This blog is written by Victoria SanJuan, Victoria is a passionate ocean lover and professional scuba diver who is currently studying biology at Florida Atlantic University. As the Communications Intern for Big Blue & You, she worked on newsletter composition, social media branding, and content generation. She believes in being the change you wish to see in the world and inspiring others to care for our earth.
As younger generations come along, they develop their own priorities and face new challenges. At this time in our history, younger generations are concerned about their futures on the planet, threatened by the climate crisis, plastic pollution and other environmental dangers. Many young people have been told that they can’t do anything to solve these problems because the problems are much bigger than they are—or that they’re too young to really have an impact for change. But young activists think otherwise.
Miami Beach is a hotspot for tourism—and for single-use plastics.
Litter from single-use plastics is suffocating the city’s beaches and marine life. This summer, a group of motivated, and very impressive, high school students have been hungry to change that.
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These aspiring young conservationists, called Big Blue Crew’s “Plastic Free MVPs”, met and contacted businesses about their use of plastic products. The MVPs proposed sustainable solutions for the establishments. Their goal is to gradually reduce Miami Beach businesses’ plastic practices and prove that sustainability can be beneficial to business owners’ wallets and improve the health of the local environment. Altogether, they have enrolled more than 10 businesses in less than a month. The future will be brighter if a program like this can run year-round!
Businesses that pledge to use sustainable products are promoted by Debris Free Oceans and the City of Miami Beach on social media. They receive a plaque, which they can exhibit to customers, that states they are an Ocean-Friendly Establishment and are featured on Miami Beach’s ocean-friendly business website.
This initiative was developed through the passion and dedication of Ocean Conservancy, Big Blue & You and Debris Free Oceans to promote the Shores Forward partnership with Miami Beach. #PlasticFreeMB is a promising step in the sustainability movement for Miami Beach.
This has been a significant shift in the youth taking more control of their futures.
Big Blue & You is honored to train and guide these teenage activists to accomplish this important challenge. We hope that the local youth can inspire other potential activists to continue advocating for change in their home cities. Together, we can position Miami Beach as a plastic-free role model.
For billions of people across the world, seafood is a critical part of a healthy diet. While much of the fish that we eat still comes from wild caught “capture” fisheries, aquaculture—or fish farming—is becoming increasingly important. Globally, aquaculture supplies more than half of all seafood produced for human consumption, and that percentage is only expected to rise.
Oddly enough, this growth comes with more opportunity for plastic pollution. Plastic is used extensively in marine fish farming, including in fish cages, in coastal fishpond linings and in shellfish farming bags. In Ireland, for example, the smallest oyster grower raises the oysters in about 30,000 plastic bags per harvest, while others use 200,000 bags or more. That results in at least two million bags in use at any given time in this relatively small oyster farming industry. These plastics are easily lost through extreme weather events, mismanagement of waste or deliberate discharge.
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We know the toll that plastic pollution takes on our ocean, and abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear—or ghost gear—is particularly harmful. Ghost gear threatens marine ecosystems around the world, from shallow coral reefs to deep-water landscapes, and it is particularly deadly to all the incredible marine life that call the ocean home.
The A-BPF is the first document of its kind and provides comprehensive guidance to aquaculture stakeholders on the best ways to prevent, remove and mitigate the effects of ghost gear. The framework covers a wide variety of aquaculture operations and sector participants across a global landscape.
To make this framework as effective as possible, the GGGI worked with Ocean Outcomes to conduct a robust consultation process with more than 150 priority stakeholders from 20 different countries. These conversations made it clear that that while plastic and other debris lost from aquaculture and capture fisheries are often considered together, the drivers and pathways are different, even if the eventual impacts are similar. In capture fisheries, fishing gear is either deliberately not retrieved, lost through unintended interaction with other gear or extreme weather or deliberately disposed of at sea. In aquaculture, the primary drivers are extreme weather, insufficient facilities or waste management and in some cases deliberate discard, particularly where waste management options are limited or nonexistent.
