.\u00a0 In 2016 its volunteers picked up nearly 270,000 pieces of beach litter, mostly plastic, and encouragingly, have found a 22% reduction in plastic carrier bags since charges on them were introduced in 2011.<\/p>\n MCS does not seem to weigh its plastic but another UK organisation running beach cleans does, the more campaign-oriented Surfers Against Sewage<\/a> or SAS.<\/p>\n In 2017 SAS reported<\/a>: \u2018the Big Spring Clean saw us remove over 55 tonnes<\/strong> of marine plastic pollution and litter from 475\u00a0beaches<\/strong> across the UK\u2019 and SAS netted another 35 tonnes in the Autumn clean-up, making a total haul of 90t.\u00a0 Some 10,000\u201327,000 tonnes of \u2018mismanaged\u2019 plastics are estimated<\/a> to be discharged from land in the UK, so in relation to say 18,000 tonnes, 90 tonnes represents around 0.5%.<\/p>\n Recapturing 0.1% – 0.5% of the plastic getting into the sea is not a lot but the activity is obviously worthwhile in many ways.\u00a0 For one thing, marine plastic tends to be concentrated near the coast.\u00a0 A study<\/a> modelling the potential of floating \u2018plastic collectors\u2019 to trap microplastic found that if placed near coasts they could remove 31% of microplastics, versus 1% if they were all in the \u2018Great Pacific Garbage patch\u2019.<\/p>\n Fortunately for collecting, it also turns out that many beaches act as traps for plastic. Consultancy Eunomia points out that the average global concentration of sea-surface plastic is less than 1kg\/km2 <\/sup>, and the highest concentration is in the North Pacific Gyre at 18kg\/km2<\/sup> but on beaches \u00a0it is five times greater at 2,000kg\/km2 <\/sup>.\u00a0 Eunomina says \u2018there is a \u2018flux\u2019 of litter between beaches and the sea. By removing beach litter, we are therefore cleaning the oceans\u2019.<\/p>\n Above: from Plastics in the Marine Environment<\/em><\/a> by Eunomia<\/p>\n So keep cleaning your beaches: it\u2019s more effective to pick it up there, than to try catching it at sea.\u00a0 Just do it frequently enough to get to the plastic before it\u2019s washed back out to sea, or before UV from sunlight makes the plastic brittle, and before wind, waves, pebbles and small life-forms break it up into microplastic.\u00a0 Eunomia also worked out that if beaches were cleaned on a daily basis rather than just twice a year, about eight times more plastic would be recovered.<\/p>\n Of course it is very hard to pick up very small bits of plastic. On some beaches over 80%<\/a> of all the pieces of plastic found between the high and low water marks are now \u2018invisible\u2019 microplastics.<\/p>\n This also leaves the problem that beach-cleans and beach-plastic dominate the engagement visuals of the plastics issue.\u00a0 Showing beach cleans solving a<\/em> problem does not show beach cleans solving the<\/em> problem and cannot do so but perhaps it is also possible to adapt beach-cleans to give them greater leverage.<\/p>\n Enhancing Beach Cleans<\/strong><\/p>\n Beach-cleans offer a good opportunity to show and involve people in the reality of microplastic, including on the beach itself.\u00a0 \u00a0There is potential \u2018citizen science\u2019 projects such as this one<\/a> in Florida and this<\/a> at St Kilda in Australia:<\/p>\n Community members investigating microplastics with Environment Protection Authority Victoria<\/em><\/p>\n Hands-on activity to sieve and reveal microplastic on the spot would be the best way to bring home the reality of fragmentation and microplastic, and if conditions do not allow, then \u2018one we made earlier\u2019 type displays could be used.<\/p>\n A big weakness of beaches as a context for plastic campaigns is the absence of corporations and politicians.\u00a0 Unlike the urban environment, beaches tend to be brand free zones.\u00a0 One approach to bridge this gap between beach plastic and responsible decision-makers is to celebrate clean-ups, and then ask the participants to demand political action, such as via the petitions run by Surfers Against Sewage<\/a>. \u00a0But even this does not actually put corporates or politicians \u2018in the picture\u2019 on the beach.\u00a0 Indeed plastic-makers and users probably hope that by becoming corporate sponsors, they may shelter behind projects like beach-cleans and evade campaigns such as Greenpeace\u2019s push against Coca Cola<\/a>.<\/p>\n A beach brand audit<\/a> can bring plastic-using brands to the beach by attaching them to individual bits of pollution.\u00a0 In the Philippines Greenpeace identified plastic from Nestl\u00e9, Unilever and Proctor and Gamble as amongst the worst offenders.\u00a0 A step on from that could be a RTS or Return-to-Sender action<\/a>; taking the plastic back to the users or producers.<\/p>\n Such enhancements could help retain the satisfaction of \u2018cleaning the beach\u2019 while embedding awareness that it\u2019s not a complete solution.\u00a0 The ideal outcome is that the beach gets cleaner but participants, having \u2018done their bit\u2019, are motivated and enabled to press for upstream action.<\/p>\n A Massive Expansion of Beach Cleans?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that growing awareness of the plastics crisis will stimulate calls to increase beach-cleans.\u00a0 Eunomia estimates<\/a> that as beach cleans cover only 1.9% of the world\u2019s coastline, at any one time the actual amount of recoverable plastic on beaches could be around 1.4 million tonnes.\u00a0 Expanding beach cleaning 50-100 fold could therefore harvest more of the plastic washing onto and off beaches but would also require significant resources.<\/p>\n If campaigners set about pressing governments to fund a massive increase in these mainly voluntary activities, there is a chance that they might succeed.\u00a0 The MacArthur Foundation notes that even in the EU, cleaning coasts and beaches of plastic could cost up to EUR 630 million per year, as pollution grows.