Unwrapped: The Plastic Crisis (Part 1) | The Origins of Plastic Pollution

Joining the conversation is Dr. Jenna Jambeck, the University of Georgia researcher whose landmark 2015 study was the first to quantify how much plastic enters the ocean each year. Her work transformed our understanding of plastic pollution and helped shift the conversation from cleanup to prevention.

Together, they explore:

• Where plastic comes from and why it became so ubiquitous
• The surprising history of recycling—and why it can’t keep up
• How plastic pollution became a global environmental challenge
• What Jenna's groundbreaking research revealed about plastic entering the ocean
• Why scientists, policymakers, businesses, and communities are increasingly focused on the root causes of the problem

This episode is about more than plastic—it's about how societies make decisions, how systems evolve, and what we can learn from the past as we work toward a future with less waste and healthier ecosystems.

Links for More Info:

Dr. Jenna Jambeck bio

WWF Plastics page

ACT: Tell Global Leaders You Want a Future With Less Plastic

TRANSCRIPT:

Seth Larson: This is Nature Breaking, and welcome to a three-part series about the plastic pollution crisis.

But before we get started, Erin, I have a question for you. Can I recycle this? And for those listening, I'm holding up a plastic grocery bag.

Erin Simon: This is the most common question I get when I'm talking to folks, and it's because we have these everywhere. I would say, in general, no.

You know, there are ways to give them back to retailers, and the retailers will collect them with other films and flexibles, as we refer to them. But ultimately, they are problematic. And so, I would recommend using a reusable grocery bag where you can.

Seth Larson: I'm Seth Larson.

Erin Simon: And I'm Erin Simon.

Seth Larson: And this is Nature Breaking, a podcast from World Wildlife Fund. Today, we're kicking off a three-part miniseries called Unwrapped: The Plastic Crisis, and we're going to be talking about the past, present, and future of plastic pollution in this country - and around the world. Before we get started, Erin Simon is here. She's going to be our co-host throughout this series. Erin, can you introduce yourself?

Erin Simon: I'm Erin Simon. I'm the vice president and head of plastic waste and business at World Wildlife Fund. I've been at WWF for about 15 years, and I've spent my entire career working with companies and governments and individuals and policymakers, really those who have the power to drive change, to use less plastic. To think about recycling it, reusing it when they do need it, and of course, making sure that none of that plastic ends up in the environment where it doesn't belong.

Seth Larson: Yeah. That's the goal.

Erin Simon: Mm-hmm.

Seth Larson: So, I feel like you're the perfect guide to take us on this journey through the past, present, and future of the plastic pollution crisis. For our listeners, buckle up and stay tuned because we're going to learn all about what needs to change if we want to have a brighter future for our planet and for people.

All right, Erin, before we get into the heart of today's episode, I actually have a few questions for you.

Erin Simon: All right. Fire away.

Seth Larson: All right, so I think it's important to establish just some baseline facts about this crisis that we're going to be talking about with plastic pollution, and the biggest, most baseline question of them all is: what is plastic? You know, it definitely doesn't grow on trees, so where does it come from, how is it manufactured, and what else should we know about it?

Erin Simon: Yeah, I think most people don't realize that all of the plastic we have today, well the majority of it, comes from virgin fossil fuels. So more than 99% of the plastic that is produced today is coming from petroleum or natural gas, the same things that we get our fuel and our energy from primarily.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Erin Simon: There are some bio-based alternatives that could arguably grow on trees but, they make up less than 1%.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Erin Simon: And the current system is really built around and about just taking things from the planet and throwing them away.

Seth Larson: Mm-hmm.

Erin Simon: And that's a big part of the problem. It's we're not reusing those resources that the planet gave us at a cost. And so, we have some alternatives that exist, and the challenge is all of those alternatives need to be recovered.

Seth Larson: Mm-hmm.

Erin Simon: Right? Plastic can be made from those recycled materials or responsibly sourced bio-based feedstock.

Seth Larson: Okay, that's a mouthful.

