# data[].attributes.body
Na een bezoek vorige week met mijn groep naar onze young talent coach hebben we ons werk laten zien en elkaar op ideeën gebracht hoe we dingen kunnen gaan aanpakken.

Ik zelf zat bij mijn eerste idee erg op het vervuiling aspect te verdiepen, maar kwam erachter dat dit moeilijker in beeld is te brengen dan eerst gedacht.

Na het beter nadenken over wat ''rethink plastic'' inhield ben ik gaan kijken naar mijn gemaakte beelden en hoe dit ook daarop slaat.

Ik maak al een tijd lang beelden rond de Maasvlakte, mede omdat dit een fascinerende plek is omdat het een stuk land is door mensen gemaakt. Het meest interessante is dat men nieuw land gaat maken en dan besluit er een industrieterrein van te maken.

Net als de Maasvlakte is plastic iets door mensen gemaakt waarin ook het gebruik ervan nog wel eens in twijfel getrokken kan worden.

Na het praten met wat lokale mensen die je heir vaak tegenkomt is ook het mooie hieraan dan mensen in al die puinhoop een stukje kunnen vinden voor hun eigen recreatie van vissen tot windsurfen.

Momenteel ben ik bezig het gebied te mappen om later een besluit te nemen welke vorm ik ga aannemen voor mijn eindproduct.

# data[].attributes.body
Ik ben van plan om me te verdiepen in hoe plastic het verkeer veiliger en duurzamer maakt. Ik wil een onderzoek doen in de vorm van een proef. Dit ziet er uit als volgt: Ik was van plan om op schaal 2 voertuigen te maken waarvan ik er een met plastic maak en een volledig van ijzer. En deze dan te proef ga stellen wat plastic voor verschil maakt naast prijs. Hoe ik dit ga uitvoeren ben ik nog aan het onderzoeken. Ik wil hiermee graag te weten komen of plastic ook positief is omdat het amper verweerd en omdat het een licht materiaal is. Ook lijkt het me interessant om te kijken naar hoe dingen ook duurzamer kunnen worden gebruikt of er vernieuwende materialen zoals carbon kan worden gebruikt

# data[].attributes.body
Mijn verzameld plastic ga ik in kleine stukjes snijden en het te smelten naar een klok. Door te spelen met verwachtingen wil ik de wijzer heel groot maken en hem heel snel laten draaien. De groote van de wijzer wil ik mee aangeven dat er een groot probleem is. Met de snelheid van de klok wil ik aangeven dat er snel een oplossing moet komen voor het probleem.

# data[].attributes.body
Momenteel ben ik van mijzelf en van mensen om mij heen zo veel mogelijk afval aan het verzamelen. Voor een andere school opdracht was de opdracht dat ik iets ging volgen om zo bij iets anders te komen. Ik ging plastic volgen op straat en maakte een timelapse om het vast te leggen. Toen kwam ik er achter dat je eindeloos door kan gaan omdat als je ergens staat is er altijd wel ergens een prulletje plastic te vinden. Ik heb gekozen om een klok te maken omdat plastic heel erg tijdsgebonden is. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan dat plastic een jong product is, er moet snel een oplossing komen voor het probleem maar ook tijdens die opdracht kwam ik er achter dat de zoektocht on eindig is. Zo kom ik steeds terug op het begrip tijd.

# data[].attributes.body
De vraag die ik mij zelf heb gesteld is wat stoort mij aan plastic. Wat mij het meeste stoort is het wegwerp plastic dat wij maar 1 keer gebruiken en meteen word weggegooid. Het is vaak niet meer 2 dagen in mijn huis en het ligt al in de prullenbak te wachten om of verbrand te worden of op een vuilnisbelt te komen. Ik wil mijn eigen afval redden van een onderdeel zijn van het plastic probleem.

# data[].attributes.body
verschillende mensen portretteren van iets boven knie tot gezicht. voor en achterkant voor completer beeld. beelden dubbelzijdig.

gesprekken met hun aangaan over onzekerheden of dingen die ze graag anders zouden willen zien aan zichzelf.

daarmee verder aan de slag. photoshop gebruiken als tool om bizarre extreme beelden te maken.

