Microplastics are everywhere | Sarah Dudas | TEDxBinghamtonUniversity

We live in a world of plastic. From the clothes we wear, the electronics we use to the food we buy, our lives our surrounded by, and depend on, plastic products. Over time, all of these plastic products break down into smaller and smaller pieces to become ‘microplastics,’ or plastics smaller than five millimeters. As we study microplastics, we are learning that they are everywhere – in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. In this talk, Dudas will lead us through a day of plastic use, how and where we use and generate microplastics, and what we can do about it.

Sarah Dudas is a biologist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, a biology professor at Vancouver Island University and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Victoria. For the last seven years she has led the Ecological Interactions Research Program, working with federal and provincial governments, industry and non-profit organizations to study the effects of human activities on coastal ecosystems. Her research includes investigating marine biodiversity across regional and local scales and the effects of historical and contemporary shellfish farming practices on surrounding ecological communities. Recently, she has focused on the issue of microplastics and their presence in the marine environment and our seafood. Dudas’s professional affiliations include the Hakai Institute, Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution and the Aquaculture Association of Canada. She is also a member of the United Nations-led Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection microplastics working group.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

I'm going to tell you a story,
and it's my story,

but it's all of yours story too,
and you'll soon see how.

I asked my students

to join me in the challenge of documenting
how plastic touches our lives,

by taking a photo
every time we touch plastic.

And at the end of that day,

to put all of those photos
together in one spot.

Here, I share with you my day of plastic.

From the moment I woke up
to the moment I went to bed,

as a working mother -
I have two young daughters -

you can see that plastic
is in every single element of my day.

And I've had to make
the photos quite small

because it was challenging
to fit them all on to this slide.

If you're looking closely,

you might notice that I've put multiple
plastic items into many of the photos.

It was quite overwhelming

in the course of the day
to take that many pictures,

but you can see that plastic
is in every single element of my day.

Right from the start, when I woke up
to the sounds of my plastic alarm clock,

the plastic packaging
in the food that I ate,

the clothing that I put on
as I got ready to go outside,

the phones that I talked on at work a lot,

right through the end of the day,

when I tucked in my youngest daughter
with her favorite stuffed animal, Pinky,

synthetic,

right down to the very last
step of the day -

a plastic book cover
on the book that I was reading.

Plastic is in every single element.

When I put all of these photos together,
I found the result really shocking,

but perhaps what's even more shocking

is that we've only been using plastic
since the 1950s.

That's about 65 years,

and in that relatively short span of time,

we have generated the estimated
[8,300 million] metric tons

of plastic on the planet.

That's equivalent to 25,000
empire state buildings.

Now, out of all of that plastic,
only 9% has been recycled,

and in my day of plastic,
9% looks like this.

60% has been thrown away.

In my day of plastic, 60% looks like this,

leaving us with the 31%
that's still being used.

All of that plastic -

over time, with the heat of the sun,
light, oxygen, microbes -

will brake down into smaller
and smaller pieces.

That may take 10 to 20 years
for a plastic bag,

upwards of 400 years for a plastic bottle,

but over time, it will brake up
in the smaller and smaller pieces

to what scientists now call microplastics.

Microplastics are defined
as any plastic less than five millimeters,

so about the size of a grain of rice,

and we divide these into two types.

The first, primary microplastics:
plastic engineered to be small.

And there are many reasons why we do this:
medical, personal, industrial.

Microbeads are one
that many of you will be familiar with,

now banned in many countries.

Watch out for other microplastics
in cosmetics,

for example, synthetic fibers in mascara.

Polystyrene beads

are used in many applications
as stuffing and flotation;

nurdles, a funny name
for plastic resin pellets

that can be used to make
just about anything,

and even things like glitter
are considered primary microplastics.

Then we have our secondary microplastics,
and these are plastics that are created

from the breakdown
of those large materials:

fragments from a plastic bottle,
films from a plastic bag,

fibers from netting, from rope,
and even from our synthetic clothing.

Now, microplastics
are in my day of plastic too,

but they are harder to see
because of their small size.

But rest assured, they were there
from start to finish.

In my morning cup of tea,

plastic fibers in the deceptively
paper-looking-like tea bags -

this is my last box -

to the tire dust generated
from my synthetic polymer tires

as I drove to preschool and to work,

to the nurdles in
my daughter's stuffed animal

and even the plastic gem on the ring
that she found in the parking lot.

Right through to the end of the day,
the load of laundry I did,

the lint from the dryer, containing
synthetic fibers from our clothing,

to my daughter's artwork that I hung up
complete with sequence and glare,

microplastics are everywhere.

As scientists have looked
across habitats and environments,

we found that microplastics
are everywhere:

in different habitats -

from freshwater to the ocean,
from deep sea to the Arctic -

and in animals -

from the bottom of the food chain
and zooplankton and fish,

all the way to the top, to marine mammals
and even in ourselves.

Microplastics are everywhere,

and as animals eat those plastics,
it can have negative effects on them.

It can have physical impacts,
blockages, abrasions,

or chemical impacts,

either from the chemicals
in the plastics leaching out

or chemicals in the environment

and contaminants sticking
to the plastic themselves.

And all of this can create
negative health effects:

decreases in growth, reproduction.

The study of microplastics is a new one,

and our knowledge of the impacts
of microplastics is limited,

especially at the smaller sizes.

And as we zoom down
to those smaller sizes,

right down to the level
that's invisible to the naked eye,

about 100 microns
or the thickness of the sheet of paper,

we find microplastics there too.

They are in my day of plastic,

in the water that I drink,
in the air that I breath,

and we're only just learning
about microplastics in food.

