Plastic oceans: a true global emergency | Craig Leeson | TEDxPitic

Craig Leeson and his team spent four years and visited more than 20 locations to research and understand the size of the plastic crisis in the oceans around the world. Their findings are disheartening, at the very least. Luckily, there's a way to turn this around but it will take a huge, worldwide effort to do it with enough time to rescue entire maritime species and ecosystems.

Crig Leeson is an award-winning journalist, television presenter and filmmaker. His debut cinematic feature film, “A Plastic Ocean,” which he wrote and directed was ranked number one documentary on iTunes in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada.

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 grew up on a beach in an island
called Tasmania, a beautiful place.

It gave me the opportunity to meet
and interact with incredible creatures,

and it was where I developed
a deep connectivity with the ocean.

Now, Tasmania is one of the most beautiful
islands on the planet.

But 30 years ago, the city I grew up in
had a terrible problem.

The ocean was polluted
with the outfall from heavy industry.

There was a pulp and paper mill,

a paint pigment plant
and a slaughterhouse among them.

These were causing rashes on the bodies
of swimmers and surfers,

and when you got out of the water,
you had sore red eyes.

Burnie, at that time,

had one of the highest incidence
of cancer in Australia.

Following the lead of three generations
of journalists in my family,

I made it my investigative
mission to uncover

whether these industries
were, in fact, responsible

for the illnesses we were seeing

and also the poor state
of the ecosystem along the coastline.

So, I got a laboratory to test
the waters around Burnie,

and they found that the outfall
from the pulp and paper mill

contained organic chlorines.

And these had dangerous
cancer-causing dioxins.

So, I put these findings
to the state government

and the minister for the environment,

and he admitted for the first time

that they knew about these organic
chlorines and these dioxins

and that they were dangerous,
but they hadn't informed the public.

So, I published my stories
in the local newspaper,

and it caused a storm of protest
across Australia.

National papers declared Burnie
"Australia's dirtiest city."

I wasn't very popular with our local
tourism authority, I can tell you.

I was 20 years of age at the time.

Shortly after those stories
were published,

the industries started to close down,

and today, Burnie has some
of the bluest water along the coastline,

and the fish have returned
to the waters around the city.

I learned then about
the power of the media.

Now, as I developed my skills in the media

through newspapers, radio and television,

I also developed a passion for film.

Film gave me the ability to tell stories
and to make documentaries

that gave voice to silent creatures
like the worms from my childhood.

But I also had a deep love

for a particular species
that had consumed my time as a child,

and that was the blue whale,
an immense creature,

also incredibly shy.

An opportunity came to film a documentary
off the south coast of Sri Lanka.

It was the culmination, for me,
of a life's dream.

Now, blue whales are the biggest
animals ever to have lived.

They're bigger than any dinosaur.

They grow up to about 37 meters long.

They have a heart as big as a car.

But they were hunted almost to extinction,

and as a result,
they're extremely elusive.

Trying to find them is like trying to find
a needle in a massive haystack.

We went up and down the coastline
of Sri Lanka for weeks on end,

searching for these whales.

We would see a spout in the distance,
we'd head towards it.

We would get our cameras
into our underwater housings.

We'd get our teams into the water,
we'd move towards the whales,

and then we would never see them again.

And this happened day after day
after day after day.

And if you want to know
what it's like to go crazy,

look out into an open ocean,
empty open ocean

for day after day after day after day.

That's where coffee
became a big friend of mine.

So, we searched
near an underwater seamount,

and this is where krill gather

because they're brought in
by the currents.

And we knew the whales would head there
because they eat krill.

We didn't find whales.

What we found was something
very significant.

It was a floating landfill of plastic.

This was a massive slick of detritus
as far as the eye could see.

It contained old fishing nets, bait boxes,
plastic bottles, used lighters,

even unopened biscuits -
the wastage of humanity.

It was absolutely dreadful.

It was the sign of a coming tragedy.

We didn't know that at the time.

We kept looking for the whales
for three weeks,

and our time finally ran out.

We had to head back to port
because our visas were about to expire.

But I'm an incredibly stubborn individual,

and I hadn't come this far and worked
this hard to give up this easily,

so I refused to allow the cameras
to be packed away.

I refused to allow the dive tanks
to be put under the boat.

I was going to exhaust
every possible moment we had on the water.

Now, when someone yells "Whale,"
your adrenaline really spikes.

Someone yelled "Whale,"
and my adrenaline shot through the roof.

There, 100 meters
off our bow, was a spout -

(Splashing sound)

high and very visible.

We cut the motors on the boat,

we put the dive teams in the water,

and the cameras,
and I got in with the crews,

and we slowly finned over
towards what was a pot of whales.

And as we got closer, we realized
this was a family of eight,

and in this family
of eight whales was a juvenile.

And when I say "juvenile,"
he was 15 meters long.

And he was as curious of us
as we were of him,

and with the big flick of his tail,
he dived incredibly deep and out of sight,

and then, moments later, he came up
right between our cameras,

and we had, for the first time,

footage, under water,
on cinematic cameras,

of a juvenile blue whale.

It was a profound moment for us.

As we were heading back to port
and I was reflecting on the shoot,

I realized that these whales
were resting and probably feeding

right near where we had filmed
this floating landfill of plastic.

Now, whales, when they feed -
blue whales - they open their mouths,

they suck in thousands of liters of water,
and they expel that water,

leaving behind the krill
in their baleen, or their teeth.

But whales can't tell the difference
between krill and plastic.

The Sri Lankan expedition
was the start of an epic quest for us,

but it posed more questions
than it answered:

If whales were consuming plastic

in a pristine environment
like the Indian Ocean,

what was happening to marine life
in oceans in other parts of the planet?

