 Well, hello everybody and thanks for joining us for Hydrotera's webinar series. Today we're continuing the theme about plastics, you'll recall a couple of weeks ago we had a really interesting talk on plastics in soil and out of that it became apparent that there was a lot of interest in this problem and so today we're joined by Ricky Herzberg who's Executive Director of Plastic Oceans Australasia and he's going to talk to us about plastic or things plastic but in particular the oceans and I will get into the detail of that shortly. All right, so I've introduced Ricky a little bit about Ricky as Executive Director of Plastic Oceans Australasia, Ricky has been instrumental in building the POA Foundation by inspiring people from all walks of life to join this determined cause. The past five years Ricky has forged positive change by creating a community collective worldwide starting her plastics journey as a teenager working with her family's plastic recycling business. She has devoted her career to drive systemic change in the corporate community, government and not-for-profit sectors. Ricky has a diverse professional background from delivering environmental education programs such as the Asia Pacific Healthy Oceans Campaign for Schools, Women on the Waves movement in British Columbia, Canada to environmental accreditation platforms for the development industry in Australia to name just a few. Along with other senior positions with World Wildlife Foundation, Greening Australia and Hilton International Hotels Group, Ricky studied at Hong Kong Polytechnic, Melbourne Business School and University of Victoria holding various degrees in marketing tourism business and plastic manufacturing. It's great to have someone on who's actually dealing with the problem, not just observing it. So thanks very much for joining us today, Ricky. Before we charge into the webinar, just a bit of administration. So for questions and you know we love our Q&A section of these webinars, please use that Q&A button and type your questions in there and we will do our best to answer them in this session. I'd suggest lodge them early. It's the last few sessions. We've had to go considerably over time and some of those people at the end of the lists didn't get their questions answered so I encourage you to put those questions up early. Why does HydroTerror undertake these webinars? Well, we're keen to share knowledge of people who have a similar passion to ourselves about environmental monitoring and also environmental management. We see ourselves having to facilitate education and we like to take a bit of a leadership position helping to raise awareness of organisations like the one today. All right, now the actual program for today. Ricky's going to talk to us about the story of plastic. We're going to start with a short video about the problems of plastic in the ocean. And just bear with us as we share screens. There could be a couple of technical challenges there. So there'll be a short video there and then we're going to talk about the story of plastic. What is plastic? The good, the bad, the ugly? Current efforts and initiatives to clear around recycling, plastic bans and the circular economy. Then we're going to have a bit of a look at food waste and plastic packaging, including the national packaging targets, progress and packaging innovation. And then we're going to have a bit of a look at Ricky's organisation and the various programs that they're working on. So without further ado, I will hand over to Ricky and we will share this short video. Our love of the ocean goes back eons. Our love of plastic, just decades. Whilst the ocean gave us the gift of life, we turned our backs and treated it with neglect. Today our love affair with plastic is everywhere to see. But the consequences of our addiction are largely unknown. The Plastic Oceans Foundation has commissioned free diver Tanya Streeter and documentary filmmaker Craig Leeson to investigate plastic pollution in the world's oceans. This film reveals their shocking discoveries. Plastic is indestructible. We are now producing nearly 300 million tons every year, more than the combined weight of all the adult humans on the planet. Half of this plastic we use just once and throw away. We've treated the ocean as a place to dispose of things that we did not want close to where we thought we lived. Actually, the whole planet is where we live. Plastic is a blessing, but it's also a curse. It doesn't go away, it just stays and stays for decades, even centuries. Our explorers begin their quest by joining key scientific expeditions around the world. They learn how plastic causes internal damage to marine life, agonizing and often fatal. Although indestructible, plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces. When mixed with plankton, the base of the food chain, it is consumed in ignores. Every surface trawl contains plastic, and at the centers of the oceans, this plastic outnumbers plankton. While nearly half of plastic floats, the rest sinks. So what deadly threats are found lurking in the depths? What I'm interested in is when we arbitrarily plop ourselves on a flat bottom in the middle of the med, is there anything but an abyssal plane? We're going to see bottles, plastic cans, you know, big containers of God knows what. I don't know. Mike prepares for a deep dive of the French port of Marseille. We came upon a pretty flat abyssal plane, very filthy, very flat, and now we're starting to see a plastic bottle exactly. Now starting to see more and more plastic. We know so little about the deep ocean and the creatures that live there, but scientists now believe no part of its domain is untouched by the scourge of plastic. Plastic in the deep might be out of sight, out of mind, but pieces of plastic on the surface are far too tempting to ignore. Sea birds are the canaries of our oceans and the first indicators of the ocean's health. The sheer water birds that breed here on Lord Howe Island, the World Heritage Site, are in dire trouble. Sea bird biologist Dr Jennifer Lavers has dedicated her life to study them, and every visit to the island brings more and more alarming revelations. We collected something like 10 dead birds that morning. It was extremely depressing. Oh, look at that. Absolutely no doubt this bird died as a result of that plastic. That is literally a gut full of plastic. It's quite alarming, isn't it? Stomach's just fuelled with it, big pieces too. Unbelievable. That plastic when we weighed it out accounted for 15% of that bird's body mass. If we translate that into human terms, that would be equivalent to you and I having somewhere around six or eight kilos of plastic inside of your stomach. But it's not only wildlife that's affected. Developing countries have few or no facilities to deal with plastic waste. Much of the population is forced to live among the debris of their daily lives. How much waste, plastic waste, is put into the waterways here? Do you have any idea? Around 1500 tons. 1,500 tons every day, yes. Do you all live here? So what do you do during your day? Scavenger work. Scavenger, what do you scavenge for? Plastic. And what do you do with the plastic? Go to the... And what do they give you for the plastic? Money. Our throwaway lifestyles are on the increase. Are these scenes an indication of what the future might hold for all of us? By the year 2050, as global populations increase, plastic production is expected to double, even triple. The frightening truth is no one even dares predict the numbers. In Germany, all packaging has been recovered since 1991. This voluntary initiative, the Green Dot System, eliminates plastic waste from the environment, and nothing goes to landfill. Many countries in Europe now have progressive recycling schemes. Customers receive cashback on return bottles, and bottles are automatically sorted into their materials of origin. Plastic is then converted back into pre-production pallets to make new plastic products. When plastic reaches the ocean, the problem is more than just waste. And this is the most insidious and terrifying discovery of all. In water, plastic attracts toxins like a magnet. When marine creatures consume the plastic, the toxins are released and stored in their fatty