Erin Simon: Such a mouthful. And, but everything needs to be recovered. And so, what we work for in WWF is to push companies and policymakers to shift away from that virgin plastic when we can by advocating for stronger regulations that help us get those materials back...

Seth Larson: Mm-hmm

Erin Simon: ... and help us extend the life of those resources. So, policies like extended producer responsibility and overarchingly trying to create harmonization globally through a global plastics treaty.

Seth Larson: Yeah. So, we're talking about a product that mostly comes from fossil fuel sources.

Erin Simon: Mm-hmm.

Seth Larson: That's obviously something that we don't want in nature, or even worse, like in our bloodstreams or our stomachs. But it's not all bad, right? I mean, there's a reason that even given those drawbacks, a large number of products are still made of plastic.

Erin Simon: Yeah, we have proliferated our use and dependency on this material. It's not just in single-use plastics, but in our computers...

Seth Larson: Mm-hmm

Erin Simon: ... in our cars, in our airplanes. It's everywhere ... in our medical... Yes, right? And the reason it everywhere is because it is very low cost and durable and has a lot of amazing properties that allow us to extend shelf life and use less fuel in airplanes cause they're lighter. That said, it's really hard to get rid of.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Erin Simon: And when it ends up in nature, it doesn't break down, it persists. And so, what has changed recently is that we're no longer addressing the problem of the material. We're addressing the problem around the material, the system that material exists in. So how are we rethinking our whole relationship with that material from source to use and to recovery again, instead of just tackling whether or not plastic is good or bad.

Seth Larson: Yeah. So, one last question before we get started today. How big is the plastic pollution crisis today?

Erin Simon: Yeah, and I think this is where the challenge is, right? I want to make sure that as we have these conversations, we are talking about opportunity and hope and positivity, but at the end of the day we're having these conversations because the plastic pollution crisis is so large that the speed and urgency at which we are seeing it end up in our ecosystems is enormous.

It's polluting our air, our water, our soil, and therefore all of the people and wildlife that depend on it. We've done some studies that showed that over 2,000 species globally have come into contact with plastic in their own habitat.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Erin Simon: Through they're either getting entangled in it, they might be ingesting it because they mistake it for food, or it's just degrading where they live. And the good news is we know what we need to solve it, right?

Seth Larson: Mm-hmm.

Erin Simon: We have the tools in our toolbox, but if we don't use them, if we don't take that ambitious action, we're going to more than double what we're putting into the environment today.

Seth Larson: Right.

Erin Simon: By 2040 we will go to 280 million metric tons per year.

Seth Larson: Wow.

Erin Simon: That is the equivalent of a dump truck per second...

Seth Larson: Yikes.

Erin Simon: ...like pouring into nature.

Seth Larson: All right, so with that, let's tell our audience what we've got planned for this awesome series.

Erin Simon: Okay. So, the goal we have is to take the audience on a journey, if you will.

Seth Larson: Mm-hmm.

Erin Simon: Sort of thinking about what has happened in the past, what are we doing right now, and what is the future of the plastic pollution crisis?

In other words, what were some of the decisions we made and missteps that maybe led us to the current situation we're in? And what are we trying to do about it to solve it? And then let's think about if we did that correctly, if there is this future without plastic ending up in nature at a dump truck a second, what could that look like, and what do we need to do moving forward?

Seth Larson: Yeah. And so, for part one today, we're going to be looking backward and examining how we got to where we are today.

Erin Simon: Yeah. History matters.

Seth Larson: It does, and it's, a history that...

Erin Simon: Yeah

Seth Larson: ... people might not expect, right?

One thing you talked about earlier is just what plastic products are made of. We're talking about fossil fuels and these things that we don't want in nature or our bodies, and recycling was supposed to solve some of these problems, right, by making sure those products got reused or repurposed in some way and stayed out of nature and stayed out of our bodies. But the recycling story turned out to be a lot more complicated and a lot less effective than a lot of us were initially told.