# data[].attributes.body
•2 wijken nemen
•in elke wijk 3 segmenten maken
•Per segment bekijken wat voor soort afval daar ligt, ordenen, fotograferen. Dan heb je een geheel plaatje
•6 interviews afleggen met mensen uit de wijk en 3 vragen stellen ( hierover meer binnenkort )

Doel: Beter inzicht krijgen wat voor afval je per segment in een wijk tegenkomt, achterhalen wie de mensen zijn die afval op straat gooien en waarom. Zoeken naar het psychologische aspect van zwerfafval

# data[].attributes.body
Naast dat er afval geproduceerd word leek het mij een goed idee om te gaan onderzoeken waarom plastic ( deels ) in onze leefomgeving komt. Wie zijn die mensen die dat doen? Hebben we zelf ooit welleens buiten de prullenbak gegooid? Het tofste zou een oplossing kunnen zijn, maar ik denk dat het onderzoek zelf een toffe reis is.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.ineos.com/nl/inch-magazine/articles/issue-14/plastic-kan-iets-fantastisch-zijn/
Waarom het leven zoals we het nu kennen, niet zou bestaan zonder plastic?

hebben we plastic nog wel zo veel nodig als dat we denken?
- voedselverpakkingen
- zero waste winkels
-

# data[].attributes.body
https://youtu.be/yaDx-WJAsaE

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.popsci.com/seagull-garbage-eating-plastic-litter/#:~:text=Nearly%2080%20percent%20of%20the,percent%20of%20which%20were%20plastic.&text=Seagulls%20have%20the%20ability%20to,what%20remained%20in%20their%20bellies.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/plastic-probleem/dierenleed/

# data[].attributes.body
Idee 1:
Hoe dieren onder het afval van plastic lijden is een naar iets. Vaak eten ze de kleine plastic deeltjes op en overlijden er vervolgens aan. Door onderhanden verstikking. Ze vergissen het voor eten en kunnen er geen onderscheid in maken van normaal voedsel. Schildpadden zien plastic tassen aan als kwallen bijvoorbeeld, die ze eten.

Doordat wij ook vis en vlees eten. Komen de microplastics ook in ons lichaam terecht. Wel iets minder heftig dan hoe dieren het binnen krijgen. Mijn momentele concept voor mijn project is om plastic in menselijke organen te verwerken. Zo gebeurd het namelijk ook met dieren. Dit zou in meerdere vormen kunnen gedaan worden met verschillende soorten materialen. Ik ben nog ruim aan het denken.

# data[].attributes.body
Aangezien ik het graag bij mezelf wil houden wil ik meer onderzoek gaan doen naar vervuiling van de zee en strandgebieden rondom mijn omgeving aangezien ik zelf ook wekelijks op het strand te vinden ben.

Problemen die zich daar voor doen:
- Gevaar voor dieren die erin kunnen stikken.
- Dieren kunnen het opeten en gaan dan dood.
- lelijk.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

Read this story and more in the June 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America-and the Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic-wrapped snacks-their plastic trash would likely still be around, four centuries later.

If the Pilgrims had been like many people today and simply tossed their empty bottles and wrappers over the side, Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world's oceans today, sponging up toxins to add to the ones already in them, waiting to be eaten by some hapless fish or oyster, and ultimately perhaps by one of us.

We should give thanks that the Pilgrims didn't have plastic, I thought recently as I rode a train to Plymouth along England's south coast. I was on my way to see a man who would help me make sense of the whole mess we've made with plastic, especially in the ocean.

Because plastic wasn't invented until the late 19th century, and production really only took off around 1950, we have a mere 9.2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6.9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a staggering 6.3 billion tons never made it to a recycling bin-a figure that stunned the scientists who crunched the numbers in 2017.

No one knows how much unrecycled plastic waste ends up in the ocean, Earth's last sink. In 2015, Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering professor, caught everyone's attention with a rough estimate: between 5.3 million and 14 million tons each year just from coastal regions. Most of it isn't thrown off ships, she and her colleagues say, but is dumped carelessly on land or in rivers, mostly in Asia. It's then blown or washed into the sea. Imagine five plastic grocery bags stuffed with plastic trash, Jambeck says, sitting on every foot of coastline around the world-that would correspond to about 8.8 million tons, her middle-of-the-road estimate of what the ocean gets from us annually. It's unclear how long it will take for that plastic to completely biodegrade into its constituent molecules. Estimates range from 450 years to never.

Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. Some are harmed visibly-strangled by abandoned fishing nets or discarded six-pack rings. Many more are probably harmed invisibly. Marine species of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, now eat microplastics, the bits smaller than one-fifth of an inch across. On Hawaii's Big Island, on a beach that seemingly should have been pristine-no paved road leads to it-I walked ankle-deep through microplastics. They crunched like Rice Krispies under my feet. After that, I could understand why some people see ocean plastic as a looming catastrophe, worth mentioning in the same breath as climate change. At a global summit in Nairobi last December, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme spoke of an "ocean Armageddon."

And yet there's a key difference: Ocean plastic is not as complicated as climate change. There are no ocean trash deniers, at least so far. To do something about it, we don't have to remake our planet's entire energy system.

"This isn't a problem where we don't know what the solution is," says Ted Siegler, a Vermont resource economist who has spent more than 25 years working with developing nations on garbage. "We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to dispose of it. We know how to recycle." It's a matter of building the necessary institutions and systems, he says-ideally before the ocean turns, irretrievably and for centuries to come, into a thin soup of plastic.

In Plymouth, under the gray gloom of an English autumn, Richard Thompson waited in a yellow slicker outside Plymouth University's Coxside Marine Station, at the edge of the harbor. A lean man of 54, with a smooth pate rimmed with gray hair, Thompson was headed for an ordinary career as a marine ecologist in 1993-he was working on a Ph.D. on limpets and microalgae that grow on coastal rocks-when he participated in his first beach cleanup, on the Isle of Man. While other volunteers zoomed in on the plastic bottles and bags and nets, Thompson focused on the small stuff, the tiny particles that lay underfoot, ignored, at the high tide line. At first he wasn't even sure they were plastic. He had to consult forensic chemists to confirm it.

There was a real mystery to be solved back then, at least in academic circles: Scientists wondered why they weren't finding even more plastic in the sea. World production has increased exponentially-from 2.3 million tons in 1950, it grew to 162 million in 1993 and to 448 million by 2015-but the amount of plastic drifting on the ocean and washing up on beaches, alarming as it was, didn't seem to be rising as fast. "That begs the question: Where is it?" Thompson said. "We can't establish harm to the environment unless we know where it is."

In the years since his first beach cleanup, Thompson has helped provide the beginnings of an answer: The missing plastic is getting broken into pieces so small they're hard to see. In a 2004 paper, Thompson coined the term "microplastics" for these small bits, predicting-accurately, as it turned out-that they had "potential for large-scale accumulation" in the ocean.

When we met in Plymouth last fall, Thompson and two of his students had just completed a study that indicated it's not just waves and sunlight that break down plastic. In lab tests, they'd watched amphipods of the species Orchestia gammarellus -tiny shrimplike crustaceans that are common in European coastal waters-devour pieces of plastic bags and determined they could shred a single bag into 1.75 million microscopic fragments. The little creatures chewed through plastic especially fast, Thompson's team found, when it was coated with the microbial slime that is their normal food. They spat out or eventually excreted the plastic bits.

Microplastics have been found everywhere in the ocean that people have looked, from sediments on the deepest seafloor to ice floating in the Arctic-which, as it melts over the next decade, could release more than a trillion bits of plastic into the water, according to one estimate. On some beaches on the Big Island of Hawaii, as much as 15 percent of the sand is actually grains of microplastic. Kamilo Point Beach, the one I walked on, catches plastic from the North Pacific gyre, the trashiest of five swirling current systems that transport garbage around the ocean basins and concentrate it in great patches. At Kamilo Point the beach is piled with laundry baskets, bottles, and containers with labels in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, and occasionally, Russian. On Henderson Island, an uninhabited coral island in the South Pacific, researchers have found an astonishing volume of plastic from South America, Asia, New Zealand, Russia, and as far away as Scotland.

As Thompson and I talked about all this, a day boat called the Dolphin was carrying us through a light chop in the Sound, off Plymouth. Thompson reeled out a fine-mesh net called a manta trawl, usually used for studying plankton. We were close to the spot where, a few years earlier, other researchers had collected 504 fish of 10 species and given them to Thompson. Dissecting the fish, he was surprised to find microplastics in the guts of more than one-third of them. The finding made international headlines.