tissues. As these toxins travel up the food chain, they become concentrated in the fish we eat. When that happens, human health is at risk. Latest science has proved that toxins associated with plastics trigger all manner of critical disease. What do you do? You can't possibly filter out these tiny particles from the entire ocean. You can't filter the entire ocean. In fact, so much plastic is in the ocean now, in a form that we really can't get to it, that I feel the emphasis needs to immediately shift toward stop putting it in. The plastic ocean poses a double threat, widespread polluted waste, and unseen danger to the health of billions of people on this planet. Although we've come to love plastics in our daily lives, our connection to our first love, the ocean, is older and more vital. The plastic ocean's documentary is a way to inspire people, first of all, to understand. With knowing comes caring. You might not care even if you know, but you can't care if you don't know. Back over to you, Ricky. Thank you so much, Richard. And before we start, I just thought it would be a good idea if we, for me, half of the team and plastic oceans, we acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and the sea in the country and we pay our respects to that eldest past and present. We acknowledge that the land and sea was and always will be Aboriginal land and sea. So thanks, Richard. So just before we start, I wanted to just mention to our guest and listeners today that the information on that video, which we started showing five years ago, the only information about this video that is out of date is the numbers and the tonnage that was said in the eight minute short of our one hour 40 minute video. And it said 300 million. It's actually now 400 million. It said 8 million. It's now 11 million. So just to show you in the five years since we made this film, the plastic increase in the ocean and in the world globally is going up. And that's what we're talking about. And this is what you can see with the graph here of global plastic production. So, you know, I know a lot of you are very learned and know a lot about plastics already. I know that you had a fantastic presentation that happened a few weeks ago about soil and microplastics. And I'll be talking about that obviously a bit later on. But what I wanted to really show and go through fairly quickly is actually the history of plastic and show why we are where we are today. And you can see with the dot points I've got on here, I did have that correction for you about 400 million metric tons. So today's not about doom and gloom. Today's about facts and figures and actually what we can do to solve and help change things. And there is time to change things. So on that note, if you could change the slide please Richard, that'd be fantastic. So plastic in the ocean. So obviously we've talked a little bit about that already. I've done those numbers for you. You saw on the video there that we had a seal that had a piece of twine around its neck. And at the end of the film we show how it's released and luckily it was one of those ones that got away. But we are constantly finding that those stories are fewer and not so prevalent that they do get away. Our job is to really try and change and hasten what is going on. And as I said you've probably all seen a lot of doom and gloom already and you've seen many films. The film is great because it's visual and by seeing visually what's happening and you saw about the birds and the amount of plastic in their stomachs and just this week there was another research piece about the microplastics when they break up really really into small pieces because they're irregular sizes. The actual plastic when it's consumed by the bird it's not only that it's consumed and it can't eat anymore because its stomach gets full of the plastic but the edges of the plastic shrubs are sharp. So it's actually also damaging the birds as it goes in and actually ripping and destroying their organs and things. As it goes down. So this is new research that came out just this week. Everything that I talk about today I'm really happy to send through information and links to the references of the new information because literally there's three or four things I'm going to mention today that have come out just since Monday. So obviously I didn't get to put it onto this presentation. Next slide please. So that was our film which we saw and here goes the next one. So the story of plastic. It's a small, there's a lot of information on here and it's a small slide but I wanted to just draw your attention to the fact that if you go down to the third column down middle section where you can see the old fashioned telephone I don't know if people can see that. So that is the one that's probably the most important one in that as was mentioned in the notes one of the reasons that plastic actually started in the first place was that people in their humans in their cleverness were trying to see what we could do to stop the ivory trade and they looked at how could we substitute a product that is like ivory hard, durable, last forever basically and at that time I suppose they thought it was affordable sadly and that was actually the precipice of which the story of plastic began and it wasn't till basically 1909 where the Bakelite product came to light and it was used then for the telephone. A lot of people don't actually know that story and what is sad is that we're very clever but we weren't very smart because we were clever to create something that we could never get rid of because it's so wonderfully indestructible, it's so wonderfully flexible it's so wonderfully cheap, it's so wonderfully all these amazing properties that the problem is that we have now is that we didn't look at the end of life of a product that was being made way back then understandably think about 1909, what was happening in the world then very different space to where we are now people were just thinking isn't it great what we did then and then from there it just escalated and you look at 1926, 1941 with polyethylene which of course the dreaded water bottle that's where the dreaded water bottle landed with us and you keep going through, you've got polyethylene with the plastic bag in the 1950s and so it goes on and it's just become more sophisticated more additives, more stabilisers included and the amount of plastic that is new plastic that's being produced and manufactured hasn't decreased at all, it's escalating out of control so even with all the information that we do know we're not slowing down production which is one of the things that I'll talk about a little bit later so next slide please so what's plastic made of? well obviously most of you will know that the raw material is from oil so the majority of plastic comes out of oil and a lot of people are saying well you know if we stop using petrol and we change over to electric cars isn't that great but actually it's not, the oil refinery companies love that plastic is made as a by-product which they're now looking at it's been at the forefront as another way for them to sell oil so when you look at crude oil and what it's made of and how that translates into the pellets it's quite disturbing so we look at synthetic pellets, we look at what's happening with that and I'm going to just quickly run you through again, next slide please the start of that and why does it matter again we've got that little chart, next slide please which I've shown you there and we can run through this a bit faster if you like and we go to the next slide which is I'm going to talk about the good side of plastic so as I said it's not all doom and gloom there's been some wonderful amazing things that have come from plastic which has been terrific obviously helping human health it's been for packaging and made it safe, hygienic, protected the lifespan of pills, medicine all these things obviously last way way longer which is fantastic I won't go to bed, I'm just going to talk about the good food, obviously food, well food last way longer you walk down the supermarket aisle and what do you see thousands of products are vacuum packed particularly meat, all the meat, dairy all those sorts of products that are the ones that will