Erin Simon: That's really true. And I think that we depended on a system that we never spent a lot of time building. So, I'm really happy we're going to dig into that today, and which is exactly why the person who's joining us on the podcast is the perfect person to tell this story.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Erin Simon: Because today we're going to have, somebody that I personally admire a lot, Dr. Jenna Jambeck. This is a Regents Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Georgia and a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. So, Jenna is one of the world's leading researchers on plastic waste. Her work was some of that first quantification of the scale of the issue entering our oceans, and not only that, but it also talked to the root cause of why. And so that has fundamentally changed how we've been trying to address this problem, and I think that's just super important because sometimes we just start with the wrong question, and she helped us to start with the right one.

Seth Larson: All right. With that, everyone, I hope you'll like this episode and subscribe to Nature Breaking on whatever podcast app you're hearing this on, and from there, let's turn to our conversation with Jenna.

Alright, Dr. Jenna Jambeck, it is a pleasure. Welcome to Nature Breaking.

Jenna Jambeck: Thanks, so much for having me, happy to be here.

Seth Larson: So, Dr. Jambeck, I'm going to turn it over to Erin in a moment, but first I want to start off by asking about some of your research and kind of why you're here. In 2015, you co-authored what became one of the most cited papers in environmental science, and it was a study that first quantified how much plastic was actually entering the ocean.

For those of us who aren't familiar with all the details of your research, can you tell us what your study found and why you think it landed the way it did?

Jenna Jambeck: Yeah, that's a question that takes me back. So that's over 10 years ago now, which in like my lifetime is a long time but in like the world of science, 10 years is, you know, a blink of an eye. Um...

Seth Larson: Sure.

Jenna Jambeck: Yeah, and first of all I kind of want to... I really want to acknowledge the folks that asked that question right. How much plastic is actually entering our ocean? And I was a part of this NCEAS group, it's the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. So, there's lots of coauthors and, you know, I was very honored to be able to lead this part of it, but many people contributed to I think asking the right question. And so, we had been, you know, seeing creatures and animals impacted by plastics but it was really like how big is this problem really? And in that work because it was the first time this number was quantified, I think that's one reason why it landed the way it did. So, our number, our midpoint calculation at the time was eight million metric tons. That's equal to about a dump truck of plastic entering the ocean every minute. Right so...

Seth Larson: Wow

Jenna Jambeck: ...to kind of visualize and viscerally feel kind of what was happening was I think one reason. The other was that we were very transparent with how we did that work. There were spreadsheets available, lists and data, and ultimately this was a geographic scope that was global, but putting all of the country data out there meant that people could use that data for their own agendas. I think everyone welcomed having the science and the quantity out there but I didn't always agree with the way the data was used and so that really meant that I felt an obligation and responsibility to communicate the science the best I could, which is one reason why I jumped at an opportunity to work the US State Department at the time to travel to many countries that were being impacted by plastic pollution learn from them, talk with them and really see things on the ground and talk about this issue one on one. Many were happy to have these numbers out there because it really meant that then this problem was recognized and they could put resources towards it. But I also had people who were offended and you know given the fact that the agendas of some folks and the way things are presented that was very understandable.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Erin Simon: Yeah.

Jenna Jambeck: It was...

Erin Simon: It's hard when that...

Jenna Jambeck: Lots of lessons learned in this process let me just...

Erin Simon: Yeah.

Jenna Jambeck: Thinking now I like "oh gosh, a long time ago lots...

Erin Simon: But it was so good because, I mean, yeah, it aired some dirty laundry, if you will. Like, but I think once we had a full picture of it, it allowed us to, like, see the problem in a lot more, in a lot more color, right? Like, you could really sort of get more granular with different ways to engage and mitigate the problem. So... but that first moment where you have to face the problem more holistically, I think that's a hard one. And sort of having that on your shoulders. I don't think until you spoke about it right now that I realize that, I mean, I understood the controversy when things were going on, but to feel that responsibility as a scientist is, that's a lot.

Jenna Jambeck: It was but I also realized how I was also extremely grateful to be able to work on science that was very impactful. So, it was you know I was, there was many things to be grateful for and have a... if you were even to call this a burden, you know that was, you know, something that I felt the responsibility to have if you were to call it that.