And if as we'd found out that 350 million
tons of plastic were being made that year,

how much of that
was ending up in the oceans?

And if marine life in oceans
around the world were consuming plastic,

and we're at the top of the food chain,

what did that mean for human health?

Well, we gathered teams
and crews and scientists,

and we traveled for four years
around the globe to 20 different locations

to answer these questions
for our film "A Plastic Ocean."

Our investigation was relentless.

For example, we found
that 70% of plastic sinks.

Now, what we'd seen then
was just the tip of the iceberg,

so we hired a research vessel
and two submarines,

and we went to the Mediterranean,

and we traveled to the bottom
of the Mediterranean,

1,600 meters below the surface,

to see what happened
to plastic in the absence of light,

in the absence of oxygen.

We traveled thousands of kilometers

to the Pacific, to islands
where seabirds were ingesting plastic,

mistaking it for food.

One of the most powerful scenes
in the film is of a heroic little seabird

called a shearwater.

These birds, chicks,
were turning up dead in their hundreds

on an island called Lord Howe Island.

And when we opened
the stomachs of these birds,

we found them filled with plastic.

In one particular little chick,

we found 272 pieces of plastic.

That's equal to about 12 pizzas
if you were to eat them all at once

and put them in your stomach.

Can you imagine the pain
this animal was going through?

As we opened other chicks,
we found a red bottle cap,

and I realized at that moment

that that bottle cap could have been
a bottle cap I threw away years earlier

without understanding
the consequences of my actions.

Now, if I'm a surfer, a diver
and an ocean explorer,

and I didn't realize the consequences
of my actions to the natural world

eight years ago,

how could I expect anyone else
to understand theirs?

We needed awareness, and "A Plastic Ocean"
would become the tool for that awareness.

Now, scientists told us

that we would dispose of
between 8 and 12 million tons of plastic

into the world's oceans every year.

How on earth did we allow that to happen?

Well, the answer's simple: We were
told plastic would make our lives easier.

We would no longer have to do
the washing up.

It would keep our food fresher.

It would protect our consumer products
like no other material before it.

And in many ways, it did just that.

But we were also told that plastic
could be used just once and thrown away.

Think about that.

Plastic is the most durable product
we have ever made.

How can the most durable product
we've ever made be considered disposable?

The answer is, "It can't. It isn't."

Every piece of plastic ever made is still
on the Earth unless it's been burned.

In the past decade,

we have produced more plastic
than the entire century before that.

Fifteen years ago,

the United States'
Center for Decease Control

released a study which showed
that more than 92% of all Americans

contain chemicals related to plastic
in their blood and their urine.

And more disturbing than that

was that children between the ages
of 6 and 11 have twice as much.

Now, plastic chemical like phthalates
and bisphenol As contain compounds

which have estrogenic activity,
which mimic and sometimes block

the natural hormonal
production of our bodies.

Recent research shows that these
can cause endocrine disruptive decease,

cancer, diabetes, fertility
and other reproductive issues.

But plastic has become
an integral part of our society.

It's a very useful tool.

My cameras, my car, my computers -
all contain plastic components.

But our habitual consumption
of single-use plastic

is destroying life-giving environments.

It's killing other species,
and it's polluting our food source.

So, what will happen
if we don't stop production of plastic?

Well, as of 2015,
we had produced, globally -

since plastic production
has begun in the '50s -

8.3 billion tons of plastic.

8.3 billion tons.

6.3 billion tons of that has become waste,

and of that 6.3 billion tons of waste,
only 9% has been recycled.

By 2050, our population will explode
to more than 9.8 billion people,

and by then, we will be sending
12 billion tons of plastic to landfill

and to the environment.

It's staggering.

So, what's the solution?

Well, we need to stop our addiction
to single-use plastic.

We need to move to a zero-waste society.

We need to change the very social
and financial paradigms

that consider single-use plastic
a useful resource.

We need a multifaceted approach
to this problem,

with input from governments, retailers,
manufacturers, consumers.

And we need to integrate new ideas,

like new legislation, circular economies

and cradle-to-grave responsibility
for manufacturers and retailers.

And as consumers,

each one of us needs to be smarter
about the choices we make.

We all need to rethink plastic.

So, how do we do that?

Well, we stop buying
single-use plastics, to start with.

When I'm at home, and I have a drink,
I don't need to use a straw.

So why do I need a straw
when I go to a restaurant?

I don't.

Why would I spend up to 2,000% more
buying water in a plastic bottle

when it costs me so much less
to refill a steel container from the tap,

and it's quite often healthier?

It makes no sense.

Take a bag with you, a reusable bag,
when you go shopping.

And when you get to the supermarket
or the market, call the manager over.

At the checkout, unwrap all the plastic
from all of those fruits and vegetables

that have been individually wrapped
with this plastic stuff,

and give it to the manager,

back to the supermarket,
back to the market,

and tell them to dispose of it properly

because you don't want to have
the responsibility of taking it home

and having to do that anyway.

But more importantly, we need to go back.

We need to understand the systems
that sustain life on planet Earth,

like the bird and the worm.

The bird wasn't committing murder.

They're part of a greater ecological,
environmental system

which sustains life on Earth.

I know that now.

I didn't when I was five years of age.

Just like eight years ago,

I had no idea that by throwing
my plastic products into the rubbish bin,

I was damaging the environment,

and I was polluting the food chain.

Awareness is a very powerful tool.

As I say in the film,

"With knowing comes caring,
and with caring comes change."

And I'd like to leave you
with this last thought:

Change starts with each
and every one of you.

There is a need to change,
and when that need arises, it's right now.

So, we all need to start change

for our future, for ourselves
and for our children.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)