usually go off in a couple of days the whole supply chain of food changed when we started doing the plastic packaging so that was great because it meant that farmers, it meant that everybody was able to sell more, it was packaged for longer, it was able to be freezeable, etc etc so that was a really good thing and it meant that people were able to sell more and it really has helped with places where poverty is rife that you can send food over and it lasts a lot longer like this, there's numerous reasons why the food side of it has just absolutely been amazing and that's great that is great, however I'll talk more about that afterwards electronics, so again everybody uses mobile phones we've done it at Plastic Oceans Australasia, we've done lots of little fun things with our followers and one of the things that we did was we challenged people to go one day without using anything that was made of plastic, whether it be soft plastic or hard plastic and of course that included mobile phone, plastic plastic plastic and nobody could do it, it was very difficult for people to actually go the whole day even getting in your car, cars got hard plastic the inside of the car seat and the doors and you look at all the plastic products that are in your car which follows onto the comfort point it's enormous and a lot of people a lot of us just don't realise that our lives are absorbed with plastic which has made it comfortable IT technology consumption of food and then of course health so those are the good things and imagine for all of you out there if you use contact lenses for example contact lenses made of plastic so yes you could wear your glasses but some people it's not great for them to wear glasses and they use contact so I'm just using that or invisible stitches for the doctors and we talk about all the different things on the hospital side of things we wouldn't get off this subject so I'll move to the next slide please but it's definitely some fabulous things and those good things obviously there's going to be things that we will continue to use products that we will continue to use forever that are made of plastic so plastic's never going to go away we know that and at our organisation we're definitely not plastic haters, we know that there's good things about plastic but unfortunately there's some very bad things about plastic and I already mentioned before about the fossil fuel and where it comes from and obviously this is a really bad thing because it never goes away and once it's been produced and made into a product that's where the challenges become absolutely escalate because then we go into the whole breakdown of what happens with the end of life and I'll talk a lot more about this and I'll go on to the example that I'm going to focus on which is about food and plastic packaging so with garbage obviously it's landfill, it's enormous the majority of what ends up in the ocean, the waterways and the ocean is actually from landfill a lot of people don't actually connect land to the sea but it's absolutely 86% of what is in landfill is what goes into the ocean, that ends up in the ocean so we really have to be mindful of this issue and even if it's tied down and not able to blow away and get washed into storm drains even if it just stays, if it's lucky in the landfill site, it breaks down and there's toxins that are in those plastics which actually leech them into the soil and you had a whole conversation about that with your previous webinar so I don't need to go into that you've already heard all about the soil part of it but those toxins are rife and that's a very big problem as well so our garbage is an issue and of course we have a whole big piece of work that's being done about sorting our rubbish, putting it into the right bins where's it going to go, a lot of us still don't know how to sort, what to sort to and what to do and again just today yesterday, sorry, there was another announcement from Tanya Plibersek about having a look at how they can restart the Red Cycle concept again and what can Aldi, Coles and Woolies do and again I'll talk a bit more about that but as I was saying to you, we're trying really hard to move along to have some wins with the bad side of it but it is a super humongous challenge, not just environmentally but also because it directly contributes to climate change and then of course marine life so you can see by the picture that we've got on the screen with the seal there, that's just the tip of the iceberg so to speak of the damage and what we're doing and we taught you sort about the birds in the film the short film that you've seen, you also sort about fish and the microplastics that are in fish that we eat so it's just, it is a massive issue and we really, really need to address that which we haven't really been doing next slide please so the ugly, well I sort of, I suppose have given away a bit of it and you've already got a bit of an idea about that anyway because that's what you've been, you know I had the chat about the microplastics and I'm just going to read something to you that actually landed in my inbox today from someone who I work closely with and I'm just going to read this to you straight, hot off the press as they say more than 170 trillion plastic particles found in the ocean as pollution reaches unprecedented levels so this is literally today the world's oceans are polluted by plastic smog made up of an estimated 171 trillion plastics and they would weigh approximately 2.3 million tonnes according to this new study that spanned over from 1979 to 2019 from nearly 12,000 sampling points in the Atlantic Pacific and the Indian oceans and the Mediterranean Sea they found a rapid international science found a rapid an unprecedented increase in the ocean plastic pollution since 2005 and this study that's published in the journal PLOS 1 PLOS 1 which I'll find for you and we'll get it out there if people are interested the previous studies and this actually has come it's much higher than previously estimated and this is from the five guys Institute Executive Director Lisa Erdie it's way way more and she was reporting to CNN about this so this is just to give you the information about how this has soared in the last couple of decades with the single-use plastics waste management systems we're not keeping in pace and as you know only about 9% of global plastics are even recycled each year so we have so much to do so microplastics are the absolute insidious worst part of the whole plastic cycle like absolutely the worst part and it's something that I really want people to take on board you had that whole story about microplastics and soil but I'm just reinforcing that and letting you know that microplastics of course affect human health you saw about fish the consumption of fish microplastics sitting in the fatty tissues we're currently so at plastic oceans we have three areas in our business and one is science and research and we've got a research project happening right now as we speak with Macquarie University and UTS which is actually we're actually at the pointy end of the study which is counting and looking at all those different shapes our story about shapes of plastic before the microplastics and we're counting and looking at all the different microplastics that we found in two commercially eaten fish in Sydney Harbour and this study when this is completed is going to be really interesting for us and for the world because although there has been a lot of study done about microplastics in fish and other animals this is going to be one of the most up to date ones that we've got in our waters for Australasia which is relevant for us where we're living so watch this space on that but we know that plastic plastic is carcinogenic we know that it's not good for us we know the toxins are not good the estimate is that on average we absorb whether it's through air or whether it's through eating products or other ways that we are absorbing the equivalent of one credit card full of plastic each person per year now you might think some of you might say oh that's not a lot and some of you might be like overwhelmed with that I think it's terrible for any organism to be absorbing plastic in any way shape or form you can't get rid of it