Over the next few weeks, the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy will travel from the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska through Arctic waters to the northern Atlantic Ocean. In making the trip, Healy will transit the fabled Northwest Passage, a route that winds among islands north of mainland Canada.
In the past, the Arctic Ocean–and the Northwest Passage in particular—was often choked with thick sea ice that made maritime voyages risky and arduous, even at the most favorable times of the year. But a warming climate has reduced the extent and thickness of summertime sea, making it easier for vessels to travel through Arctic waters.
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Healy will pass through portions of the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas before entering the archipelagic waters of the Northwest Passage and on to Baffin Bay off the coast of Greenland.
Along the way, the Coast Guard icebreaker will travel past northern coastal communities whose Indigenous residents engage in traditional subsistence hunting practices that date back thousands of years. Changing conditions can make the sea ice less predictable and more dangerous for hunters, compromise ice cellars that are used for food storage, and accelerate damaging coastal erosion.
Climate change is also affecting the Arctic Ocean ecosystem, including its marine mammals, sea birds, fish and other marine species.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) 2020 Arctic Report Card, “. . . the story is unambiguous. The transformation of the Arctic to a warmer, less frozen and biologically changed region is well underway.”
To better understand these changes, Healy hosts research scientists who monitor conditions and perform experiments while the vessel travels in Arctic waters. Coupled with knowledge from Arctic Indigenous peoples, this work can tell us a great deal about the pace and trajectory of ecosystem change in Arctic waters.
One Arctic trend that’s already well underway is increasing vessel traffic in the region. According to a 2019 government report, “In the last decade, the number of vessels operating in waters north of the Bering Strait around the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas has increased by 128% and is now 2.3 times larger than the number of ships passing through the region in 2008.” This growth in includes tankers coming from Russia’s Northern Sea Route carrying Liquified Natural Gas and oil, cruise ships bringing tourists to the region, vessels delivering cargo to onshore oil and gas or mining operations, research vessels supporting scientific operations and even private adventure cruisers.
All this additional traffic increases the risk of vessel strikes on marine mammals, creates more subsea noise, adds pollution to the water and the atmosphere and elevates the threat of a major oil spill.
Because of these risks, it’s vital to put in place management measures to maximize safety and minimize adverse impacts to the environment and coastal communities. These management measures will become even more important as vessel traffic increases even more in coming years.
To that end, the Coast Guard is conducting a study—called a Port Access Route Study or PARS—to assess whether and how to implement vessel traffic safeguards in U.S. Arctic waters. Safeguards include things like the creation of offshore vessel traffic lanes, designation of areas to be avoided, vessel speed limits, among others.
There certainly isn’t a shortage of grim news lately. And, the recent report from the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is no exception.
The IPCC tells us that this is the decade when we must take action on climate change to avoid the worst- case scenarios. If we fail, it could be impossible to keep average global temperatures from rising well above 1.5 degrees Celsius. Rare, extreme weather events will become increasingly common at 1.5 degrees of warming, with the intensity and frequency of heatwaves, heavy precipitation and droughts escalating with every half degree beyond that. It is not hard to see how catastrophic a 5 degree increase by 2100 would be to life as we know it.
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UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that we’re in a “code red for humanity” and called for an end to fossil fuel production and exploration, along with a massive transition to renewable energy, to mitigate climate change. This transition will require a huge amount of investment from governments and the private sector at all levels.
In our fight against climate change, we need to make sure every dollar makes a difference. Unfortunately, fossil fuel subsidies—billions of dollars in special tax breaks to the fossil fuel industry—worsen, rather than solve, the climate crisis. This is because subsidies increase the amounts of fossil fuels we produce and greenhouse gases we emit, polluting our ocean and making virgin plastic cheaper, all while padding the profits of polluters. That’s not helping our ocean or Americans. All the while, taxpayers are spending billions each year to recover from climate disasters.
