 as we wait for and use to filter. Okay, excellent. I think it's time to kick off the webinar. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Simon Clark. I am the EDU Community Programmes Coordinator, and welcome to a new EDU webinar series where we talk with a geoscience expert about hot topics or big concepts affecting the world today. Today I'll be discussing ocean plastic pollution with oceanographer Dr Delphine Lebel. After the discussion, it will be time for an audience Q&A. If we have a question, please enter it by clicking on the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen. We can also upvote questions and questions with the most votes, but we're more likely to be passed to the expert, although we will try and get through all questions. Yes, so let's begin. Hi Delphine. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So to kick us off, could you tell us a bit more about yourself, who you are, what your expertise in and how you got to where you are? Sure. So I am originally Belgian. When I was one, though, we moved to the UK. Then when I was nine, we moved to Africa and Asia. So that was during my school years. And then I've basically been living in Europe for most of my working years so far. I did my undergraduates at Warwick University in the UK in biological sciences. And then I moved to South Africa to Cape Town where my parents currently live to do my masters in applied marine science. And then my PhD, well, I took a small break, a two year break in Barcelona. I left academia for two years and came back when I went to do my PhD in Southampton. And there I was looking at the effects of climate change and the interconnection between climate and the oceans. And really trying to see how climate change can affect the ocean circulations and how, you know, this could in turn affect the weather patterns in Europe. And, you know, I've got to say that that's probably the first thing, you know, why I decided to make this change from biological sciences to more physical oceanography was really this global impact, right? So I'd moved around a lot since I was nine. I haven't lived in one country more than three years. And so I've really seen that, you know, there are these common, yeah, these commons like the atmosphere and the ocean that are really, you know, you can see there are global repercussions. And so I really wanted to look into something that had such a huge impact like climate change. And then I decided to shift my focus a little bit in this postdoc. So right now I'm in the Netherlands. I'm at Utrecht University. And I'm in a team called Topias and that stands for tracking of plastic in our seas. So I'm still looking at, you know, how the oceans move, but this way this time seeing how particles in the ocean can actually move with the circulation and where plastic can actually end up. So this is the goal of our project. It's a five year project that is a European Research Council grant. And this, you know, with the aim to really see where does the plastic end up in the ocean. And my specific work is on seeing how plastic can sink. So we're really trying to build this 3D model of not just what happens with surface plastic but also what happens once it goes, it goes down. So I'm looking at the algal attachments on the surface of little tiny pieces of plastic and seeing how that can actually cause it to either go down into the water column or go all the way down to the sea floor. And, you know, this is really important so that we really understand the full budget of where how much plastic is in each reservoir so that we can then, you know, relay this information back to stakeholders that are concerned about this whether it's fishes or whether it's, you know, people that are looking at where to clean up the plastic or politicians so you know this is there's there are a lot of impacts that can come out of out of this work. And I'm also working half time on another project that is a material flow analysis of Dutch plastic waste. So basically how much waste is plastic waste is generated. And how much of that waste is incinerated recycled, you know, managed properly, including exported to other countries and managed properly and then the remainder so what actually is lost to the plastic and again you know the this this kind of impacts on on the impact factor really drove me to be interested in these two projects right so seeing where the plastic ends up and how much of it is actually in the the environment. So I've been in, you know, a country such as the Netherlands which has very good waste management infrastructure and system so yeah this is, this is kind of a quick summary of my work my background and and why I'm interested in this work. You mentioned oceanography. It's almost like a broader look at interaction. When I was reading up an oceanography prior to this, there seemed to be a lot of different types. So, yeah, you see our physical notion of for but it seems to be more chemical, more chemical systems and such. So could you go a bit deeper into what is, and also what is a food for. Sure. So, so oceanography is, you know, we basically are just trying to understand how water moves in the ocean. And from that you can really apply that to many different things so the water transports lots of particles right whether it's heat, which is important for climate change, whether it's nutrients