this is the issue people feel out of sight out of mind don't see it it's all fine it's actually not it sits with us forever so COVID-19 actually exacerbated the situation globally we were going really well three steps forward and then with COVID there was all this publicity out there plastic bags you mustn't use plastic cups you mustn't use your reusable cups you mustn't use your cloth bags you've got to go back and use your plastic so the psychology of that for people was oh okay I'll just go back and do my old things when I was doing it it was so much easier so much more convenient and we went backwards with the whole footprint of moving forward positively about getting people to change what they were doing due to COVID the increase in masks, the increase in gloves and of course gowns and everything that's being used and it still is we increased 33% there was a 33% globally in single use plastic over the last two years so we as you could probably expect were busier than ever because of what was happening with the plastic increase during those couple of years so it's not great it's really really slowed down progress and as I said smart not clever clever not smart depends if you want to put it but either way we're not really we're not really that smart as a species because we were too smart we were clever to make something but we weren't really that smart to work out the end of life so next slide please so current efforts are not enough there's so much going on here that it where do I begin I'm going to go fast because we want to get to questions that's the best part right Richard we love questions recycling so recycling versus circular economy I'll talk about that so I've talked about recycling we only recycle about 9% which is absolutely minimal to what we need to do recycling is not the silver bullet everybody talks about oh yeah well if I put it in my bin or it goes through a cycle that's great it's actually not recycling for us is the last frontier it's the absolutely last place you wanted to end up so we talk a lot about avoiding it at the source and doing things differently biodegradable and compostable another that's a whole big story we could do a whole session just on biodegradable and compostable but may I just say that biodegradable compostable is a really important situation because biodegradable products and compostable products all need to be treated as well and they need to be disposed of in a different way to what goes in your recycling bin to landfill for them to actually make a difference and again a lot of people are very confused about the systems and what happens to recycle something and for something to be compostable and biodegradable so if you truly want to do a composting do it in your backyard and yes and turn it over and make sure you've got the right temperature and you've got the right amount of water and you can actually manage it you might get that product that might say that it's going to break down in 180 days if you're in control great buy it, use it, put it in your backyard but the rest of it that goes into your bin not a chance not a chance until we get some commercial compostable millions more commercial compostable centres that can actually deal with the compostable because it needs to be treated differently big corporations have a lot to answer for in the sense that they can do so much more they can be doing a lot more internally with their staff internally with procurement internally with being leaders and making change with SMEs there's so much more that can be done with big corporations including the oil companies so there's so much there that is not enough and plastic bands so the plastic bands are great please don't get me wrong we are absolutely delighted that the states in Australia are rolling out their plastic bands unfortunately and that there is a slide on this in a minute that I'll talk about it's just not enough and with that can we go to the next slide please so with this our problematic and unnecessary plastic products by 2025 now the products that are out there that have been banned and if you go to the next slide please so again it's a little small but hopefully you can see it reasonably well and this is available on many websites this is there's many websites that you can look at particularly the government websites but if you look at the top of the chart and it says the names of our different states and you look at the ticks the green ticks are what have been banned the blue ticks are what's not been the bands not yet commenced and the orange are subject to consultation now interestingly I just want to draw your attention to the fact that in the orange one which is falls under plates and balls in SA and then you look under micro beads which is in ACT that's this year which is going to be really interesting to see because they're the first state nationally that are going to be tackling micro beads micro plastics micro fibres all the things that I've been mentioning before and that's going to be really interesting so that's under consultation they're proposing to do that so it'll be interesting to see where that goes and what happens there but if you look at Northern Territory the only product in NT that has actually been banned is the plastic bag that's the only one and all that's all and they've got a major problem there we do some working the NT with schools and businesses and some of the remote regional indigenous communities etc and it's a massive problem because a lot of the plastic that they get is actually not all from them it actually comes down from Indonesia and the Philippines and comes down onto the shores so they've got the most amazing beaches beautiful they've got thousands of kilometers of the most pristine beaches in NT but a lot of it is they're challenged because it actually doesn't even come from their own production but what's coming from overseas that's another story but just to show that with you so there's a lot of work to be done so the plastic bands why did I say it's not enough it's not enough because we're only highlighting half a dozen to 12 items there's thousands of single use plastic items that we use every day in our daily lives that are what I call high volume products that we could eliminate a lot of those we don't need those they're not essential to our daily life and we could be using something else so that's why that was in that category under why aren't we doing why isn't it enough there are current initiatives which are great old fashioned to me back in the day South Australia I don't know whether you remember but many decades ago South Australia was already the ones that were doing the container deposit scheme with the cans the bottles etc etc now people talk about the container deposit schemes as if it's this new thing it's not it's not a new thing it's just that we're saying oh well okay that works we've got people to change their behavior so we work closely with the container for the scheme for example in Queensland and we're delivering to schools about 300 schools we're delivering our schools program which tells them and talks about P&T bottle and how it's great to recycle and you get some money the reason it's working again going right round the loo is because people are getting 10 cents back and those 10 cents do add up and it's great at least it's not going directly to landfill it's got a chance for it to be recycled and go back into the system so that's an initiative which is great it's going to be Victoria starting up Tasmania starting up, WA started up a couple of years ago so that's great I mean it's a way to help change people's behavior and it's a way to try and stop it from getting into the ocean so it's great then we've got the product stewardship extended producer responsibility this is basically saying when a company makes a product sell it like a Pepsi Coke or whatever bottle they should actually be looking at the end of line of that product and adding an additional fee onto that so that they take responsibility that when that ends up in the bin or before it ends up in the bin that they're doing something about it to make sure that it's reused or used responsibly so that's not a bad thing that's great there's a lot more being looked at with that which