Erin Simon: Yeah.

Jenna Jambeck: It didn't feel that way.

Erin Simon: Yeah.

Jenna Jambeck: It was just something that I felt like this is just what I have to do.

Erin Simon: Yeah. Yeah.

I've been in this field for decades in a different part of it, right? But I'm curious sort of about how the arc of where we are today, how we've gotten to where we are now. Were there moments for you from a scientific perspective in the science and the data in what was showing up in wildlife and ecosystems where... we saw this coming. You know, and the signals just weren't being taken seriously. They weren't being seen in the right lens. You know, what were your early warning signs that you could, you know, you could speak to?

Jenna Jambeck: I'm kind of a now maybe accepted but I was a weird person in this space initially right. I'm not a... I don't study wildlife, I don't study ecosystems from a science perspective, I'm an environmental engineer. So, I was learning about this issue when I was going back for my PhD. And yes, you're absolutely right. This has been an interesting issue in that the photos kind of, as I was referencing, we were seeing seals with the sixpack rings. We were seeing the impacts to wildlife through photographs. You know, some scientists, but many, you know, NGOs and organizations like yours were starting to see these impacts but we really didn't quite know from a scientific perspective what was going on. But I was seeing data and, you know, having my roots in environmental engineering and solid waste management, I was curious about what's ending up on beaches. And I think this initial thought and the initial characterization that was a number was based upon ocean dumping. So, a lot of people way back when were just like this is, you know, was called marine debris. It was an ocean problem.

Erin Simon: Yeah.

Jenna Jambeck: Was very much associated with "Oh that must be coming from ships, it must be coming from, you know, maritime operations." But I looked at the stuff on the beach, and I was like this is stuff that we're, you know, from a solid waste perspective, I'm like this is what we're putting in the trash can every day. Somehow, it's getting in the ocean. I don't think this can all be coming from ships. And so, I was like this brand-new PhD student hearing about this issue, and I was like doing GIS projects in my classes to try to illustrate. I was like mapping storm drains with international coastal cleanup data and trying to think about how can this, what's ending up on our coast be coming from land? Because that's what I suspect is going on here.

Erin Simon: I think you pivoted the conversation to the root cause, which opened up bigger dialogue than it was before when it was just ocean plastics, and that was really important for developing solutions.

Jenna Jambeck: Can we talk about recycling for a minute? Because one of the things that Erin and I chatted about in our intro for this episode was kind of the story that a lot of us were told as kids about recycling. I know for myself growing up in the '90s, I was told that, like, if I just did a good job and sorted all of my waste into the blue bin and put anything that could be recycled in there, then I was doing my part and, like, the system would take care of the rest of it and make sure it got to the right place and didn't end up in the ocean or anywhere else that it's not supposed to be.

Seth Larson: I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from recycling because it is really important, but the reality of it is that a lot of the plastic we put in those blue bins ends up in a landfill or in nature regardless. And I wanted to ask, like, what's behind that, and why is plastic harder to recycle than other materials like paper or aluminum that don't seem to have quite the same problem?

Jenna Jambeck: It's a complex pretty long answer but I'll try to be fairly succinct. I mean it's different from those materials in that it has many different polymers right. Plastics we think of, like, oh this is just made of plastic. But it could be polyethylene, it could be polypropylene. You can't mix those together mechanically and then recycle them because they have different melting points.

So, it's not just... I think this perception that plastics are just plastics from the consumer side is actually this really complex issue behind, which is why it's hard to recycle, which when you put it in the bin and you maybe just look at it, you're like "Oh here's a yogurt container I can put it with my milk jug." Well, they're not the same polymer. So, we have, you know, engineers have tried to design facilities or material recovery facilities to separate all these items and we do an okay job of that, but it's very hard when you get to the nuances that I'm talking about of the different polymers. It's much easier... aluminum you can use an eddy current separator. Ferrous metal you use a magnet, glass weighs a lot more, it's different shapes. So, what's hard is the plastics are similar in other physical ways but then you know again very hard to separate. I wanted to dig a little bit deeper on sort of the cultural issues. I'm apparently older than you I grew up in the 70s when you said 90s. But this is really interesting right? Because I have stories from my mom, when disposable stuff first came out, you know, that famous Life magazine photograph. And she talks about going to a dinner party somewhere and she's like, "they just started throwing away the plates." And she said I started pulling them out of the trash.

