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– We know that plastic pollution in our ocean
is an enormous problem.
There’s about eight to 12 million tons of plastic
entering our oceans every year.
And a big artery, a big root for that plastic
into the ocean is through rivers.
We’re like detectives working our way up
through that river system to work out what’s going on.
So our quest is to do the first large scale
river level assessment of plastic.
We are really looking to identify the sources,
how it gets into the river,
how it then moves into the ocean, and most importantly,
what are the local and global solutions to change that.
I’m Heather Koldewey, I’m a National Geographic fellow,
and I’m the science co-lead
for the sea to source expedition.
40% of plastic produced every year,
that’s single-use plastic.
That’s the bit where there’s a huge opportunity
to reduce the amount of plastic in the system.
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We want to actually look at the major rivers of the world.
We’ve started with the Ganges.
It’s an iconic, culturally famous,
and legendary river system, that’s so important
for the people of India and Bangladesh.
It’s also considered in the top rivers
contributing plastic to the ocean.
One of the scientific questions we wanted to ask
was to really understand exactly how does plastic,
once it’s in the river, actually move and flow
through the system to get out into the ocean?
But most importantly,
how do we go about stopping that flow of plastic?
We worked with a conservation technology expert
to actually look at developing a tag,
to look at how we could follow the bottles
through the system and understand
how plastics move in from source to sea.
We deployed 10 tags in India
from Varanasi right up to the Himalayas.
Inside the bottle you have a circuit board
and your method of communication.
We put a SIM card in.
We used a special electronic design,
and as the bottle moves through the system,
it pings a message through on your cell phone.
Just this, once it gets out to sea,
you lose your mobile phone signal,
and then you rely on satellite phone technology.
The bottle tags are providing exact coordinates
of where they are and sends the exact GPS coordinates.
So the bottle tags are very much one element,
one exciting technological development,
but just one component of a whole body of information.
What’s so valuable about using GIS and GIS mapping skills
is to be able to combine that information.
So you’re really collating all of that research knowledge
and putting it in one place to give you
an informed view of what’s happening in a system.
Plastic has become that tangible problem
that people relate to.
It feels solvable.
It feels like there’s momentum.
It’s something that relates to pretty much everybody
on the planet and everybody can make a difference.
And that’s a really exciting place to be in.
We care about the science, we care about what we’re doing,
but we really want to make a difference.
The opportunity around plastic is, for the first time
it’s connecting society with the ocean,
and gives us an opportunity to actually build
a more ocean-friendly society.