My research team has found microplastics
in shellfish, in clams and in oysters.

Other studies have found microplastics
in chicken, honey, salt, beer,

and we've yet to learn
about microplastics in other foods.

Almost all of the microplastics
that we've found,

and in many other studies,
have been fibers.

We're still figuring out
where these fibers come from,

but synthetic clothing represents
a significant potential source.

Every year, 70 million tons of fibers
are used in the clothing industry.

Out of that 70 million, 60% are synthetic.

And that's evident when you go shopping
if you look at your labels.

My daughter and I went shopping
to get ready for this talk

on a hunt for a natural fiber
dressy shirt.

We went to four major
Canadian retailers, and we struck out.

So I stand here today looking
a little less formal that I might like,

but feeling a whole lot more comfortable
than I would if I were standing here

talking to you about plastic
while wearing it.

Now, as we wash our clothes,
fibers are released,

and a recent study took
six-kilogram loads of laundry -

polyester cotton, polyester, and acrylic -

and washed them.

And they generated

anywhere from 140,000 fibers
for the poly-cotton mix

to a whopping 700,000 fibers
for acrylic, per load.

Now, I took those numbers
and imagined that my family of four

would generate a three-kilogram load
of synthetic laundry a week.

Multiply that up by 52 weeks a year,

and my family alone generates
11 hundred million fibers a year -

fibers that go into our sewage system,
into our waterways, into the ocean,

into our ecosystems, and into our food.

Our microplastics are everywhere,

but there is something that we can do
about it almost everywhere we go,

and it starts with the good old three R's
from the 70s that we're familiar with:

reduce, reuse, recycle.

But we need to update these
to add three new R's,

starting with the first one: refuse.

Refuse single use plastic,
refuse any plastic you don't need,

refuse straws, refuse coffee cups,
think critically about what you need,

think about where away is.

If you can't refuse it, reduce it.

Think carefully about
the plastic that you need,

find natural alternatives where you can.

There are many things that we can do
to reduce fiber pollution,

for example, you can use
a fiber catcher like the Cora Ball,

or use a bag to put your synthetics in,
like the Guppyfriend from Patagonia,

use a front-loading washing machine

that generates fewer fibers
than a top-loader.

Use a filter on your washing machine

to catch the fibers
before they go into the water.

All of these things will help
reduce your fiber pollution.

If you can't reduce it, reuse it.

Choose products that are built to last

rather than those
with planned obsolescence.

Try to get most life
out of your plastic items that you can,

and if you can't reuse it,
of course, recycle it,

but even the hard things,

even the things that don't fit
into your curbside recycling.

In my case, that's plastic bags,
styrofoam, electronics.

If your community doesn't have a facility
to deal with these types of items,

then create the demand
and the need for it, it's worth your time.

The second new R: rethink.

We live in a society that doesn't place
a high value on second-hand goods,

we need to change that.

We need to focus on services
rather than replacement,

and that is going to require
the final new R,

and perhaps the most challenging,
which is to redesign.

On a broader scale,
we need to change our thinking

from the linear model
of make, take and dispose

to one that's more circular in nature,

to one in which we think
about the end life of a product

right at its beginning.

Now, I went through my day of plastic

and chose a number of items
that follow that linear economy,

that linear model
of make, take and dispose,

and I multiplied the images

by the number of each one
that I've used in my lifetime.

Now, I'm proud and somewhat embarrassed

to say that this is the alarm clock
from my childhood,

which doesn't say much
for me keeping up with the times,

but I've gone through

a number of different appliances,
computers, phones;

I chose my daughter's backpack
because in her seven years on this planet,

she's already gone through three,

and I've gone through more synthetic
clothing than I care to admit.

This consumption model

generates much more waste
than it would in a circular economy,

one which focuses on services,

on repurposing, on refurbishing,
rather than replacing,

one in which I might have
one phone, one computer

that gets updated with latest technology
as it becomes available.

Imagine a system in which
you don't own your clothes,

but burrow them or you rent them
from the companies that you like,

you wear them until you want
something new, you send them back,

they get repurposed
into newer styles you want to wear.

Let's slow down fast fashion
and focus on quality rather than quantity.

All of these things, with a change
in our linear way of thinking,

are within the realm of possibility,
and many are already happening.

Let's think outside the bottle
and create room for innovation.

Plastic is a valuable product,
we are reliant on it,

and a future without it
is completely unrealistic.

But we can't and we shouldn't continue
to use it and produce it

on the increasing trajectory
that we are currently on.

Plastic is resilient,
it lasts a long time,

and while that is a problem
in one respect,

it represents an opportunity
in so many others.

Microplastics are everywhere,
and while that scares me,

what gives me hope is knowing
that the solutions are too.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Winter Clark: I'm just so intrigued

by these ideas of rethinking
and redesigning,

you know, focusing on repair and services

rather than just throwing
something out after one use.

Do you think that those aspects
of rethinking and redesigning

are more important

than continuing to reduce
the amount of plastic that we use?

Sarah Dudas:
I think they're both important.

On an individual level,

it's very easy to reduce
the amount of plastics that we use.

Now, I challenge everybody here
to try and do that

every time you're offered plastic
you don't really need.

So we can make
some smart individual choices,

but we do need to rethink things
at a broader level.

There are some things that we're doing
that we can improve upon.

For example, in the food
packaging industry,

we package foods that have a shelf life
of a few days to maybe a few years

and packaging that lasts
upwards of a few decades.

This doesn't make sense,
we need to rethink those models,

and with that will come

a further reduction in the way
that we're using plastic.

WC: Alright, thanks.

SD: Thanks.

(Applause)