Starting Upstream: The Benioff Ocean Initiative’s Intervention into River Plastic Waste

When we think of marine plastics, our minds likely jump straight to the open ocean: turtles and seahorses swimming among refuse, or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, itself. But how often do we think upstream in the literal sense?

The Benioff Ocean Initiative (BOI), a nonprofit under UC Santa Barbara, has done just that. In a white paper released in April 2019, BOI pointed out that 80% of marine pollution originates on land — as opposed to, say, abandoned fishing gear or trash from barges and boats. Furthermore, the paper explained that rivers are a key conduit for this waste, and the vast majority of our marine trash originates from just 20 countries. Uncovering this information gave BOI an idea about where one could target global cleanup efforts.

Aerial view of “Mr. Trash Wheel” river plastics intervener, Baltimore, MD (Clearwater Mills)

Now, BOI is putting their money where their mouth is. Just over a month ago, the organization released an RFP seeking interdisciplinary pilot projects for an innovative plastic waste capture system in any river in the world. The winning proposal will receive $3 million to develop and deploy their project, as part of a jointly-funded program between BOI and the Coca-Cola Foundation.

We at SeaHive spoke with Molly Morse, Project Scientist with BOI. In terms of geography, she said, “The RFP is pretty open-ended. The only guidance is that it can be any river in the world that will intercept plastic waste before it enters the ocean.” More important, the proposal should demonstrate that the team thought critically about what approach would be most effective for their chosen river and region. From a technical standpoint, this means understanding the hydrology of the river system: the river’s shape, width, flow rate, and so on. Furthermore, although the waste capture technology is the premise of the project, communication is a major component. The technology will be used to draw attention in the local community to the problem of plastic pollution. As such, outreach should be targeted toward the local culture. “For instance,” explained Molly, “if it’s in a communist country vs. a democratic country, do you target the public or the government and decision makers to change policies?”

One other key consideration is what will be done with the waste after it is collected. The program requires that the waste be captured and disposed of properly. Ideally, this means plastics will be recycled; However, BOI recognizes that some of these projects would be in areas without recycling capacity. Furthermore, plastics that have been sitting in water tend to be degraded, low-quality plastic that may not be recyclable. Some possible solutions have been to allocate project funds to building recycling capacity, or to conduct a brand audit to find out where these materials are coming from. BOI is allowing organizations to approach that part of the project however they would like, but it is something that needs to be addressed.

Plastic waste in the Mekong River (Shutterstock)

Given the interdisciplinary nature of this project, it is likely that the winning team will have a variety of key members involved — namely, an engineering specialist, an environmental or watershed scientist, and a relationship with the local government or key stakeholders in the region. It may seem that these are tall orders, but according to Molly, BOI has been talking to people on every continent except Australia and Antarctica about marine plastic solutions. “There are folks and organizations all over the world who are thinking about this,” Molly explained, “It’s encouraging to see how much thought, time, and design are going into finding solutions all around the world.”

The RFP deadline is July 12. The BOI team will be reviewing proposals for the following month or two, and a decision should be made by September on the winning project. The program will tentatively launch by the end of 2019 and continue over the next four years. If you’re interested in applying, you can do so here, and for more information email boi-contact@ucsb.edu.

The SeaHive Guide to Plastic-Free Packaging: Minimizing Your Carbon Footprint

There’s a lot you can do to broaden your company’s environmental responsibility beyond just eliminating plastic in packaging. Below are a few areas where you can reduce your footprint.

Design Considerations

• Think about ways to minimize the overall size of the product that requires packaging. For example, with the Pakt One, we found a way to fold the bag so it fit neatly into a much lower profile box. Many bags are packaged with stuffing so that they look good on retail displays. By flat packing the Pakt One each bag required a third of the space of a stuffed bag which meant we could fit three times as many bags in a shipping container. This meant the ocean freight carbon footprint was also slashed by approximately two-thirds. The bonus is that cargo shipments like that are generally charged by volume so we were also cutting the freight costs by two-thirds.

• Instead of picking a box size from a supplier’s catalogue, design your own box to the dimensions of your product. Brown cardboard boxes are very inexpensive and you’ll increase the number of items that can be shipped at once if they are sized as small as possible. This reduces the total amount of fuel needed to get your product to the customer. And your product won’t be clanging around in a laughably-sized box (hint, hint Amazon).

• Pick packaging that is lightweight, reusable, and recyclable. Avoid using mixed materials as they’re harder to recycle. Plastic films with multiple layers of paper, plastic, and foil are hard to process. Bonded packaging (the paper envelopes with plastic bubbles inside) is also difficult to recycle.

Choosing Locations

• Try to pick suppliers that are close to your factory. If your 3PL is close to your factory, that is great too but only if it is also central to where your products will be shipped. The goal is to reduce total shipping distances, and therefore the total fossil fuels needed to transport all the materials involved in your business.

Shipping

• Plan ahead! When you ship the product from the factory to your 3PL leave enough time so you can opt for sea shipment over air. The emissions are lower and it is much more cost-effective.

• Again, if your 3PL is located centrally within the territory that you ship the most product it will save on total distance shipped, cutting emissions.

These are just a few ways you can be more environmentally responsible when developing and shipping a product. We’re constantly learning more and will be updating you as we make more packaging and learn from our experiences. Please reach out if you have any questions about how we designed, sourced, or shipped our products. We’re happy to help you switch to plastic-free packaging any way we can.

The SeaHive Guide to Plastic-Free Packaging: Picking a 3PL That Can Support Your Plastic-Free Vision

Packaging is the major generator of plastic waste, responsible for almost half of the global total.  It’s important to pick a 3PL that shares your values on avoiding plastic packaging from the start. You’ll have a much smoother experience getting your product to customers if communication is strong and everyone is on board with packing and shipping plastic-free.

The front of our educational insert, which seemed a bit like a joke when plastic was thrown in.

Every 3PL will tell you they can avoid plastic for your products because they want your business. The reality is that warehouses have a lot of clients and there is high staff turnover. We experienced this with our first 3PL when they intermittently added plastic air pockets to boxes on accident. Pakt customers were pretty confused seeing the educational inserts reading “Did you notice your bag didn’t use any plastic packaging?” after removing the snake of plastic pillows from the package. After this mess and a few other challenges we decided to switch our 3PL. If you want to make sure you never have any slip-ups you can seek out a company that doesn’t use any plastic at all. If you’d like a recommendation, just send us a message.

A Pakt customer posted on socials that she got something rather unpleasant along with her bag.

If they aren’t a plastic-free 3PL make sure they can meet your requirements prior to agreeing to do business. This may mean a dedicated plastic-free zone or table in the warehouse and consistent training for employees. We even bought our own paper tape machines for our first 3PL in hopes that would help. Tour all the 3PLs you are considering to fully understand how they will keep their promise of plastic-free packaging before you make a decision.

There will always be challenges in shipping products but not having to worry if your products are arriving plastic-free will take a lot of stress out of the process.