Over the next 10 years, the fossil fuel industry in the U.S. is set to receive nearly $120 billion dollars from these special tax breaks alone unless Congress and the Biden-Harris Administration takes action. There’s so much we could do with that taxpayer money to protect our ocean and communities and fight climate change:
Double existing funding to help build enough offshore wind to power 10 million homes: $5 billion.Offshore wind power is a key ocean-based climate solution that we need to invest in. The Biden-Harris Administration recently announced a goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, which could catalyze over $12 billion dollars in capital investment per year to advance the domestic supply chain. To accomplish the Biden-Harris goal, federal agencies including the Departments of the Interior, Energy and Commerce as well as state governments have already committed almost $5 billion in investments to jumpstart clean, renewable energy with the potential to eliminate 78 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and create almost 80,000 jobs.
Fix curbside recycling to cut our dependence on oil to make new plastics: $12 billion. The Recycling Partnership estimates that about $12 billion dollars of investment is needed to fix the U.S. curbside recycling system, making recycling widely available and accessible to the entire US population. Improving recycling is an important step in the needed transition away from using so much plastic.. Widespread recycling in the U.S. would reduce as much CO2 as taking 20 million cars off the road. Doing this is vital to protect the ocean and dependent communities from plastic pollution.
Funding for more than 650 projects to protect coastal communities against storms and sea level rise, absorb greenhouse gases and protect our fisheries: $10 billion. Coastal communities will be hit hard by climate change. Coastal States Organization has identified 650 shovel-ready coastal restoration projects that would create jobs and protect coastal communities and fisheries against the impacts of climate change. Ocean Conservancy is calling for $10 billion to fund these projects and continue to build coastal resilience across the U.S.
What You Can Do to Help
This is just a start. There is so much we can do to invest in the people, infrastructure and technologies that will help us solve the climate crisis. You can use your voice to protect the ocean and support climate solutions. Tell Congress to stop wasting our tax dollars on fossil fuel subsidies and instead invest in the fight against climate change.
There is no doubt that climate change is the single greatest threat facing our ocean. Now more than ever, we need to know how to talk about it with each other. Luckily there are experts who can teach us how to have these important and sometimes uncomfortable conversations. One of my favorites who’s helped inform my own thinking is Professor Katharine Hayhoe.
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Here are some helpful tips to consider when attempting to talk about climate. They will help you in conversations with your friends and family about the urgent impacts of climate change.
Identify a common value, interest, community or culture.
Many people who reject climate change have their own reasons for thinking that way. It can often be difficult to see eye-to-eye. You can help break down that barrier by connecting with them on a shared value, interest, community or culture.
For example, talk with them about your shared love of spending time with family at the beach. Then tell them how you support coastal restoration projects to make sure our beaches won’t wash away. Healthy coastal ecosystems will reduce the damage from sea level rise. By restoring them we’re not only protecting our beaches, but also fighting what’s causing our beaches to erode—climate change!
Find out how climate change impacts them or their community.
People are more willing to act on climate change solutions if they see and feel the effects of climate change at home. Try to find out where the person is from which is easy if they’re from the same community. Connect with them by talking about how climate change affects their specific community.
For example, if you’re talking with someone from your same town, discuss how much you both hate the pollution choking up your parks. Tell them that switching to renewable energy can reduce pollution from coal-fired power plants. This can clear up your favorite outdoor places and help our fight against climate change.
Talk about climate solutions that benefit things they care about.
Some people are often scared that solutions to climate change will come at the cost of things they care about or their ways of life. If this is true of the person you’re talking to, you can help provide information to remove that fear.
For example, let’s say the person you’re talking to values energy independence. Let them know wind and solar farms can power whole communities. This reduces our reliance on nonrenewable energy sources from foreign countries. Remind them that we are safer and more resilient when we can produce our own renewable energy.
Emphasize that advancing climate solutions does not take away from their current quality of life.