Erin Simon: Weird.

Jenna Jambeck: Like, what are you doing? It was so weird for her to throw away something that had been this reusable item. And so, she didn't think of a plate made of plastic or anything else as different. So, it was just, she was like it was just hurting my heart that we were just throwing away everything we had just used. And so, she's like, "I'm picking it," out and I think we find that in a lot of her generation and others. She's eighty-two right now. And we had a culture shift where instead of thinking about reusable items and I understand there was convenient... you know, there was all these other sorts of priorities at that point. But that culture shift means that we... they we were just... cause people had that feeling of like, "Oh, it feels a little wrong to just use something once and throw it away so let's try to recycle."

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Jenna Jambeck: And so, I think that's part of the messaging you're talking about.

Seth Larson: Yeah. No, I'm not an expert on, on, like, the year-by-year history of all this, but my, my sense is, you know, when these products first kind of became available en masse in the '50s or '60s or whenever that was, it probably had that initial perplex- like perplexity, perplexion, like, how? Really, we're supposed to be just throwing this stuff away? But then I think there was, like, a couple decades where it was a revelation that it was so convenient. Oh, and you don't have to wash it, and you can carry it anywhere. It's lightweight. This is... Oh, this makes life so much easier. And, like, then there was a whole generation that kind of came up with that mindset. And now there's a generation that's sort of seeing the results of several decades of just, like, throwing everything away and seeing it wash up on our shores or just float down city sidewalks. And now 20 years of, like, boy, we really need to shift things back in the other direction. And Dr. Jambeck, your research has been so helpful in motivating people and helping people understand the scale of the problem.

Erin Simon: Listening to the two stories, you know, as a material scientist growing up in that period, right? Like, the '90s and 2000s when I was going to school for this, and the application of that as a packaging engineer was the requirements were to make things recyclable and to use as little as possible. That "use as little as possible" has always been a cost thing, really. I mean, I think there was the idea of reduction, but it was mostly like how can we get as much cost savings as possible? But make it recyclable and the whole campaign of recycling, like, just sort of assumed that, like, if we were going to do that, we were also going to invest in all of the equipment and facilities to actually recycle, and that was really where we missed the ball, you know? Or missed the whatever the sport ball reference is. But didn't... we like didn't equally spend time innovating in and investing in that recovery, and we spent a lot of time innovating and proliferating the use of this material to all kinds of applications and sectors. And then by the time we get to that moment where you, you know, an environmental engineer asking this question about, like why this is getting here, it is surprising that we didn't ask that question earlier.

Seth Larson:

Jenna Jambeck: You brought up I think a really good point where packaging designers... and when I first entered this space being working mostly in solid waste management I'm like, no one ever talks to us about what you're going to create and what kind of... cause like we just see the problems kind of at the end of pipe right? Like all of a sudden, I mean, and I love thinking about this through the evolution of how we listen to music right? There was like records, and those were ending up in our waste stream. And then, you know, cassette tapes, well 8track and regular cassette and then CDs. I remember digging, like, we would dig in landfills for various things for my work...

Erin Simon: Yeah.

Jenna Jambeck: ...a pile of CDs and jewel cases and those were like problematic for disposal. I know we had little binders...

Erin Simon: Yes.

Jenna Jambeck: ...where we stuck the CDs, but you'd have all these jewel cases, and they'd get thrown away en masse and now we just...

Erin Simon: Yeah.

Jenna Jambeck: ...you know, digital that we listen to, so it's really kind of... it's all this evolution.

Erin Simon: The no-pack option.