After we'd steamed along for a while, Thompson reeled the manta trawl back in. There was a smattering of colored plastic confetti at the bottom. Thompson himself doesn't worry much about microplastics in his fish and chips-there's little evidence yet that they pass from the gut of a fish into the flesh we actually eat. (See We Know Plastic Is Harming Marine Life. What About Us?) He worries more about the things that none of us can see-the chemicals added to plastics to give them desirable properties, such as malleability, and the even tinier nanoplastics that microplastics presumably degrade into. Those might pass into the tissues of fish and humans.

"We do know the concentrations of chemicals at the time of manufacture in some cases are very high," Thompson said. "We don't know how much additive is left in the plastic by the time it becomes bite-size to a fish.

"Nobody has found nanoparticles in the environment-they're below the level of detection for analytical equipment. People think they are out there. They have the potential to be sequestered in tissue, and that could be a game changer."

Thompson is careful not to get ahead of the science on his subject. He's far from an alarmist-but he's also convinced that plastic trash in the ocean is far more than an aesthetic problem. "I don't think we should be waiting for a key finding of whether or not fish are hazardous to eat," he said. "We have enough evidence to act."

How did we get here? When did the dark side of the miracle of plastic first show itself? It's a question that can be asked about many of the marvels of our technological world. Since helping the Allies win World War II-think of nylon parachutes or lightweight airplane parts-plastics have transformed all our lives as few other inventions have, mostly for the better. They've eased travel into space and revolutionized medicine. They lighten every car and jumbo jet today, saving fuel-and pollution. In the form of clingy, light-as-air wraps, they extend the life of fresh food. In airbags, incubators, helmets, or simply by delivering clean drinking water to poor people in those now demonized disposable bottles, plastics save lives daily.

In one of their early applications, they saved wildlife. In the mid-1800s, piano keys, billiard balls, combs, and all manner of trinkets were made of a scarce natural material: elephant ivory. With the elephant population at risk and ivory expensive and scarce, a billiards company in New York City offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could come up with an alternative.

As Susan Freinkel tells the tale in her book, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, an amateur inventor named John Wesley Hyatt took up the challenge. His new material, celluloid, was made of cellulose, the polymer found in all plants. Hyatt's company boasted that it would eliminate the need "to ransack the Earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer." Besides sparing at least some elephants, celluloid also helped change billiards from solely an aristocratic pastime to one that working people play in bars.

That's a trivial example of a profound revolution ushered in by plastic-an era of material abundance. The revolution accelerated in the early 20th century, once plastics began to be made from the same stuff that was giving us abundant, cheap energy: petroleum. Oil companies had waste gases like ethylene coming out the stacks of their refineries. Chemists discovered they could use those gases as building blocks, or monomers, to create all sorts of novel polymers-polyethylene terephthalate, for example, or PET-instead of working only with polymers that already existed in nature. A world of possibilities opened up. Anything and everything could be made of plastic, and so it was, because plastics were cheap.

They were so cheap, we began to make things we never intended to keep. In 1955 Life magazine celebrated the liberation of the American housewife from drudgery. Under the headline "Throwaway Living," a photograph showed a family flinging plates, cups, and cutlery into the air. The items would take 40 hours to clean, the text noted-"except that no housewife need bother." When did plastics start to show their dark side? You might say it was when the junk in that photo hit the ground.

Six decades later, roughly 40 percent of the now more than 448 million tons of plastic produced every year is disposable, much of it used as packaging intended to be discarded within minutes after purchase. Production has grown at such a breakneck pace that virtually half the plastic ever manufactured has been made in the past 15 years. Last year the Coca-Cola Company, perhaps the world's largest producer of plastic bottles, acknowledged for the first time just how many it makes: 128 billion a year. Nestlé, PepsiCo, and others also churn out torrents of bottles.

The growth of plastic production has far outstripped the ability of waste management to keep up: That's why the oceans are under assault. "It's not surprising that we broke the system," Jambeck says. "That kind of increase would break any system not prepared for it." In 2013 a group of scientists issued a new assessment of throwaway living. Writing in Nature magazine, they declared that disposable plastic should be classified, not as a housewife's friend, but as a hazardous material.

In recent years the surge in production has been driven largely by the expanded use of disposable plastic packaging in the growing economies of Asia-where garbage collection systems may be underdeveloped or nonexistent. In 2010, according to an estimate by Jambeck, half the world's mismanaged plastic waste was generated by just five Asian countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka.