Many people have concerns that climate change policies will impact their current lifestyles. It’s true that a shift to more renewable energy resources and green infrastructure will come with inevitable change. But this change won’t severely affect our everyday lives and is necessary to build resilience. Allowing climate change to progress beyond our control will affect our lives.
If you’re a courageous advocate who wants to have a healthy discussion about the health of our planet, try out these tips. They will help you achieve the most productive conversation possible. While a single conversation may not solve climate change, gaining more consensus gives us the power to advance necessary solutions before it’s too late. So what are you waiting for? Have a conversation about climate change today!
This post was written by Maya Canonizado, Communications Intern at Ocean Conservancy, based in Los Angeles, CA. She is a recent graduate from University of Southern California with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a minor in Management Consulting.
Today’s guest blog comes from Dr. Chelsea Rochman, Assistant Professor at University of Toronto and Scientific Advisor to Ocean Conservancy.
COVID-19 kept me cooped up inside and out of the field for more than a year. I missed field research so much that I was THRILLED to spend my first few days back there. It was exhilarating to be on my knees in the mud scrubbing floats while it snowed on our heads. Yes, I was beyond excited to be back in the field. But, I was also excited to start the project I’d always dreamed about: using whole ecosystem science to research microplastics at the International Institute for Sustainable Development Experimental Lakes Area (IISD-ELA).
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IISD-ELA is one of the world’s most influential freshwater research facilities.
It includes a system of 58 lakes used for long-term ecological studies and manipulative whole-lake or in-lake limnocorral experiments. Over the last 50 years, ELA has provided science needs to address a range of environmental problems ranging from nutrient pollution, acid rain, emerging contaminants, climate change and fisheries. Ever wonder how we decided to take phosphorus out of detergents? The policy decision was informed by research at IISD-ELA that discovered phosphorus was a driver of harmful algal blooms.
Here, we are using IISD-ELA to better understand microplastic pollution. Microplastic pollution (small pieces of plastic waste <5mm in size) is ubiquitous globally. It contaminates all ecosystems, the air that we breathe, and is present in every level of the food web. Such widespread contamination, combined with evidence of risk, has led to a global policy movement to increase our understanding and prevent further emissions of microplastics. At IISD-ELA, we are working in freshwater systems—heavily impacted by anthropogenic stressors and urgently needing conservation action. Our long-term objective is to gain a better understanding of the physical and chemical fate of microplastics and how they impact aquatic ecosystems across all levels of biological organization, from molecules to ecosystems. Our work will span all trophic levels including bacteria, algae, macrophytes, zooplankton, macroinvertebrates, amphibians, fish and birds.
This research relies on an international and multidisciplinary team of scientists and practitioners.
Combined, we have a collective 88 years of experience researching plastic pollution and 91 years carrying out ecosystem-based research at IISD-ELA. Over the last six years, this team has collectively published >700 scientific papers, including 147 on microplastics. Ocean Conservancy serves as a key partner on this research, as investigating aquatic microplastic pollution informs science and policy in both freshwater and marine ecosystems.
Our research begins with a series of in-lake limnocorral experiments and aims to run a whole ecosystem experiment beginning in 2023.
Ultimately, we will fill key research gaps and provide critical evidence to inform policies aimed at mitigating microplastic pollution.
This summer, we began our first in-lake limnocorral experiment. What is that you ask? It’s basically the creation of nine small, self-contained lakes in the lake. Within each corral we have a small lake ecosystem. Within each mini lake, we can add different concentrations of microplastics to track the fate of the microplastics and their effects on a freshwater community. Results from this study will inform how different concentrations of microplastics affect aquatic ecosystems, informing governments of the concentrations that may trigger different management decisions in their local aquatic ecosystems. Management strategies may include monitoring, trapping litter with trash traps, regulating inputs upstream and/or seafood guidelines.
These valuable lakes in Canada provide critical information globally. They help conduct the most environmentally and ecologically relevant science to inform real-world positive change we can see, eat and enjoy.
Historical illustrations give us a glimpse into the scientific research of the past—and they can be very cool to look at!