is really good but I guess it brings me to my next point which is talking about circular economy which is the next slide if you can go to the next slide please and a lot of you will be very familiar with this and there's a lot of confusion even more confusion confusion reigns confusion reigns sorry it is Friday I've got to just you know bear with me the circular economy is a wonderful way to raise awareness to move people more into a sustainable life cycle what is the difference difference between recycling and the circular economy is that we are looking more holistically at the life cycle of a particular product and looking how it can be more sustainably created used and disposed of to keep it in the system so I'll give you an example if you think about glass so glass can be 85% of glass can consistently be recycled forever and reused and stay in the circle and it'll never end up in landfill as such and the reason that is it's a pretty pure product it's got it's easy it doesn't get mixed mingled with all the different like for example with plastic properties so glass is a really good one metal is actually really good as well a lot of people don't think about metal but metal is a really pure and really good product as well in staying in the system for a circular economy people often think that plastic is the easy one it's not it's plastic it's really hard as we know so with the circular economy it's really looking at that longevity of the production of a product going into the system and how it then gets reused, recycled and never going out to the final destination with landfill so I'm happy and I know that there'll probably be quite a bit of discussion maybe on that if there isn't that's okay I'm just very aware of that I'm going to talk on another chart in a moment which is about the packaging which is a good example so I'll move on if I could to the next slide please so I wanted to delve down a bit closer into food waste and plastic packaging and I thought this might be useful for yourselves to know because not only does it affect your day to day life but it's a good example of what I'm talking about with circular economy social responsibility environmental responsibility and economic responsibility so there's some numbers there 3.4% of global emissions are created through plastic packaging which is 10% of global emissions it's quite a lot for people to think about excuse me and take in 3.4 sorry 3.46 million tonnes of plastic consumed annually 1 million tonnes are estimated to be single use and 13.1% of plastic is recovered so that's those figures are recent figures specifically for packaging and I gave you figures before which was the total which includes not just plastic packaging but plastic generally 7.6 million tonnes of food waste is wasted annually and they've got some wonderful organisations are doing great jobs with trying to stop that waste as you know like Os harvest etc they're doing really great jobs with that and 70% sadly of that food is perfectly edible not just for humans if it's not okay for humans it can be used for other animals that can eat those vegetables etc even if they're a few days old and yeah and the amount of the plastic we've covered the majority of that is actually from households so just wanted to give you a little bit of some stats on that next slide please so I showed you a slide before which was talking about the mandates for the different states and products that they've put mandates on to phase out and this is the 2025 national packaging targets so APCO is a very well known organisation which is the Australian Packaging Covenant organisation and they work with many many many manufacturing companies of food in particular or products not just food but food's a big high one of it and you can get some fantastic stats on their website and again that's something that I can send you through a link but it'll be easy for you to find in fact one of our board members is actually the sustainability director from APCO and so we have conversations all the time and updates about what's going on so if you look at the targets here and I don't know how well you can see the chart here but if you start with the raw material on the top left where it's a light coloured sort of movie purple and you follow that chart around with packaging production, packaging and filling and you look at the use source separation collection sorting cleaning, secondary material production end market and then that's your cycle of the plastic value chain so the reason I wanted to show you this is that as it says on the left hand side 100% of the materials with the plastic packaging targets there is a one to basically look at that 100% is by 2025 100% is either reusable, recyclable or compostable well I don't like to be doom and gloom but I don't think we're going to reach those targets I think it's going to be very very difficult we've got 70% of plastic packaging being recycled or composted I don't know whether that's going to happen we're trying we'll see and then 50% average recycled content included in packaging and that was revised from the 30% in 2020 now we were struggling just to get to 30% and we've upped it to 50% so I don't know based on the current directory of what people are not doing and organizations are not doing and what governments are not doing I have no idea how we're going to reach these targets it would be wonderful but I really have no idea how we're going to get there so if we go to the next slide we'll show you actually how we're progressing with what I've been saying just before we do Ricky the 100% you mentioned earlier about you had some reservations about compostable packaging and biodegradable products as well so do you think that's a sensible packaging target to be aiming for or should it not be on there at all well if you look at the next slide it shows the results of what's been happening in the last if you look at that top one it shows what's been happening there with the results from 2017-2018 and you can actually see that it's actually dropped down to 86% so we're going down with the projected targets not up so it was 88, 89 and 86 and that's a lot of that is about the fact that we haven't got the mechanisms in place so that those compostable the items that are made out of compostable items like cornstarch or sugarcane etc. they're not being disposed of in a way that they can actually be composted and we need to do more infrastructure as a society to allow for that to happen so I think it's a bit out of the general household people you and me or all of us we live in a house somewhere or we live we have a place where we live it's very hard for us to do the right thing when there isn't the facilities available to do to actually give it the end of life that it needs so when you look at that target I just see it as being quite unrealistic and I think there needs to be a lot of work on that and that's so that we use it for recyclable and then you look at the 70% of plastic packaging you can see the results there so it's pretty static 16, 18, 16 50% the 50% has gone up that's the only one that has increased 50% of recycled content included in packaging so what that is meaning is that when a manufacturer is looking at a new product he or she are working on how they can include more recycled content into the injection molding or the blow-filling or whatever it is that they're going to be doing with making that product so it's in development stage development phase that was 2019, 2020 so I'm hoping that we'll get some more up-to-date figures on that but that's all I've got at the moment but basically what it's showing you is that we're not moving forward very fast which is what I'm saying how we're progressing very slowly so if you look at material recyclability as well and you look at the bottom there what's good what's limited, things that are not recyclable so you've got paper and paper board not bad glass as I mentioned to you glass is fantastic, glass is the one that is the winner plastic 60% metal 97% I mentioned metal as well that one's also really good and then wood interestingly you'd think with wood that you would have a better uptake but it's not always the case and that's a lot of that it also can be to do with the process of how