"Let's say you recycle 100 percent in all of North America and Europe," says Ramani Narayan, a chemical engineering professor at Michigan State University who also works in his native India. "You still would not make a dent on the plastics released into the oceans. If you want to do something about this, you have to go there, to these countries, and deal with the mismanaged waste."

The Pasig River once flowed majestically through downtown Manila, capital of the Philippines, and emptied into pristine Manila Bay. It was a treasured waterway and civic point of pride. It's now listed among the top 10 rivers in the world that convey plastic waste to the sea. As many as 72,000 tons flow downstream each year, mostly during the monsoon. In 1990 the Pasig was declared biologically dead.

The Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission, established in 1999, is working to clean up the river, with some signs of success. Jose Antonio Goitia, the commission's executive director, says he is optimistic that the Pasig could be restored someday, although he acknowledges he has no easy way of doing that. "Maybe the best thing to do is ban plastic bags," he says.

The remaining challenges are clearly visible every day. The river is fed by 51 tributaries, some of them overflowing with plastic waste from squatter settlements that cantilever precariously over creek banks. A tributary near Chinatown, where rickety shanties are wedged between modern buildings, is so choked with plastic debris you can walk across it, forgoing the footbridge. Manila Bay's beaches, once recreational respites for greater Manila's 13 million residents, are littered with garbage, much of it plastic. Last fall Break Free From Plastic, a coalition including Greenpeace and other groups, cleaned a beach on Freedom Island, which is advertised as an ecotourism district; volunteers picked up 54,260 pieces of plastic, from shoes to food containers. By the time I visited a few weeks later, the beach was littered again with bottles, wrappers, and shopping bags.

The scene in Manila is typical of large, overcrowded urban centers across Asia. The Philippines is a densely populated nation of 105 million people that is still struggling with the most basic public health issues, including waterborne diseases such as typhoid and bacterial diarrhea. It's no surprise that it has trouble managing the explosion of plastic garbage. Manila has a metropolitan garbage collection system that stretches across 17 separate local governments-a source of chaos and inefficiency. In 2004 the region was already running out of land to safely dump garbage. The shortage of landfill space, and thus the crisis, continues today.

A small part of the slack is taken up by Manila's informal recycling industry, which consists of thousands of waste pickers. Armando Siena, 34, is one of them. He and his wife, Angie, 31, have lived their entire lives surrounded by trash. They were born on Smokey Mountain, an internationally notorious dump that was officially closed in the 1990s. They now live with their three children near Manila's waterfront in a one-room flat lit by a single bulb, furnished with a pair of plastic chairs, and lacking plumbing, bedding, or refrigeration. The flat is in a garbage-filled slum named Aroma, next to another slum named Happyland.

Every day Siena rides a rickety bicycle beyond Aroma's boundaries, scanning the streets for recyclable rubbish that he can stuff into his sidecar. Plastic soup containers are high-value finds, paying 20 pesos (38 cents) a kilogram. Siena sorts and sells his load to a junk shop owned by his uncle, who trucks the waste to recycling plants on the outskirts of Manila.

Waste pickers like Siena are part of the solution, some activists argue; they just need a living wage. In the Baseco waterfront slum in Manila, a tiny recycling shop operated by the Plastic Bank of Vancouver, British Columbia, pays a premium for bottles and hard plastic collected by waste pickers. It then sells that plastic at a higher price to multinationals, which market their recycled products as socially responsible.

Siegler, the Vermont economist, has worked in enough countries and run enough numbers to be skeptical of such schemes. "There is not enough value in plastics to make that work," he says. "It's cheaper to fund a solid waste management system than to subsidize collecting plastic."

The waste that clogs Manila's beaches and waterways reinforces Siegler's point. Much of it consists of sachets-tear-off packets that once held a single serving of shampoo, toothpaste, coffee, condiments, or other products. They are sold by the millions to poor people like Siena and his family, who can't afford to buy more than one serving at a time. Sachets blow around Manila like leaves falling from trees. They're not recyclable, so no waste picker will retrieve them. Crispian Lao, a member of the National Solid Waste Management Commission, says, "This segment of packaging is growing, and it has become a real challenge for solid waste management."