We can view thousands of historical illustrations of marine life thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). The BHL is the largest open-access digital library for biodiversity archives. They work with libraries around the world to offer millions of books dating back to the 15th century for free. The library is not only an incredible source of data for scientists—it brings scientific art into the homes of people around the world.
Previously, we dug through the BHL archives to bring you some of our favorite ocean, shark, shell and cephalopod illustrations from the 18th and 19th centuries. Now, we’re bringing you our favorite cool and unusual illustrations of fish from the BHL!
The last sight you want to see when you visit Florida beaches is dead marine life. But, that is what is starting to happen more and more as this year’s red tide event is beginning. So far this summer, Pinellas County has collected more than 1500 tons of dead marine life found along St. Petersburg and the county’s beaches.
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Although red tide is a naturally occurring event, pollution and nutrients are making the red tide worse.
Red tides frequently form off Florida’s southwest coast and can spread to the Atlantic coast and up to the Panhandle. These events have devastating impacts on Florida’s people, animals and places.
Impacts of Florida’s red tides include:
Fish kills
Strandings of dolphins, manatees and sea turtles
Toxic waters
Unusable beaches
From suffering wildlife to severely contaminated coastal air quality, we’ve got to let our state legislature know how big a problem red tide really is for our ocean and coastal communities.
If you don’t live in Florida, you can still help. Florida’s manatees are suffering. Did you know that more manatees have died in 2021 than in any other year in Florida’s recorded history? You can take action to help Florida’s manatees.
This blog was written by Susie Goodell, Ocean Conservancy’s Communications intern for the Spring 2021 term and a member of the Dartmouth College Class of 2023, majoring in Environmental Studies. She is the Build Chair for the Dartmouth chapter of Habitat for Humanity and a scouting intern for the Dartmouth football team. Susie loves spending time on the coast of Maine with her dog.
The English Premier League Sustainability Table was created by CEO of Sport Positive Summit, Claire Poole, and her team at Sport Positive in the United Kingdom. This organization rates teams across the Premier League on actions taken in a variety of environmental categories. This year, Tottenham earned the top spot by getting cars off the road on match days, embracing clean and renewable energy and reducing single-use plastics. Those are only a few highlights; the entire body of work by the Club is like a great goal preceded by build-up play—a tiki-taka of environmental action if you will.
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What does it mean for our ocean?
We spoke with Poole and Spurs’ Head of Public Relations Tony Stevens to take a deeper look at the impact of this work and where it is headed in the future. Our focus is on some of the actions that are likely to have the biggest impact on our ocean. For a full listing of all of Spurs’ environmental actions, please check the Sport Positive Sustainability Table here.
Single-Use Plastics
Let’s start with plastics. Tottenham Stadium has eliminated plastic straws, stirrers, cutlery and all plastic disposable packaging that accompanies these items. These reductions mean a significant number of single-use plastic items are not entering the waste stream nor are they ending up in the ocean. Here are some highlights:
The Club has implemented a reusable beer cup scheme at its stadium where cups are collected after matches, taken off site to be washed and returned for further use. The cup supplier is U.K.-based
Plastic caps on the beer kegs sold to the stadium are saved and returned to the supplier for reuse.
New stadium contracts will include a requirement to cut single-use plastics.
These are important steps that Tottenham is taking that will help protect the ocean and the marine organisms that live there. Using fewer single-use plastic products that are damaging to the ocean is a critical part of the solution to plastic pollution. Tottenham is setting an example on a large stage that will inspire others to take similar action.
Tottenham is also making strides in the realm of sustainable transport, particularly on matchdays. Carbon emissions from transportation accelerate climate change and affect ocean health by increasing ocean acidification and driving rising seawater temperatures. The club is implementing measures to protect the ocean and reduce transportation emissions for both fans and staff members. Here are some examples:
The organization has been encouraging fans to cycle to matches, including adding bike racks at their facilities to promote the initiative. They are close to their goal of having at most 23% of fans—approximately 14,250 individuals—travelling to matches by private car. This is a major reduction: at the old stadium, an average 22,500 out of 36,000 fans travelled by private car.