it's being recycled as well so recycled content the third chart on the bottom right there looking at averaging or packaging giving you percentages and this is just to really back up what we're talking about but it's broken it down into the property types so you've got PET HDPE paper packaging, metal, glass etc so you can see the target, the green is the target and the blue is actually what was reached so if you look at paper packaging was the closest one with 54% and the paper packaging target was 60% and look at plastics packaging pretty dismal the target was 20% and it only got 3% so there's a lot of data there's a lot of charts and get very confusing as I said I don't want this to be doom and gloom it's just to show that we're really not progressing there's a lot of my I don't call it greenwash for me and our team there's a lot of graywashing out there about all these wonderful things that are happening but it's not happening fast enough and I still don't think that we really get the issues I really think that there's still some mindset changes that need to happen so where do we go from here, next slide please I don't know how we're going for time but back to you you've got a few minutes left we'll jump straight to questions after this one maybe yeah we might just need to rush through I'll just click through really quickly so reduce packaging design better packaging, simplify recycling educate and empower and consumers next slide please obviously reduce packaging so no brainer, it's so ridiculous to have vegetables and fruit I've seen bananas that are shrink wrapped like and oranges anyway I won't go there but it's just sickening next slide please design a better packaging I think that's a really important thing and that's what is being looked at already now there is a lot of work being done Nestle, Kellogg's Cabri, they are all looking at Madeira, they are all looking at what they're Moduna, they are all looking at what they're doing but it's got a long way to go as we've already talked about so next slide please simplify recycling, yep that would be really great, that would be a really good thing to do is you know check it before you chuck it people still don't do that I see that all the time next slide please so our work, this is important I guess for you to know that there's hope and solutions and this is what I wanted to show you that we're not alone but this is some of the things that we do to really try and hasten and speed things up we do a lot of work in policy advocacy and we work with the governments at the top putting forward submissions we're on the International Plastic Treaty really trying to make that change think about what's happening government level wise and then we also work from the bottom up so we work in business sustainability, education, science research, next slide please and they split into three areas and they're all intertwined and sequined together there's no silos everything is mixed together, the science and research helps the education education helps business sustainability and vice versa next slide please so this is our little circular economy chart and our little how we walk the talk and it's just to show you what we do within our organisation the number one thing is to create systemic change how do we do that with technology and innovation help create pioneering practices bring others on the journey diagnose the system walk the talk so that's an ongoing cycle like the packaging cycle that you saw and like the circular economy one next slide please well we do Ricky say if people want to work with you do you offer a consultancy service for them to absolutely and I'll talk about that in a minute I'll just get, yeah absolutely but what I did want to show you is as a big take away for everybody today regardless of anything if you would like to have a go with our plastic and you'd like to be environmentally friendly in September every year we have this campaign where you post or have a picnic or join a picnic with friends and you can actually have a go and see how you go with it take a photo into one of the many categories of our competition and apart from winning great prizes it's a really good way for people to do things differently we give you recipes of making products that you don't have to buy supermarket we give you lots and lots of tips great chefs we've got out there and we talk about how easy it is so the picnic is just sort of the carrot you think about any time whether you're going camping, whether you're going to you know a music festival it doesn't matter where you're going whenever you go outside and you want to take food and refreshments with you this is a way to really help this is our community behaviour change piece that anybody can do so I'm really there's a website address there and it's free of course everything's free because we just want people to take it up and do it next slide please and that ties in beautifully about the whole food packaging for example but for consultants and for maybe some of the wonderful people that are here today we have a program which is a FIFA service like a consultancy package that we offer called Epic we had Epic before COVID by the way and I know today the word Epic has become the epic word to use for everything but it actually means engagement in plastic free innovation for change we're very much about changing people's behaviour with solutions through innovative technology that we have we're even now looking at how we can measure your carbon footprint of the plastic that you didn't use so we provide a program which actually goes over 12 months and you can use it internally with your staff or with your suppliers or with your contractors or with anybody really to actually create your own circular economy within your organisation to show you're making a change and if lots more people could do this we've done a lot with councils a lot with businesses schools communities etc if a lot more people could take up this model and say this is what everybody should be doing helping with procurement helping with your own policies within your organisation etc etc so again really happy to share and give material out to people that are interested so I hope that answered your question Richard I did so you're trying to drive for in the end a standard that the government adopts is that really so from bottom up top down squeeze out the plastic in the middle think of a hamburger and plastics in the middle and just trying to sandwich it out basically we're trying to give people options that actually we've got some runs on the board we're working in health, we're working in construction retail community and actually got examples of all the things we're doing in this area with this program and this was organically grown out of what we do with schools saying to us oh we really love what you're doing with the schools could you do this for big people so the Epic program has actually just not because we thought oh this is something we could sell it's actually something that people have asked us for and there's a need for it so you can get lots of presos you get lots of stuff off the shelf but we really take people on a journey to empower that change do you want to go to the next slide please yep we're over time I know it's nearly done it's the next slide I think we're just done it's just you can just flip through this the next one I think we're done this is just a little quote and then we're going to do takeaways and all that so I'll leave it to you over to you Richard thank you well thanks very much Ricky I've got a couple of questions but we'll go to the early bird questions but before we do that I guess the key takeaways here is that Ricky's giving us some hope that it's not too late certainly also highlighted that it's a huge problem I think that picture of that bird from Lord Howe Island really brings it home pretty nicely that it's just a massive problem and we need to get on with it takeaway number two global manufacturing product design unification is needed and takeaway number three corporates need to take the lead to help drive change through ESG and CSR objectives look I had another key takeaway and I guess it's the first question I get the chance to ask the first few questions Ricky is you had