When Greenpeace cleaned the Freedom Island beach, it posted a tally of the brand names of the sachets its volunteers had collected. Nestlé ranked first, Unilever second. Litterbugs aren't the only ones at fault, says Greenpeace's Abigail Aguilar: "We believe that the ones producing and promoting the use of single-use plastics have a major role in the whole problem." A Unilever spokeswoman in Manila told me the company is developing a recyclable sachet.

After Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from radar screens in March 2014 while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the search for it extended from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean. It captivated a global audience for weeks. No sign of the wreckage appeared. On several occasions, when satellite images revealed collections of objects floating on the sea surface, hopes soared that they would turn out to be aircraft parts. They weren't. It was all trash-pieces of broken shipping containers, abandoned fishing gear, and of course, plastic shopping bags.

Kathleen Dohan, a scientist and the president of Earth and Space Research in Seattle, saw opportunity in the horror: The images from space were pushing a problem into view that had long been neglected. "This is the first time the whole world is watching," she told me at the time. "It's a good time for people to understand that our oceans are garbage dumps." Dohan sensed a tipping point in public awareness-and the events since suggest she may have been right.

The most heartening thing about the plastic waste problem is the recent explosion of attention to it, and even of serious, if scattered, efforts to address it. A partial list of the good news since 2014 would include, in no particular order: Kenya joined a growing list of nations that have banned plastic bags, imposing steep fines and jail time on violators. France said it would ban plastic plates and cups by 2020. Bans on plastic microbeads in cosmetics (they're exfoliants) take effect this year in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and four other countries. The industry is phasing them out.

Corporations are responding to public opinion. Coca-Cola, which also produces Dasani water, announced a goal to "collect and recycle the equivalent of" 100 percent of its packaging by 2030. It and other multinationals, including PepsiCo, Amcor, and Unilever, have pledged to convert to 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging by 2025. And Johnson & Johnson is switching from plastic back to paper stems on its cotton swabs.

Individuals are making a difference too. Ellen MacArthur, a British yachtswoman, has created a foundation to promote the vision of a "circular economy," in which all materials, including plastics, are designed to be reused or recycled, not dumped. Actor Adrian Grenier has lent his celebrity to the campaign against the plastic drinking straw. And Boyan Slat, 23, from the Netherlands, is charging ahead with his teenage vow to clean up the largest garbage patch in the North Pacific. His organization has raised more than $30 million to construct an ocean-sweeping machine that is still under development.

All of these measures help at some level-even beach cleanups, futile as they sometimes seem. A beach cleanup hooked Richard Thompson on the plastic problem a quarter century ago. But the real solution, he now thinks, is to stop plastic from entering the ocean in the first place-and then to rethink our whole approach to the amazing stuff. "We've done a lot of work making sure plastic does its job, but very little amount of work on what happens to that product at the end of its lifetime," he says. "I'm not saying plastics are the enemy, but there is a lot the industry can do to help solve the problem."

There are two fundamental ways industry can help, if it wants or is forced to. First, along with academic scientists such as Jambeck, it can design new plastics and new plastic products that are either biodegradable or more recyclable (see You Can Help Turn the Tide on Plastic. Here's How.). New materials and more recycling, along with simply avoiding unnecessary uses of the stuff, are the long-term solutions to the plastic waste problem. But the fastest way to make a big difference, Siegler says, is low tech. It's more garbage trucks and landfills.

"Everyone wants a sexy answer," he says. "The reality is, we need to just collect the trash. Most countries that I work in, you can't even get it off the street. We need garbage trucks and help institutionalizing the fact that this waste needs to be collected on a regular basis and landfilled, recycled, or burned so that it doesn't end up going all over the place."

That's the second way industry could help: It could pony up. Siegler has proposed a worldwide tax of a penny on every pound of plastic resin manufactured. The tax would raise roughly six billion dollars a year that could be used to finance garbage collection systems in developing nations. The idea never caught on. In the fall of 2017, though, a group of scientists revived the concept of a global fund. The group called for an international agreement patterned after the Paris climate accord.

At the Nairobi meeting in December, 193 nations, including the U.S., actually passed one. The United Nations Clean Seas agreement doesn't impose a tax on plastic. It's nonbinding and toothless. It's really just a declaration of a good intention-the intention to end ocean plastic pollution. In that way it's less like the Paris Agreement and more like the Rio de Janeiro treaty, in which the world pledged to combat dangerous climate change-back in 1992. Norway's environment minister, Vidar Helgesen, called this new agreement a strong first step.