that's important for the application to the biogeochemical cycle and so basically you know this is where it becomes more bio physical and biogeochemical oceanographer, trying to understand where these, you know, these particles end up. Or even, you know, salt freshwater so it's really seeing how the transport is, what is driving the transport, and how it's how that water is moving and what the impacts of that movements actually are. And there are kind of two different types of oceanographers while I would maybe say three because there are two types and then you can have the blend of those two types. So the first is an observation list so it's people that go out into the ocean on a cruise ship, you know, a cruise ship being in the science world being that you go out and take samples it's not not a holiday, but it's very fun. So yeah so you go out to the ocean you take your samples and you use that data to analyze and to try to understand the movement of the water. And then there are modelers who are using simulations since you know it's really hard to have a global coverage of what is happening in the oceans right so even though, you know, the, a lot of estimations can be made from when you're taking samples. If you want to have kind of a global understanding then we have these these simulations these global models where we can estimate you know what's where the currents are going and you know have the atmosphere ocean interactions in there and there are lots of these models are getting, you know, more and more precise as time goes by so the you know basically the resolution can get finer and finer so you can start to really look at, you know, if there are fine fine scale details like mixing and all these kind of things that are that are becoming a very hot topic right now because we really see that these these small features can actually impact on the large scale too. So, so yeah so in my in my PhD for example I did a bit of both so that's why where the third category comes in worth, you know, an oceanographer that that uses some of the data that's taken from from the ocean. And the models and tries to you know validate models or tries to see comparisons between the observations and and the models. For example, I, I went on on a cruise from Tenerife to the Bahamas during my PhD. So it was a six week cruise and and they basically have these really long moorings, which is one long cable that goes down to the bottom of the ocean. And they have different sensors along this this cable and they can make estimations of how the water is how fast it's flowing. Basically, yeah. Okay, so I think you mentioned looking at small interactions didn't do bigger impacts in bigger processes. Perhaps that could be nice segue into plastic interactions. Yeah, so the key issue here is plastic pollution. Yeah, it's a big topic in science at the moment in geoscience. And of course it's an area of your expertise. So let's get right down into the problem. How much plastic is there in that ocean. Is that something we can quantify is a scale we can add to that issue at all. It is a very good question and it seems like it is a very obvious one that it is actually extremely hard to answer. And so I've actually done a little bit of digging into, you know, the best estimates that we have what knowledge we actually, you know, can say yes this is this is the closest to what we would you know we think that it is, and then try to estimate for you you know how much plastic is in the whole ocean because as you can imagine. It's such it's impossible to actually go out and collect all the plastic and see how much it is right so we cannot go and sample that so we have to make estimations. So, bear with me I'm going to go through a few numbers to those who do not like numbers you can just wait until the end and I'll give a very easy comparison to something that you can relate to but I'm going to give you an explanation right now of the plastic that enters the ocean in one year. So this is based off a 2010 model that was from Jambic at our 2015. It's one of the most cited references for this right now. And they estimated that between 1.15 and 12.7 million tons of plastic enters every year. So to try to get some perspective on that it's between 0.4 and 4% of the global plastic production in one year. So you might when you're asking about scale, you know, is this a big number is it not, you know, 4% might seem like very little, but that's equivalent to between 0.23 and 2.54 million elephants every year. Two and a half million elephants max. And then when we try to use that estimate to see okay how much plastic is in the whole ocean then we have to go back to 1950 so that's when mass production of plastics started. And since then until now the total production of plastic is 7.8 billion tons. And if we assume that you know let's take the lowest estimate of this 0.4% of how much is produced ends up in the ocean right per year. So let's say that then 0.4% of this 7.8 billion tons is around 30 million tons. So that is how much plastic if we use all of these rough estimates and you know we we take the best estimates that we have currently, then it's around 30 million tons. And if that doesn't say very much to you one reference that I can give you is that in 2018 there was a study that was made to try to estimate the total weight of all humans on earth. And all humans on