Jenna Jambeck: What we see is not consistent coming down the pipe in waste. So, I'm not necessarily blaming designers. It's also a part of society and how it changed and what we buy and do. But there are not a lot of conversations between packaging engineers and designers, and solid waste managers had happened.

Erin Simon: Yes. Everything was so siloed. And I think what we've been trying to do in WWF is, like, talk about things systemically, right? And do it in a way where we are, our efforts to reduce a problem or to address a problem is collaborative, so that a designer should be designing something to cascade in value, which means it needs to work with the material recycling facilities to be designing for that so they can cascade it.

But a lot of that, it has to be underpinned by good science and data. And so, from your vantage point as a researcher, what does the historical record actually show about the role industry and government played in getting us here? And what can we learn from that?

Jenna Jambeck: Yeah. Well, I think we've touched on this a little bit, but I would add that, and I said this when I think even in 2015, I was kind of reflecting on how we even got to that point right. And it was like solid waste management, our regulations, RCRA, the Resource Conservation Recovery Act in the US wasn't passed until 1976. I was already two years old. And I understand that our en you know environmental regulations even were probably more delayed than they needed to be, but you know the EPA really had to address water. Drinking water and wastewater are two sanitation issues that come first understandably. And but there's this lag in the environmental impact of solid waste that I think couldn't quite envision. You know, we literally would dig holes and put our waste in there. I mean I remember going to the dump it was called, that it was not an engineered landfill and you just throw your trash in. And so yes, when we were making... you know way back you're making things out of clay and all natural materials, like that's okay. We kept with those practices that had been around hundreds and hundreds of years, you know, and... but then our materials and our systems changed. And what I, you know, I don't... I'm not necessarily blaming the government for waiting on that because that was... but I'm just saying that is an artifact that I saw. So, the lag in the solid waste...

Erin Simon: Yeah.

Jenna Jambeck: ...compared to other environmental issues did not help the scenario.

I want to reflect a little bit more on sort of what we were talking about in terms of design. I think that you know you mentioned that someone actually wanted to make recyclable packaging. I think before that people were just thinking about... the priorities to me seem like marketing, even loss prevention. Like these other important categories for packaging were usurping the actual like what how can I make this material more valuable at its end of life? Like you were saying. So, everything should be clear, you know, or the right you know a consistent color or a consistent design so at these material recovery facilities can separate them out easier. You know so for us at the back end it's much easier for things to be more alike than they are different, but that doesn't do well for marketing and, you know, selling and some of these other considerations. And so that's really what I saw a lot with industry prioritizing thing... other aspects over the environmental benefit of making things more the same.

Erin Simon: It's so interesting that design for recycling didn't really come up until, I mean, the last 10 to 15 years that, like, concept and the golden design rules all, like, sort of emerged. But yet, packaging engineers like me were being trained to design for recycle, but not the way we're referring to it today. It was a technical thing. If it was collected with and like, and then could it be processed? And like, sure, yeah, that's an easy box to check, right? But the "if" in all of those things was not up to the respond- like, that was never something that, as a packaging engineer, I understood I was actually accountable to. And so, I never took it into consideration until I realized that.

Jenna Jambeck: Dr. Jambeck, while we have you here, I wanted to ask you just for a minute to talk about the Marine Debris Tracker app that you co-created. It's super cool. I love anything that can help everyday people get involved in solving these big problems. And so, the Marine Debris Tracker app, it lets everyday people get involved in collecting real scientific data about plastic pollution around the world. So super cool. I wanted to ask you to talk to our listeners a little bit about how it works, how they can get involved, and secondly, I'd love to understand from you what you've learned from that data over time and how it's maybe changed how you think about where plastic is actually coming from, and if there's been any surprising findings that have come out of that app.

So yeah, so Marine Debris Tracker, Debris Tracker for short is a mobile app. It's free for anyone. You can download it, Android or iPhone. And really those of you that have done cleanups before, it's like your data card is in a mobile app now. Those of you who haven't done a cleanup, it's a way for you to independently go out and see what's in the environment. You can opportunistically log litter. Just tell us what's there. If you can safely collect it that's great as well, while you're walking your dog or, you know, walking to the office, walking to lunch.