Tottenham also created the “Cycle to Work” program with Cycle Solutions and added more bike racks at their offices to encourage staff members to commute using more sustainable transportation.
The Club has access to a fleet of electric Audi e-tron cars for daily business. There are also charging stations available across all Spurs sites.
Thousands of people flock to the stadium to watch the Spurs play, and initiatives like these reduce carbon emissions, particularly on matchdays. It is important that the club is actively working to lessen their environmental impact and, in the process, setting an example for other clubs to follow.
Waste Management
The Club has also made great progress in terms of waste management. Major sports events generate a lot of waste, so it is important that teams take steps to properly handle it and keep our ocean clean. Here are some steps that the club has taken to lesson waste:
Tottenham has adopted a zero-waste-to-landfill policy. This means that the club is working to reduce the amount of waste it sends to landfills.
The Club’s sites have both dry mixed recycling bins and general waste bins with instructions on which items fit in which bin. Dry mixed recycling bins are solely for empty plastic and glass bottles, empty cans, paper and small carboard pieces. The contents of these bins are taken to a Materials Recovery Facility in Edmonton, Enfield, where the waste is turned into quality, single-stream materials. These can then be sent to companies to be re-processed and reused.
Leftover food from events are given to charity for local food distribution.
It is encouraging to see groups such as Tottenham Hotspur prioritizing the planet and sending a message about what we can do to protect the environment. As the stadium gears up for a new season and major events, such as Lady Gaga’s tour, sustainability is more important than ever. Spurs have shown us why they are recognized as the English Premier League’s most sustainable club and continue to be an inspiration to other sports organizations around the world.
The ocean can be a tough place to live, but some pairs of ocean critters have evolved to help each other out. The ocean is full of examples of mutualism, which is when two species interact and both benefit from the relationship. Let’s celebrate some of these dynamic duos!
Read on to see how ocean organisms work together to survive and thrive.
Coral + zooxanthellae: Coral polyps get their vibrant colors from tiny algae called zooxanthellae. Corals get food from the algae, which photosynthesizes like plants do, in exchange for housing and protecting the algae in their hard calcium carbonate structures. When corals get stressed by things like pollution or high temperatures, they kick out the zooxanthellae, which results in coral bleaching. Learn more >>
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Cleaner wrasses + predator fish: Why would a little fish swim into the mouth of a predator? Because it’s a cleaner fish, of course. On coral reefs, large fish line up for “cleaning stations” where the wrasse removes parasites and dead tissue. The wrasse gets a meal, and the predator swims away healthier and happier. Learn more >>
Hawaiian bobtail squid + bacteria: Bobtail squid have a symbiotic relationship with a bioluminescent bacteria called Vibrio fischeri. The squid provides food for the bacteria it houses in a specialized light organ, and in turn, uses the bioluminescence for camouflage—the resulting blue-ish glow helps the squid blend in with the moonlit waters and avoid detection by predators. Learn more >>
These are just a few of the many mutualistic relationships in our ocean. Others include gobies and mantis shrimp; manta rays and remoras; hermit crabs and sea anemones; groupers with octopuses and moray eels; and the famous sea anemone and clownfish. All are unlikely pairs who have found a way to help each other out, whether by sharing food, providing shelter or more. I mean, wouldn’t you say that only a true friend would pick parasites off of you?
Like the best of friendships, sometimes the relationship between these ocean critters can go through ups and downs—these ocean mutualisms may ebb and flow in their benefit to the ocean animals within them.
Guest blogger Laura Reyes is the executive director of CEMPRE in Colombia. She utilizes her background as an Environment & Sanitary Engineer, as well as her MBA, to help build a sustainable future with leading companies. For more than 15 years, she has worked to create, test and implement circular business models for post-consumption waste. Laura is passionate about the circular economy, public policy, strategic management and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Every day, an estimated 15 million people around the world earn their living from items the rest of us toss away.