earth roughly weighed about 60 million tons. So, you know, with these estimations and everything, the amount of plastic the total amount of plastic in the ocean currently is about approximately half of the total weight of all humans on the planet. You say there's a lot of ways to find measure plastic in the ocean. But does that mean we're potentially missing more plastic that could be out there. So, you know, these these estimates so this model was taken from basically the mismanaged waste that's within a 50 kilometer radius, 50 kilometers from the coast. And so this is, you know, saying that and it's taking population numbers around the coastlines. So, you know, this could be an overestimation so actually in the jump back model it was between five and 12 or 13 million tons. And I brought it down to this 1.15 because of the fact that there are new studies that are coming out that are saying, overestimation because not all of, you know, the plastic that's mismanaged close to the coast will end up into the ocean. You know, let's let's look a bit closer at the actual samples that you can take from the rivers. So that's where, you know, this this number has has gone down a little bit. And it's, it's still, I think it's something that definitely still needs to be, you know, developed further and, and a lot more samples need to be taken and, and yeah, at some points later and I'll show you, you know, they've, you know, one of the latest studies has has just come out. I think it was last week in nature and showing that you know they they did. They took 12 million litter pieces and tried to classify them and understand how much plastic is in each of the different in the rivers and the oceans and and the beaches so. Yeah, I'm sure I'll bring it up at some point. And you mentioned lettering. And from just not observer, like the beach seems to be like a major focus of, like, waste, at least, especially plastic, but also actual waste as well from like this random garbage to so great but so much, but is, is that a major source of pollution in the ocean or is it more from, more from rivers as never so as you mentioned, where, where's all this plastic. Yeah, so whether it's coming from, you know, the beaches itself or from rivers is quite hard to determine what we have as the best estimates is that 70 to 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land based sources so this can include the beaches and the rivers and you know, and, and there are some this this means that the rest so the 20 to 30% is coming from fishing gear. So from ropes and from lines and even from, you know, discarded ships themselves, and this is, you know, this has been one of the questions and I think a lot of people have been asking, you know, like how much is actually coming from from land and how much is coming from the ocean itself. And there are also some regions where this amounts that comes from the fishing can be bigger can be a larger amount so for example in the North Pacific, you know there's this really large, what what is called in the media the great Pacific garbage patch. It's a big subtrapable jar if you're looking more in a scientific point of view. And that for example there's a lot of fishing activity it's it's very intensive fishing region. And so up to half of the total plastic is has been seen to come from fishing gear. So half from the land and half from from fishing gear. Yeah, but so so the question about beaches or rivers is a really hard one to get to but you know if we if we do look just at the rivers, then the, yeah, the latest research shows that 1600 rivers in the world. have the 80% of the the ocean plastic that comes from from rivers is from these this 1600 rivers. And so, you know, this is, this is quite, I think in the past it's, it was estimated that it was, you know, first it was about six rivers that it was about 100 and now we've seen that quite a lot of rivers that make up this 80% of ocean plastic. Or that comes from the rivers I mean so you know this is this is really something that is quite new because we now need to focus on some of the smaller rivers to know they do have a big impact and actually around 80% of these rivers are in Asia. There's one third of them are in the Philippines. So if these really high impact, you know, lots of plastic that's coming out and you know it's really important to say at this stage that the reason why there is so much plastic that's that's coming out from from these areas is really about 60% of the total population of the world is in Asia. So that's one reason that the other reason is that they just they don't have the the waste management facilities in place always to deal with, you know, to manage their waste and there's a lot of people who are exporting from high income countries, you know, exporting plastic waste to these low income countries so there are lots of, yeah, we can't just, you know, point the finger and blame because there are lots of things that need to be improved in order to, you know, to prevent this from happening. So any solution will really require some kind of international collaboration, at least. So I'm going to put a little pin into that question because I want to return to that. But just as we're talking about plastic sources. So one of the questions I was asked a couple of times when I mentioned I was going to discuss a solution with an expert was