Marine Debris Tracker was born in 2011. It came out the same year as my youngest son, so I always know its age. We have over 10 million items...

Erin Simon: My daughter too.

Jenna Jambeck: ...reported by folks around the world in nearly 100 countries. And every continent including Antarctica people have told us about what they're seeing. And so, it's really a way... an unfortunate thing that's happening but being able to report that. And then you asked about what's been happening with the data. So, this is a good time to talk about why we call it Debris Tracker now because what it has kind of shown us which is a theme throughout this conversation is we need to move upstream to address this issue. We need to move upstream to even collect data. So going from the coast into our cities. So, we have our circularity assessment protocol where we use Debris Tracker to collect data systematically sort of monitoring what's there based upon policies in a community. We have all kinds of influencing factors. And then really trying to understand that data to implement interventions to prevent what's ending up in the environment from getting there. So, three easy questions: What is it? How did it get here? And then what can we do about it? And so that sort of guides you as you think about this large data set. And so, what it has shown us is thinking about these you know more upstream interventions and getting folks involved this way has been pretty amazing. My grad students originally on this project are like, "no one's going to do this." They were like why would someone? They were just, they were... they were you know computer systems folks and they were just like, why would someone do this? I'm like, "I promise they will." Now did I think that two to three thousand...

Erin Simon: We will.

Jenna Jambeck: ...reports would come in every day? No. I'm amazed at that cause we get about a million reports a year. But when I was getting just even once a week someone I was like, "See It's happening." And then it just continued. And I wanted to share that we're working on Debris Tracker Junior, so a kid’s version of the app, which...

Erin Simon: Kids.

Seth Larson: Cool.

Jenna Jambeck: ...will engage the younger generation in this issue in a fun way but also impact the prevention of plastic pollution. So be on the lookout for that hopefully within the next eight months.

Seth Larson: That's great. I'm envisioning, handing that to my son and giving him a, a job of go- going up and down the beach later this summer to use the app and see what he finds. Or maybe it'll be next summer if it comes out in eight months. But...

Jenna Jambeck: We just...

Seth Larson: ...that sounds like a great use of his time.

Jenna Jambeck: used it with incoming year student engineering camp this week, and we used it with the students. But they can't unsee what they've seen. So, I have a lot of that, "thanks a lot." But I'm like, "Yeah, I know, but you need to see it."

Erin Simon: Yeah.

Seth Larson: Need to see it. Definitely

Erin Simon: What I love about this app, and, what I've learned in conversations with, like, general public over the years of talking and sharing what we're doing with this issue, is that it gives them something tangible to do. I think people tend to get really overwhelmed by the complexity of the issue. But a tracker like this lets them be a part of the, the solution, right? And it helps them with the awareness raising, the understanding, and the impact of it, and that's... I think that's really important because, the questions, most of the questions I get from the general public are, "yeah, but, like, what can I do?" Right? Like...

Jenna Jambeck: Right.

Erin Simon: ...you know. And I want to ma- you know, like, they don't have to make a sustainability assessment decision at purchase, right? Like, I need to make things as simple as possible. And I have found that the act of cleaning up trash is the easiest way to get them engaged and excited and wanting to do more. So, I, I realize I underutilize this app and need to more cause I'm regularly doing cleanups. But my team is doing a beach cleanup in two weeks. So will make sure we're utilizing and adding data to this.

Jenna Jambeck: Right.

Erin Simon: But I know we're getting up on time here, and we're wrapping up this, this first episode. Dug into how we got to where we are. I think there's just real value in s- in sitting with that history before we rush to solutions. I think it, we learn a lot from that. Not just on plastic pollution, but on many things. And I'm hoping that you can, like, sort of close us out with what you think is one of the most important lessons that we've learned in the past 30 years, um, that plastic pollution research can teach us. And what do you want our listeners to carry into the rest of this series?