Earlier this year, Ocean Conservancy discussed informal sector waste collectors in Vietnam, highlighting their contributions to recycling and to preventing waste from flowing into our ocean. Now, we’re highlighting our engagement with informal sector waste collectors, or individuals who collect and sort plastic waste, in Colombia.
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Our hope is that by empowering these workers, we not only protect our ocean but also improve workers’ social and economic well-being—a triple win.
Ocean Conservancy, along with several Trash Free Seas Alliance members, identified Vietnam and Colombia as our two target countries. We then set about building a best-in-class partnership to maximize impact. On the ground, we joined with the Center for Environment and Community Research (CECR) in Vietnam and Compromisso Empresarial para Reciclagem (CEMPRE) in Colombia. We identified a coordinating partner, Inclusive Waste Recycling Consortium (iWrc), to provide CECR and CEMPRE with strong social support and a standardized process for training and reporting. And so ASPPIRe (Advancing Solutions to Plastic Pollution through Inclusive Recycling) was born.
While we plan to share more about our work in Vietnam in future posts, today we want to highlight our in-country partner CEMPRE Colombia and our coordinating partner iWrc. For over 15 years, iWrc has focused on uplifting those in the informal sector by creating opportunities to connect directly with businesses that care about the people in their supply chains. Along the way, iWrc built an operational model that could be replicated, as well as on-the-ground capacity using the SA8000 social standards which are based on internationally-recognized standards of decent work.
CEMPRE brings decades of experience working across Colombia towards implementation of a circular economy by developing projects that result in increasing material recovery, strengthening actors across the ecosystem and engaging in waste management public policy based on sound research and knowledge management. A non-profit led by women, CEMPRE is part of a larger umbrella group that has chapters throughout Latin America.
CEMPRE identified two cities for the ASPPIRe project where they could build on an ongoing initiative called RED RECICLO, (which is focused on packaging policy) and where local actors were interested in joining forces: Cartagena, a major city popular with tourists, and Buenaventura, a rural coastal city. Within these two cities, four cooperatives (organized groups of informal recyclers) agreed to develop and pilot new models to collect plastic waste that currently lacks end-markets in the recycling system—the types of plastics that are most likely to be found in our ocean. The pilot will also aim to align cooperatives with Colombia’s legal formalization path for recyclers, as many cooperatives are not yet fully compliant with government guidance—which will ultimately provide workers with better incomes and access to social services. ASPPIRe supports the path to government compliance through targeted social and professional trainings to improve the well-being of workers, utilizing the SA8000 standard mentioned above and supported by coordinating partner, iWrc.
As the partners started working on the project, CEMPRE suggested they work together on an activity with a community focus. On July 10th, dozens of volunteers from the area around Cartagena came together with 15 informal recyclers from the local waste cooperatives to cleanup local beaches and mangroves, collecting all types of materials and handing over anything that had value to the recyclers so that they could sell it back into the recycling system. In just a few hours, the group of more than 60 people collected 1.6 tons (or 3,200 pounds) of recyclable materials.
The group wore buttons that translate to “my job protects the ocean”—an inspiring reminder that informal waste collectors and recyclers in Colombia and around the world are providing a valuable service that contributes to waste management systems and protects our natural environment.
Another cleanup activity will take place in Buenaventura this fall with the same goal: to bring together the community, including local informal recyclers, to raise awareness and connect the dots between waste management and keeping our ocean free of plastic.
“Throughout the years, we have learned that working with those with whom we share a view of the future is the foundation to build on. We respect the place each actor has forged in the dynamics of the recycling industry over the years; thus, our goal is to join and empower them through the achievement of sustainable business models that result in the circularity of materials. Sustainable businesses are the basis of a balanced society, where economic and environmental development meet and guarantee social needs and goals,” said Laura Reyes, Executive Director at CEMPRE.