the question of plastic drawers. Big media focus them around 2015 2016 and most people are quite familiar with the video of the straw stuck up a turtle's nostril. Does that deserve all attention is that something we should be focused on these plastic drawers which are definitely seem like a alum based that the source. Yeah, so it's, it's a very good question and I'm going to answer it in two different ways right so firstly the scientific standpoint if we look at just the numbers and see you know how many straws. If we compare it to other plastic products how many stores are actually in the environment. And when you see it that way it really seems like a very small problem. Right, because the amounts of the percentage of plastic debris that is in rivers and that's in coastal regions. And on the beaches for example like in the shore on the shorelines is 5% or even less. And then when you want to go into the open ocean and you look at the sea floor for example on the river bed, then it's not even in the top 10 cast grays of plastic waste and whereas if you look at all of the take out food. Yeah, products so this is ranges from plastic bags to plastic containers, you know food containers to wrapping to plastic wrappers to wash bottles and you know sort of soda bottles. And all of those ones make up almost 50% in all of these different regions right in the rivers and on the coast and the open ocean. So, you know it, there is definitely. If you want to look at the one that has the most impacts straws don't have, don't end up in the environment as much as other products. And then I, you know, I would, I'd like to also say that it's, it's almost like a symbol for change right like it's something that caught people's attention. And, you know, say you're a consumer or you know you're you own a cafe restaurant, and you start finding alternatives to straws plastic straws right so you can have metal straws or you know they even have pasta straws or something. If you don't need it. Then, you know there's there's really this, this kind of shift in consciousness and and an awareness that you don't have to have plastic for all these products right and so it really starts making people think about okay what else, you know what's the next step, you know and and it's it's almost this, this starts, I think it's it was a great easy solution and a great starts to this this kind of understanding of plastic not being a necessity for everything. So yeah, so I think there's kind of a scientific point of view and then the social science kind of point of view. So, perhaps thought the, the biggest impact on oceanic plastic pollution compared to others, but otherwise a great rallying point for environmental change or environmental awareness around pollution. So, although of course something to mention is that when it comes to consumer decision, it can be a bit more complex at an individual basis. Disabled people, plastic straws are necessary as they're bendy, they don't disintegrate can be made sterile and generally used about will help people not to ask for it. Yeah, so a good rallying point, although perhaps the next step to use to kind of push on more, more common plastics if I don't know, maybe. I think that co leads on to another point really is, well, what are these common plastics of a mostly large of a small of a micro plastics, what even is a micro plastic. Yeah, so so it's definitely the smallest pieces are the most commonly abundant in the ocean and that's really because of this fragmentation process right so you have one large piece of plastic, and that can fragment into millions of tiny pieces. And this is, you know, it's, it's a logarithmic increase so as you basically go smaller to smaller pieces, then, or smaller sizes sorry, you have many more. Yeah, many more abundance and more social amount of those. So to give you an example one study showed that in the North Pacific subtrapical Jaya. The pieces that were between point zero five and point five centimeters accounted for 94% of all the items that were found floating in that area. So really, you know, kind of think grain of rice size and a little bit smaller than that. So that's really what ends ends. And when you kind of think about where, where this this this plastic actually. Yeah, where where it kind of ends up so, so the fact that plastic is entering the ocean as one item, maybe, right. And then due to the fact that it stays close to the coastlines. A lot. So this is, yeah, this is kind of going into a bit, a bit more of, you know where the plastic ends up and everything but basically, if it stays close to the coastlines then it is a lot more. There's a lot more chance that it is affected by the sunlight so UV radiation, which can cause fragmentation. Then the wind and the waves so that's this this crashing, you know, and basically the physical degradation of the plastic due to the fact that it's being bashed against the sea floor and against the rocks and sand. And then there's oxidation, there are many ways in which this, this plastic can become more brittle and and break down into into smaller pieces. And this whole idea of, you know, nano plastic micro plastic and micro plastic so our team is actually trying to move away from this classification because they've, there are very arbitrary values that have been used to classify this this plastic right. So a lot of studies and politicians are using a five millimeter cutoff point for anything larger than that it's a macro plastic anything smaller is micro plastic and then there's another one for nano plastic. And it's not like as if, you know, the the properties or basically the behavior of plastic that is 5.5 millimeters and 4.5 is very different right. So it's not. Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't. There's no scientific reasoning for classifying it that way it's just kind of a random kind of point so we actually in our team we prefer to say, you know, to give the item its actual name whatever the item is when it is a wonderful piece, and then just to say that it's fragments right and give the actual size. So yeah, that's I think that's that's the answer to what micro plastic is because it's, it's been a randomly chosen, you know, size category of fragments of a larger piece of plastic. Yeah, and I think maybe one last thing to add here is, you know, and that's actually linked quite closely to the work that I'm doing in my postdoc is, you know, you asked whether this, you know, what what is the most commonly found, you know, particle and I said that a lot more of the smaller particles, smaller pieces of plastic should be found than the larger pieces right. Whereas if we go out to the ocean and we collect a sample at the surface of the water. There are a lot fewer of the very small pieces than we would expect. So if we do, you know, we try to draw a line and we see okay with in this size class we should have this amount of plastic. And we actually don't see that and the reason for this is both a physical and a biological reason so physically, there's a lot of mixing at the surface so a lot of wind and so this causes these tiny particles to be very easily mixed in the surface waters. And secondly, this algo attachment that I was explaining about it can, it's a lot easier for small particles to sink due to an increase in density when you know you just need a very small amount of algae to basically increase its density and to make it sink. Whereas for a larger particle you really need a lot of colonization of algae to make it start sinking. So yeah, it's there are kind of a lot of ways to answer that you know whether it's found depends on if you're thinking about the toes or amount of plastic that's in the ocean. Or yeah, what's on the surface. So I think two thoughts that came to me when you were discussing that as firstly run a classification of, I suppose microclass plastics if I want to continue using that term is it's really less like the size is important, but at the same time, the iron dollar product is also important. So, and the classification of size micro plastic. I've ignored that other side of it. Is that correct. You mentioned, you often look at the products and say what it is in the state it's documented. So is there other things to consider as well more than just the size. Well, so this this study that I was mentioning that just took these 20 million items of litter in the rivers in the on the shorelines, and it was really a global study so you know they really focused on the items. And maybe I can share my screen and I show you know just one of the figures, so that you can, you can see you know what I mean about this. This classification. So, can you see my screen. Yeah, I can see. Yeah, so here they really looked at, oh sorry. At the top 10 litter items I think since I've zoomed in it might be a bit blurry but you can really see that you know in the river waters for example they looked at. So, that there's food containers is found 35 or 36% of the time in rivers and bags 16% in the shoreline and anything that's read as plastic. So you can really see that, you know, in the majority of the, all of these locations, they really found plastic and they kind of related it to take out consumer plastic so it's, you know, plastic from plastic bottles to all the way through to you know straws are in there and and food containers and cutlery so you know there are, there are definitely studies that are now trying to to look into this. And, yeah, I just in case anyone is interested in more looking into this this paper a bit more. It was really just published very recently. And it's by Morales Gasez. So yeah, I think, I think these kind of studies are really, you know, really interesting to to really look at what's what products are other. Yeah. So up to date, scientific graphics. I love that. Yeah, so you discussed about small plastic sinking and perhaps larger plastics being able to separate of the ocean. So are like most smaller plastics ending up in the ocean sediment them and are very more likely to be caught by these guys, as you say, like where's this always a lot of plastic ending up. So that question is really, you know, the goal of our whole projects of our whole team. And each team member is really looking at a different process right so I mentioned that I'm looking at this algo attachment and seeing how it can cause the sinking. Someone else is looking at the beaching someone else is looking at, you know how it fragments so we're really hopefully you know maybe by the end of next year we'll have a paper out that really puts all of these different pieces of the project together and we have one global understanding with the best, you know, the closest estimations and the best knowledge that we have to date