Jenna Jambeck: I do agree. I'm really happy that you did sort of this context setting episode because I think that is helpful cause this is a complex issue. Its very systems based. I think you and I are very much on the same page with that. We've talked about that a lot. And sort of, it is this web. One way to kind of think about that, and there's all these sorts of little levers in there. And so, I don't... I agree with you I don't want people to feel discouraged like they can't do anything because it is this complex system issue. But to... if you think of it sort of as a web and all these different levers you know even small things that you do can have an impact. Because eventually collectively these things, you know, come together and they can create this change. Now whether it be you do have the capacity to participate in cleanups, to make different choices at the grocery store, sort of vote with your pocketbook, write letters to your government, write letters to companies to tell them what you feel like you need or what you would like to see. All those things can make a difference. They really do when, you know, they come together. But then I think for me, feeling like, I don't know. I keep doing the work I'm doing, and some people are like: "How can you?" Like, given... I still feel optimistic, and part of this is because of the history, right? I mean, uh, we have seen a lot of change. Yes, that paper came out 10 years ago. Again, many things have happened, and it seems like a long time going away, but it's a short amount of time, and a lot of change has come. Look how much we've learned. Look how much further upstream we're thinking about...

Erin Simon: So much.

Jenna Jambeck: ...interventions Think about the justice issues we're incorporating. Think about all of these things that we've learned, and all of this gives me optimism moving forward.

We've got, you know, member states of the UN talking about a global agreement. We've got incredible university researchers developing new materials and thinking about how we can move forward. We, you know, we have amazing organizations, you know, working, across those lines, right? Talking, trying to break down those silos, talking, NGOs talking to industry.

Erin Simon: Yeah. Yeah

Jenna Jambeck: So that's what gives me hope, and I think we can all be a part of that. So, thanks for hosting this.

Erin Simon: Yeah. I'm...

Seth Larson: Love that.

Erin Simon: ...I love hearing when people have the same amount of energy and hope and optimism, and so it's especially, es- it's especially good to hear that from you. So thank you so much for that, Dr. Jambeck.

Seth Larson: Very much agree.

Jenna Jambeck: Thanks for having me.

Seth Larson: Dr. Jenna Jambeck, thank you so much for being here today. We will leave it there for now, but we really appreciate your time and, we will maybe talk again soon.

Jenna Jambeck: Thank you.

Erin Simon: Yeah.

Well, Seth, okay, we've wrapped up part one of the series. What stood out to you from our conversation with Jenna?

Seth Larson: Yeah, I loved that conversation. I learned a lot. Two things I really appreciated that stood out for me most of all, I really loved hearing about the research that Jenna did and how it really helped crystallize for people just how big of a problem this was. I mean, that seemed like kind of a watershed moment...

Erin Simon: Mm-hmm.

Seth Larson: ...when that research was published and really opened people's eyes to the nature of the, and the scale of the problem. The second thing I really appreciated was Jenna's explanation of our current recycling system and why it's failing to produce those results that we all really hoped for and were promised back in the day. So, those were my takeaways. How about you, Erin?

Erin Simon: Well, I really love Jenna's global perspective. She helps me to understand how this issue is different from community to community. So as WWF is working on solutions, we can make sure that they work for the people. We're helping to improve their lives. And then the second takeaway is one that continues to stick with me since she first started to do this research, was she opened our solution set from, you know, focusing on using less plastic and making it more recyclable as ideas that were, barely two... to if this material is leaking to the environment through its entire life cycle, and we have limited and lacking infrastructure globally to address it, which is a major root cause of why it's ending up in the oceans, we have a lot more opportunities to solve this problem than just those two.

Seth: Yeah.

Erin: And so, she gives me hope in that sort of level setting of the root cause of this problem.

Seth Larson: Yeah. Well, with that, I want to say another thanks to Jenna for joining us today. It was a great conversation, and we will be back in two weeks with part two of our miniseries on the plastic pollution crisis, where we're going to be talking about the present reality of this situation we're dealing with, and we'll be hearing from the corporate perspective about what one company is trying to do about it.

Erin Simon: Yeah, I can't wait. I'll see you then.

Seth Larson: See you then, Erin.