\u00a0 So it could appeal to politicians as a great way to encourage volunteering, boost civic minded participation, be seen to do something \u2018big\u2019, and possibly divert the unemployed or low-paid into useful activity.\u00a0 Some charities might love the idea as it could create a new profile and cash flow for them.<\/p>\n But unless beach-cleans are enhanced as campaign platforms as discussed above, just scaling them up could actually prevent effective action by reinforcing a perception of the problem and solution to plastic pollution in terms of \u2018beach+litter+cleanup\u2019.\u00a0 Something similar happened in the past with \u2018clean ups\u2019 of beached oil spills and oiled wildlife.<\/p>\n One way to avoid a reinforcement of the status quo would be to make the polluters pay. Why should the taxpayers or volunteers pay to clean up plastic pollution just because the \u2018leaky\u2019 plastics system is a profitable business model for chemicals companies?<\/p>\n The MacArthur Foundation has pointed out that on conservative estimate, \u00a0\u2018costs of the negative externalities of plastics in the oceans\u2019 total least USD 13 billion each year.\u00a0\u00a0 In other words, the impact of plastic pollution is costing us at least US$13bn per annum but the plastics industry is not paying.<\/p>\n Governments could use tax or other measures to extract at least these sums from the plastics industry, and then to use some of that to recover plastic from our beaches.\u00a0 Alternatively, one could take the \u2018community service\u2019 penalty approach and make the plastics industry executives get out and pick up the plastic themselves.\u00a0 Campaigns to demand this might at least force corporations into the open.<\/p>\n Of course none of this makes much sense so long as the \u2018Niagara Falls\u2019 scale flow of plastic into the environment continues unabated.<\/p>\n In the end campaigns to tackle the plastics crisis cannot be won just \u2018fighting on the beaches\u2019.\u00a0 Campaigners have inherited a legacy activity conceived to manage a local impact, not resolve the underlying causes.\u00a0 It\u2019s a problem management activity not a problem solving strategy, and can only partly be transitioned into a battle winning campaign tool.\u00a0\u00a0 Effort needs to migrate upstream, into homes, shops, schools<\/a>, workplaces, legislatures, investment, design and industry.<\/p>\n The Limitations of Recycling<\/strong><\/p>\n Perhaps the biggest communications challenge facing architects of new plastics campaigns, is \u2018recycling\u2019, an activity which has become almost synonymous with \u2018being green\u2019.\u00a0 Our customary \u2018Track One\u2019 conceptualisation of the \u2018plastics issue\u2019 includes plastic waste (often on the beach), and recycling. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Unfortunately, in the case of plastics, this simple WYSIATI, (what-you-see-is-all-there-is), is an illusion.<\/p>\n What we imagine, because of what we \u2018see\u2019.\u00a0 Not what happens.\u00a0 Leastways, hardly ever.<\/em><\/p>\n That it is good to recycle, has become a social norm and so it has become conventional wisdom that if we recycled plastic, then coupled with recovering it from the environment, as in beach-cleans, we could \u2018solve the problem\u2019.\u00a0 Unfortunately when experts have looked into this, it seems that whereas recycling may indeed achieve great things on say, aluminium, that\u2019s not the case with plastic.\u00a0 It can\u2019t solve the plastics crisis.<\/p>\n This poses a communications challenge but it\u2019s unavoidable, as it\u2019s part of the reason why we need to stop using plastic.\u00a0 Yes the current recycling system can be \u2018tightened up\u2019 but that only makes sense as a transitional mitigation during a phase out.\u00a0 Substitution of non-plastic alternatives, needs to loom large in campaigns, communications and government strategies.<\/p>\n Re-appraising how we communicate about recycling within a plastic phase out framework is going to take some working out.\u00a0 The naieve version of \u2018recycling the solution\u2019 is well embedded.<\/p>\n Above: the first US plastics recycling facility was opened in 1972.\u00a0 The magical green box takes plastic away to be \u2018recycled\u2019.\u00a0 It helps us feel good by doing good but it too often it is an exercise in deception.\u00a0 From industry site <\/em>Plastics Make It Possible<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n \u2018Track Two\u2019 type analysis shows that the plastics recycling \u2018system\u2019 is not \u2018fit for purpose\u2019 when it comes to delivering a solution to the plastics crisis.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just like a bucket with a hole in it, it\u2019s more hole than bucket, in fact about 90% hole.<\/p>\n In 2009 as part of the Royal Society study Our Plastic Age<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 <\/em>two plastics industry consultants described a great many recycling processes<\/a> that could<\/em> in theory make a difference to overall waste and pollution, but no examples of it actually reducing producion of new plastic. \u00a0(The industry provides countless examples of pilots and prototypes that are very \u2018closed loop\u2019 but the forest of examples disguises the fact that hardly any plastic is actually in anything like a closed loop system: a case of not seeing the wood for the trees).<\/p>\n
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EU science and policy and technical reports on marine plastic<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Marine-litter-1-1.jpg\")
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<\/em>Above: some of the signatories to the Marine Litter Solutions \u2018declaration\u2019.\u00a0 A who\u2019s who of those producing the plastic problem. <\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/EU-water-protn-cover.jpg\")
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