about all of these these processes into one one model. And, you know, I, it's probably important to mention at this stage that really trying to understand it by just looking at samples is is really hard because right like 70% of the surface is the ocean. And it can reach depths down to 11 kilometers, you know, in the the Mariana trench, for example, and plastic has really been found in all of the locations around the world. So, from the Arctic and Antarctic to the bottom of the Mariana trench actually. Yeah, that was US explorer Victor Viscovo who actually found, found plastic there. So, you know, it's, it's something where we really need to look at models to try to, you know, we can look at observations but try to try to get an idea of where the plastic is going with. We use models in our group, and we use this Lagrangian particle tracking software which is basically where you, you track a particle as it's moving in the currents so you provide the currents to your simulations. And then you try to track whether the particles are going. And so we have a few, you know, there are a few things that we do know so. There's a large scale circulation and you know those due to the winds and the rotation of the earth, then these gyres can be formed and so what a gyres is almost like a massive whirlpool that covers the whole of the, the North Pacific, the South Pacific, North Atlantic South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean so there are five of these subtropical gyres. And a lot of the plastic actually accumulates in these regions due to the fact that these, you know, these whirlpools are bringing the, all of the material that it's carrying with it in the waters to the center of these gyres. Then there are also some other areas where you have maybe semi enclosed spaces, for example in the Mediterranean, and it's been shown that in the Mediterranean. There is the same amounts of plastic so the same concentration of plastic than the entire North Pacific. So you know this is really, this is where a lot of plastic can accumulate also. And so, Eric Sansebill, who is my boss and who has been working on this so he's the one who really designed this particle tracking software and he's been working on this for, you know, for a really long time. And who in 2015 the whole kind of reason for looking into where the plastic actually ends up is because his model showed that the, well, they published a paper, him and his co-authors in 2015, showing that's only about 1% of this plastic that enters the ocean every year. Only 1% of it is actually at the surface. So this was the real question. Okay, if anyone percent is at the surface, then where is the rest going, right? And so, one of the PhD students in our team, Victor Owning, who published a paper this year, was really looking at, okay, if we release, if we use the jambeck model which was this model of in 2015 that I mentioned at the beginning which is, you know, estimating how much plastic that enters the ocean. So if you release that from the coastal regions, then how much of that actually ends up on the beaches. And so, from in the kind of coastal waters which is up to 10 kilometers offshore, 77% of the particles actually ended up on in this coastal region. And that really shows that, you know, even if the plastic is entering from the lands, you know, mainly, which we saw it was 70% to 80%, then of that, that plastic that is entering from the land. Most of it is actually staying close to the coastal regions and could, you know, end up on the beaches. And so we really see that there's this kind of movement of plastic that goes into the open ocean or into the coastal regions and then can go back onto the beaches, right, with tides and with waves and everything. So that was a really kind of key finding. And that therefore means that around 25% of it could be affected by, you know, biofiling and what I'm looking into, which is seeing how the plastic sinks. And we're actually seeing, you know, it's where we're going to publish our results in the next, the next couple of months, hopefully. But we're seeing that there are some regions where you can get these this accumulation of plastic that stays at kind of mutually buoyant assessment depth. And due to the fact that you've basically got biological and physical processes that are just keeping it in equilibrium, and it just stays at an assessment depth right so that can happen but you know there are a lot of observations that have shown that plastic can end up at the sea floor so there is still you know there's still some some kind of missing links that we need to need to look into. So that's that's basically what our team has kind of seen so far. So one of the main things I got from that is over the last, what just more than half a century. Plastic pollution we've generated has has become exactly pervasive on the bottom of the ocean to the Arctic, which is scary. I suppose, I think, as we start to run up, so I think one of the key questions that remains is that's been the last 60 years or so worth of major plastic pollution. Do we know what the future plastic. There's some some models on on this so firstly the Janbeck model that was this 2015 model. They had, you know predicted that there could be an increase by 10 times between 2010 and 2025. So for just a 15 year period, they predicted that the total amount of plastic in the