a statistic which was 86% of all the plastic that's in the ocean was plastic that was destined for landfill yes so it's going to take a while for us to get all these other innovations in place all those targets the 100% recyclable etc etc could we not really focus in very hard on the waste collection through to landfill and actually depositing it in landfill if that's where the leakage actually is could we not rapidly move to tightening the noose on just how we get the litter to landfill given that's where there's so much you know slippage right hmm well you know it's a good question in Victoria they started with the purple bins in some of the suburbs which is to collect glass so glass had its own sourcing separation the other countries I've lived in and visited like Canada for example they for many many many years have had a very very more succinct separation system which has been was I think about even 20 years ago from memory far more advanced than what we've got here in Australia and I think the reason why Australia doesn't come up very well numbers wise is because we have a large land mass population compared to many other countries in the world and I think that's why it's always showing up that Australia's one of the worst disposes lack of disposing properly because of the numbers game there is a lot more that needs to be done and unfortunately it's not just about us putting it in the right bin and knowing what the plastic is or what the item is whether it be wood and there's some that are mixed up whether it's a wood or plastic like you know it's so muddled up with the way it's being produced it's really about that taking it all the way back to the actual manufacturer so I also with the Society of Plastic Engineers and I'm talking with the engineers at the beginning when they're looking at form and what they're going to make, why they're going to make it and how they're going to make it and it's really that very beginning at the source of looking at how you can reduce products going to be so produce the extended producer responsibility part I think is going to help that's going to be one of the biggest ways is stopping it at the source so it doesn't even end up at your bin and then the bin doesn't have to go to landfill All right, we better go to the early bird questions here we go and thanks very much for those who did send in these early bird questions are there any programs that are presented to the schools regarding this issue? Yes, I've already mentioned that we have a very comprehensive program that we deliver to schools and have done over the last five years I think you mentioned the other day that gives you hope for the future because they're more aware than we were of the problem that's what makes sense Number two, melding of ice caps is decreasing the salt concentration in the ocean Could this I can't read the next word sorry Could this have an impact on waste plastics in the ocean? Yeah Yes, it could but I don't know the exact chemical biology marine percentage with all of that and that's something that I'd like to take away and get back to that person from the scientists in my team and obviously we're hearing a lot about the increase in the ice cap melting I think they just said again this week about the Antarctic with the the thickness of ice and the Antarctic had reached all time low, again numbers on that I'll have to check but I'd like to take that on notice and I can get back to whoever that is with more information if that's okay No worries I don't know what plastics can be recycled maybe is there a readily available list out there that people Yeah, so we've got listings you know there's numbers the one to seven rating system that came out a long time ago and there is quite a lot of labelling which shows you when you buy a product whether it can actually be recycled or not so the one to seven sourcing of a product is the easiest one to look at number of government websites about that if you're in Victoria you could go to the sustainability Victoria site they've got a whole big piece on it there from Victoria as well and it's across the nation anyway there's different sites but if people don't have that handy we've got that with our programs and what we do it's too hard to explain now it's very complicated No that's fine what we might do is we might shoot out to people with that list number four microplastics recovery factors impacting rate of generation food chain implications so we covered that a bit at a high level I'm particularly interested in this recovery of microplastics like it says So there's people out there that are doing some really good work in re giving us data back of where microplastics being found and we've got a huge amount of information on that but there is a couple of companies that have made some very interesting machinery that they go onto the beach and they can actually sift, literally sift through because you can't see them and the nerdles look like when you see a nerdle which is so so tiny it actually doesn't even look like plastic for a lot of people that don't even realise it's a microplastic so nerdles on the beach they almost look like sand almost like sand grains so it's actually quite hard to even identify and that's why birds and other animals marine animals eat them because they look like what's natural but the and that's one of the factors with this question that's one of the factors of how actually like Mike said in our movie it's almost impossible once it becomes a microplastic it's almost impossible to actually stop and grab that microplastic and stop it from going to anywhere else and that's the problem with plastic is that it doesn't break down it breaks up and eventually either ends up in the ocean or ends up as in the air so it's the food chain implications that are massive and that's one of the things we want to do with this fish project that we're doing in Sydney Harbour is we're looking at we want to look at the life cycle of the fish and about the reproduction of fish and about the size growth size of fish because they're being affected how they're being affected by the fact that they're consuming plastic and what does that mean for the ongoing life cycle of the fish so the implications are massive and just what I read out to you earlier on about the 171 trillion tonnes I mean that's really overwhelming from 1979 to 2019 was that research study and as I said I only just got that literally today hot off the press from CNN so there is so much implications with microplastics is enormous it's like it's a real problem it'll be interesting to see how far we are through the the cycle towards the peak right because there's so much sitting on that ocean floor that you showed in the movie and so much sitting there that's slowly degrading it's not like we will have peaked in terms of microplastics I would have thought it's more to come sorry I meant to keep this one positive next I think we've covered question five but I was thinking more of six sorry what is the primary source of plastics I think so you said 86% from packaging that would have gone to landfill is that right? Yeah well most of the plastic in the oceans is actually single use plastic which is from landfill and there's a small amount that comes from fishing but nothing at all like what comes from landfill or from the land not just landfill from the land because it gets blown and carried out of the material that would have been destined to go to landfill we'll move thanks very much to everyone who's still on the webinar we'll move to the Q&A side of things have you got a couple more minutes for a kit you all? Yeah I'll have to go by two if that's okay I've got another meeting but yeah that's right and I'm always happy for us to send out answers to questions that we haven't got time for to you that you can forward on to people because I know it's really important to answer everyone's question and if anyone wants to get Ricky's contact details they will be on the presentation which we'll be saving to the website so you'll be able to get in touch that way alright so Antonio Collages why is Tasmania only bans one type of plastic do they have other ways of processing plastics e.g. in incineration etc look really really great question I'm not aware of