you take this incredible material
that lasts for hundreds of years we use
it for a few seconds a few minutes and
then we throw it away
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i’m heather coldway i’m a national
geographic fellow and i’m the science
co-lead for the sea to source expedition
our job with the national geographic
seas to source team is to get in there
to really understand how plastic is
getting from land into the water and
where we can switch that off
the focus of our attention is on the
forty percent of plastic produced every
year that’s single-use plastic
and what we’re finding because it lasts
so long is it’s accumulating in the
system
as it accumulates it breaks down into
smaller and smaller pieces where it’s
now being consumed by the smallest
plankton to the biggest whale
we know that there is a huge amount of
ocean plastic that can be accounted for
coming from some of the major rivers in
the world
how do we go about stopping that flow of
plastic
where are the solutions to stop plastic
entering the ocean and harming people
and wildlife in the process
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oh
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there wasn’t any plastic before
now it has been part of our life for the
last 10 to 15 years
when plastic stops being available in
the market then we will stop using it
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foreign
if the public uses it less and the
government decreases the amount of
plastic then hopefully we can achieve
something
we know a lot of plastic is what we call
pointless plastic and that’s
particularly single-use plastic and a
lot of the items that we use that for
really are things that we can do without
or use an alternative more sustainable
material
instead the data we’re collecting is
really a tool to help those solutions
along the way and make them happen
quicker or faster
it’s something we can fix and it’s
something everybody can do every single
day
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there is no single solution to the
plastic pollution crisis
our research shows we need action from
all sectors of the community
government business and civil society
to truly tackle plastic pollution
everyone needs to commit to making a
difference
from changing our own behavior
to changing systems
together we can make a difference
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