ocean could increase by 10. A study that's that that was. Yeah, that was published last year actually allowed out 2020. They have been looking at all aquatic environments so not just the oceans but also the rivers and the lakes. And if no action is taken so if we keep producing and consuming plastic in the same way as today and which is predicted to increase. The total. Yeah that basically that the plastic litter from land to these aquatic systems could almost triple by 2040. So this is kind of, yeah, this is the trend that we're we're seeing if we can, we do not try to reduce the consumption reduce the production. Yeah, I think I think there is, you know, a shift towards policy changes and you know decision makers policy makers, they all, no one wants to have this plastic in the environment right I don't think there's any politician who says well, it's fine with me. You know, so I think there's, there's, there is no debate on the fact that this, this is atrocious behavior and that we should, you know, we shouldn't be continuing this right. Depending on the way in which the political decisions go, then knowing what items actually end up in the ocean will be affected by this right so if for example now in the EU there's this single use plastic ban that is being enforced put into place next from next month, and they will have these goals for by 2025, you know, 25% of. So, there are some things in place that are, you know, that are going to change how much plastic can be produced basically. And depending on that, we will then see a shift maybe to, you know, more plastic that is actually coming from textiles or from, you know, construction work so maybe the shift would then be to reduce that production right so I think it's it's going to be a stepwise change in what happens and with future plastic in the oceans, yeah. One final question for me before I move on to you question sent in sent in to me by the audience. And that is, if there's one key message you'd like people to take away from this. Regarding plastic pollution as your position as a photographer, what would that be. Prevention is key right so we really need to turn off the tap at the source, I think that a lot of people are focusing on quick fixes which is very good for you know cleaning what is there for example so beach cleanups, whether yeah whether it's beach cleanups, litter booms that are in the rivers to prevent the plastic from from reaching the oceans. You know whether it's, it's trying that basically what I what I'm trying to say is that, you know, the, the actual reduction of production and consumption is, is really what's, what's necessary, right. And whether that means that you know we we actually dispose, there's proper disposal of the plastic, right so what whatever is produced by plastic because one of the key things to to say is that plastic is a really incredible material right since it since the 1950s it's really been this, this revolutionary change to so many things it's it's helped in so many, so many, so many ways. And so it's, it's not like we want to live our lives without this, you know, without this this material but we can find alternatives, and wherever we can we don't need to, to use it right so. Yeah, it's it's reduction. It's correct disposal and I think yeah one of the key ones there is is that businesses should have this extended producer responsibility where it's, you know, they actually take responsibility for whatever products they are producing even if they send they're exporting it you know to actually go and and make sure that in those areas they have the proper facilities to dispose of it and if not then to bring it back, you know. So yeah but it's it's really preventing the plastic from ever reaching the the oceans. Sure. Excellent. Thanks for thinking through my questions and answering them so thoroughly. I want to move on to some questions that I've been sent in to me for. So let's kind of correctly go through them before we wrap things up. The first one I have is what can the average person do to help. We already mentioned, we really need to stem exchange from businesses but as a something individual can do also. Yeah. Yeah, so I definitely think that there's this kind of. We can look at this as both a top down and bottom up approach to solve this this issue right so when it comes to the top down. If we actually as as citizens vote for politicians that take it seriously and understand the urgency of this this issue, along with other ones right and I have to say that it's also, you know, we're talking about plastic pollution today but climate pollution is really the big monster right so it's it's voting politicians who see all environmental threats to the environment basically as as urgent. And also there's, you know, some of the the advice that's that's given is you can write a letter or you can call your, your local politicians or your municipality but you know it takes a lot of effort. So there are a lot of groups out there who are already doing all that work and they're writing the letters and all you have to do is just sign the petition right and sometimes these petitions really get a lot of traction and and can can do a lot. Yeah, have a have a big impact. So it's, and I'm, you know, I'm not here to endorse any particular one so you know you can do your research and see which ones really cool to you the most. But