Michael Maggio, President of iWrc noted, “What we’ve learned is that the key to engaging the informal sector is a consistent process. Our model has always been to engage local partners in-country to perform the social assessments and build capacity; we have been very impressed with CEMPRE and their connection to the informal sector in Colombia. We have quickly built a strong relationship between our organizations, and together identified the potential for social improvements within the cooperatives. There is a tremendous opportunity for companies to engage and get involved in creating end-markets for the material being collected.”
We look forward to sharing further updates as the project gets underway, and in the meantime, let’s all think about how our job and our actions can protect our ocean.
On the shores of the Salish Sea where land and ocean meet, the animals and plants that live between the constant motion of the high and low tides are masters of life on the edge. Many are small but mighty, having adapted to the twice-daily challenge of being submerged in water and then exposed to the air for long periods. But even the secrets of their formidable success may not be enough as they face their latest and possibly greatest challenge: climate change.
Just recently, this sad and scary thought momentarily became a reality when a historic record-breaking heat wave hit the Pacific Northwest and Canada’s British Columbia coast in late June, killing as many as 1 billion marine animals in the intertidal zone. Scores of mussels, clams, barnacles, snails and sea stars died struggling to survive the extreme and unrelenting heat, literally cooked alive.
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According to a recent report from a team of international climate researchers, though higher temperatures in this region are not unusual during summer months, the perilous “heat dome” event that lasted five days in late June was not only extreme, but “would have been at least 150 times rarer without human-induced climate change.”
As a life-long resident in this region, I found it both alarming and bizarre how quickly the heat dome seemed to descend upon us and how unprepared and ill equipped even we humans are for such extreme heat events. This heat wave was linked to the deaths of hundreds of people throughout the Pacific Northwest, and I can’t help but wonder about the safety of some of the iconic touchstones of my childhood as well. Orcas, salmon and oysters are among the sentinels of environmental change in this area. And in some instances, they are helplessly bearing the brunt of our consumerism.
The Coast Salish people have stewarded the lands and waters in this area since time immemorial. The living creatures on our shores and in our waters have nourished Indigenous and colonial families and their descendants in the Pacific Northwest for generations, but their significance goes far beyond being just a source of food. From the humble barnacles, limpets, periwinkles, mollusks and anemones busying themselves along the intertidal shores to the mighty orca plying the swirling currents, a healthy Salish Sea is integrally linked to the survival and well-being of us all. We know, too, that respecting the natural world, telling its stories and recognizing its many gifts are cultural treasures that sustain us.
Unfortunately, now less than one month after the shellfish mass-mortality event in the Pacific Northwest, health advisories warn of record-breaking shellfish poisonings across Washington state, likely due to the heat dome priming the waters for shellfish-borne contagions. And across much of the Northwest and central United States, another series of heat waves are looming, threatening to set off who knows how many chain-reactions of adverse effects.
What are we to do?
Walking the nearby shores this week, some littered with dead mollusk shells, clams and mussels crunching under foot with barnacles baked on the rocks, the perils we face seem daunting. The big question arises: What are we to do? The mind reaches for “lessons learned,” pathways forward and “building back better,” but how much can we truly control?
At Ocean Conservancy we continue to rally around #OceanOptimism, the resolve that in order to protect the ocean from today’s greatest global challenges we need to have the courage to face daunting environmental threats head on and encourage governments, corporations and individuals to take action. As we continue to face the many challenges ahead, I chose to imagine that we will meet them with #OceanOptimism and offer these basic observations as a way forward.
We will get through this by working together. Overcoming the climate crisis will require all of us. We will need meaningful partnerships that bring together people, companies and policy makers to move the needle forward.
Crisis gives rise to innovation. We’ve seen accelerated leaps in innovation in stemming the spread of COVID-19, and so, too, will tackling climate change require innovative solutions.
We need bold leaders that we can trust to take on the climate crisis. Adding climate change to the policy agenda will require strong leadership that shows they are capable of real change and making decisions
Fish kills