incineration I think that's highly unlikely because they are quite forward thinking and wanting to do a lot in Tessie the only reason is they just haven't had the capacity yet to go to Banmore and it's something that I know that they're looking at and one of our supporters Senator Peter Wish Wilson who's a very long time a Green Senator based in Hobart they are very proactive and really onto the whole plastic waste side of things so I think watch this space I think there'll be some good upgrades on that coming so if you are living in Tessie and I've got staff who work in Hobart as well I think there's a lot of things on the horizon there so I hope that'll come up soon on the chart as a good thing that you can see they're doing more products well that's good news next question Jorg Acovido could you please repeat the micro plastic ingest analogy to eating one credit card per year and source of information would be great yeah good question Jorg and I think what would be best is if I send you an article where that came out from that's been actually around for a couple of years actually I think it's a year and a half but basically what the article and the research shows is that because we breathe and we have a little film that we show which is about the air that we breathe and shows how the micro plastics have been absorbed into our body through the lungs absorbed into the system it's been calculated methodology the calculation that is the equivalent of one credit card and I think the best thing as I said is that I again get that article through for people to see because it's quite analytical but it's good it's helpful Excellent Antonio Colleges says thank you very much he's learnt a lot from this webinar so good work Rikki next one Karen Paranada Hi this is Karen Paranada of Clean Away Environmental Management Solutions here in the Philippines just want to ask how was your take on the EPR law this is already implemented here in our country and it was explained that we need to contain slash control or reuse 20% of plastic from the consumer or end user side realistically we cannot control from that perspective but we can transform or improve the process from the manufacturing side on how they use plastic on their products to release onto the market is this correct please advise thank you for taking time on my question Yeah complex question in the sense that I'm not up to speed 100% with what's happening in the Philippines and Indonesia as well there are lots of different laws that are happening but basically by charging more at the front end of the product and encouraging the manufacturer to then make sure that the end of life transformation of that product gets reused is I think one of the biggest challenges so is this correct yeah pretty much it's correct but I think that again I need to find a bit more info I'm not up to speed as I said with the Philippines the whole idea of the extended producer responsibility law is to have that beginning from the beginning the 20% amount again I think that varies I'm not quite sure of that figure I'm not quite sure Clean away is amazing and you do incredible work in Australia as well but again Karen it's something that I could that one I take on notice to get some more information for you if you are interested Excellent Next question was from Sheema Zia Jiarumi I've got tricky names today what about tyre wear particles they are considered as micro plastic and it has been shown that a huge load of tyre particles is getting to our waterways and ocean through road runoff Yeah I know again that is like textiles and tyres that's another whole we could spend another hour and a half talking just about tyres and absolutely so every time somebody puts their brakes on and the tyre skids or the you know your braking the wear and tear of those particles absolutely goes into storm water and it is a huge issue as for micro plastics as you quite and there is a lot of work looking at now about tyres how we dispose of tyres recycling of tyres and stopping tyres actually from just a lot of tyres just get dumped and go to landfill but there are companies out there that are actually trying to recycle and are recycling tyres but that's when they finally get them so every time you change your tyre and you get a new tyre if you ask your tyre man or mechanical man yourself what they do with it most of the time they wouldn't know where it goes and generally it just gets dumped and it goes very often to landfill but the ones that do make it to recycling plant and they chop it up and reuse it and it's going into things like road base it is being used for construction in other areas reuse is great but still when we're driving every single day we are creating inadvertently just by driving our car micro plastic and it is a huge problem and yes, you're right it is a micro plastic Alright so Karen just said thank you thank you Karen Ricky that's the end of the questions today just one last question for you from myself just how did you get started it's a pretty amazing achievement what you've achieved with this plastic ocean Australasia but how did it get started Oh look, thanks Richard and I do want to say thank you so much for having me and inviting me on board and I'd love to meet more of the team and find out about your story that's amazing I basically started in this business through my dad who had one of the first plastic recycling plants here in Victoria and a young person was already doing sorting in the yard with plastics way back when I was already like 10 or 11 years old and way back then decades ago it was very uncool then to be doing anything with plastic waste and I stopped telling my friends at school that's where I was getting my pocket money from but that was my beginning of the journey and I went after I've been working in the environment to sustainability space for a long time but again my own circular circle of being asked so when the movie of plastic ocean came out and the founder of plastic oceans Joanne Ruxton who I worked with in Hong Kong many years ago and the producer of the film she appointed me and asked me to set up plastic oceans Australasia so it was the last thing I ever thought I'd be doing but it's basically you know what they say what goes around comes around I started in plastics at mature age I'm still doing plastics which can be a good thing and also a bad thing and sometimes it could be an ugly thing because I'm thinking what have I done with my life so there you go but I'm hoping I'm hoping with the work that we do and we're told that we're helping make change we're hoping very much that even what we do even if it's only one business at a time or one school at a time or one council at a time etc that the change we're making is obviously going to be impactful long-term not just with plastics but all the waste streams but plastic is the worst well done I'm getting it to where it's at it's obviously got plenty of work left to do but it's fantastic to see you get that up and going in terms of watching that movie I understand that the film that we showed the first eight minutes of is available for everyone to watch for free yeah so you can you can actually get it on YouTube the one hour 40 minute film is on YouTube you just put in a plastic on YouTube and you'll get it if people are having trouble finding it I don't think it is quite easy and it's free to watch we just show the eight minute one because obviously we don't have time in this in this forum to be able to do the whole thing and as I said the only thing about the film that is outdated is the numbers and that's probably the main thing for people to know but it is a a sombering film to watch it's not enjoyable it really gives you that my gosh we really need to get going and doing something but I hope that Pit and Sun Wrap will inspire people I'd love everybody to come on and be part of that I'd love to talk to people about anything else and the issues anyway we can help people under our plastic oceans umbrella to help people in that space well thanks very much Rikki I think we'll leave it there and thank you everyone for attending today it's great to see another big audience and we will finish off there thank you thanks so much thanks everyone have a great weekend bye bye