you know that's that's something else that you can do and then it's really almost kind of doing small changes in your life that is, I've almost seen it as for me it's kind of gamification so if you have the financial means right so I'm not saying that this is for everyone and I know that they can do this but if you have the financial means to try to like take a few items and see and see if you can change it to something that is without plastic right whether this is going out to the if you go to the supermarket, you you know you take all of your loose fruits and veg and you can use you know a paper reusable paper bag for example. I know in the UK it's you know having your own reusable bag and reusable bottle and mug is a very kind of more common thing that I've seen here in the Netherlands for example it's not as common so you know really making this part of your routine so as soon as you go out of the door you have your those three items always would be so that you know and and then you know for example it's this whole. Yes smaller items of plastic within one big so like a crisp packet for example like six small packets within one large one and you know if you just buy in bulk so you buy one big plastic bag if you have to buy plastic I mean. And then you know have Tupperware so it doesn't doesn't get stale you know Tupperware is an incredible incredible invention right like cling film what do we need it if you have Tupperware you can put can keep your your food fresh that way right. And so it's just little things and and you'll see that you know then it kind of becomes natural to go on to the next step and it doesn't doesn't seem like an efforts because you know it's becoming part of your routine and it's yeah it's almost almost like a game so yeah that's something that I've personally placed into into my life and then I think just talking about it right so normalizing the fact that this is something that should be talked about and that you know you everyone has that that kind of. That awkward conversation maybe with the family and you know you have someone that's in your family that's set in their ways and just trying to you know talk them through it and show them what little things that they can do right because. I do think that behavioral change is you know is is also we have to think about all the stakeholders that are part of this that can be part of the solution we all have to play our roles right. Even if the politicians have can have the most impact by changing laws and you know incentivizing businesses and people by having you know carrot stick type of you know and whenever there's any financial. Either incentive or punishment you know people act faster but I do still think that it can come from each person to I think it's it's really top down and bottom up yeah. So this is this is actually one of the most common misconceptions and misunderstandings. So I think you know through the media and everything there's been some images of these very concentrated areas of plastic but that can happen really very very rarely on you know it's maybe a very small scale and it's one feature because of some wins and whatever but really in the. This North Pacific region. It's more of a plastic soup. And as you have seen you know from from what I said there's a lot more of the smaller pieces than the larger pieces right so on average it's actually only about one piece of plastic per meter square. In the the Great Pacific garbage patch so definitely cannot walk on it or put a flag on it or anything it's like not an island at all yeah. So, so this is, yeah, I think I think it's it's important to know that if you you could even be in the middle of it and maybe not see plastic for a few kilometers right. Yeah. So we're actually very quickly running out of time. Before I do this one last question is where can we find out more information or further information on the race today. More information on on our research and on on the topic. Yeah so um yeah firstly we have our team has Twitter account if you want to follow that sits called you follow the ocean. We can add you with a capital you, we can add it in the chat if you would like. You can also follow me on Twitter I'm doffing at doffing the bell. And then there are also. So I recently found this. Yeah this this basically it's it's called our world in data. It's, it's a website where they synthesize lots of information about plastic. It's about any scientific data and really give you the key points and you know what we know so far and the closest estimates so that's another link that that I can send through to you. And, but yeah I thought that that was it was a really great great place for me to you know start getting my my thoughts together for example for this for this webinar because it really highlights a lot of the key key points. Yeah, so there's a three three different places for more information can be found. Excellent. Thank you. Right. We're just about our time. So I'm going to now close the webinar. So firstly, thank you for spending time with us today and explaining ocean plastic pollution from your perspective as an expert. I would like to thank the audience today and everyone who sent in their questions beforehand. So I can get for all of them. But thanks everyone has participated before. And with that I like to close the webinar and thank you for attending. Bye bye.