Staff writer Laura Parker and photographer Randy Olson last worked together on a feature on the vanishing Ogallala aquifer, which was published in the August 2016 issue.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
We Depend on Plastic. Now We're Drowning in It.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The miracle material has made modern life possible. But more than 40 percent of it is used just once, and it's choking our waterways.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Plastic has thousands of uses, its versatility and virtual indestructability practically unmatched in the world of synthetic materials.

Since first developing plastic in 1907, we have melded and moulded the material to fulfil our needs and desires. From bags and milk bottles to agriculture and transportation, plastic is everywhere, useful and convenient.

But we could be yet to realise the true cost of the synthetic behemoth we have created.

Both land and sea are affected by plastic waste, mainly because it is so durable. It isn't just large pieces that pose a threat, however - microplastics are amassing in colossal quantities, sometimes in parts of the ocean that have never been seen by humans before.

Marine biologist and microplastics expert Dr Lucy Woodall is a scientific associate at the Museum.

Currently a researcher at the University of Oxford and Principal Scientist with Nekton, Lucy sheds light on just how deep our plastic problem is.

The plastic planet

Plastic is everywhere, and the ocean is awash with it.

According to figures published in 2015, from the surface all the way down to the deep sea, a gargantuan eight million tonnes of plastic amasses each year.

Lucy says, 'These figures come from what we know goes to landfill, and what is known to go through other pathways - for example it gets burnt and recycled. We then assume that the rest of it ends up in the ocean.'

Scientists have been able to calculate the quantity of plastic in the ocean by extrapolating from the amount collected in nets during their studies of the surface.

'It's relatively easy to see what is on the surface, but we don't know exactly what is floating mid-water or on the seabed,' says Lucy.

'A lot of my research is looking at the seabed, but we don't have enough data to be able to estimate the figure there yet.'

A threat to marine life

Microplastics, one aspect of the world's plastic problem, are pieces of plastic less than five millimetres in length, according to a universally accepted description from the USA's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

'We have a maximum size, but there is no minimum limit - they can become small enough to be classed as nano, so when you can't see them anymore,' says Lucy.

From the largest pieces to the unseen, plastic is affecting life in the deep blue.

'You have the problems of ingestion and entanglement, but they can also be used for organisms to raft. Animals can use plastic as a conduit to get from one side of the ocean to the other.'

'This is potentially damaging if you get something non-native coming in and thriving. We know invasive species are bad terrestrially, like in Australia with rabbits. Less is known about this in the ocean, although it is just as damaging. One well-known example of this is lionfish in the Caribbean.'

Plastic also has the ability to carry pathogenic microbes across the ocean, potentially impacting life as it travels.

It can also act like a sponge, pulling in other chemicals.

Lucy explains, 'Some organic pollutants are hydrophobic, and sit on the surface of the water. They want to get into the plastic away from the water, so you end up with a lot of them concentrated in the plastic.

'If that plastic then gets ingested, what happens to those chemicals? Some are released in the organisms when they are ingested.'

Studies have shown that this significantly increases the concentration of organic pollutants in an animal, compared with organisms that haven't eaten plastic.

Munching on microplastics

Plastic is virtually indestructible - a virtue which helped make the material such a commercial success. Aside from being incinerated, it is a problem that will almost never go away.

Left to itself, plastic will get infinitely smaller, but never fully disappear.

Lucy says, 'Microplastics are probably in every food we eat. They're in my cup of tea. I am breathing them in. We are exposed to them every day.

'But even if we stopped all plastic from going into the environment tomorrow, we would probably see an increase in microplastics. This is because some plastics come into the ocean when they are small, but most of them degrade into fragments from other large items. '

One issue is that there are many products that are not commonly known to be made, at least in part, of plastic.

Lucy explains, 'Cigarette butts, babies' nappies, insulation - a lot of the products we make are made up of lots of different types of materials that are all connected together, so it's really difficult to break them up to recycle them.

'This is a human made problem, and what we need to do is start stemming the sources.'

The microbead ban

Plastics are now in parts of our oceans that humans have never seen.

Lucy says, 'For some of the places I go to as a researcher I am lucky enough to be the first human ever to see that bit of seabed, and I will still find bits of plastic.'

'We need to think beyond clean-up. You cannot strain every bit of ocean, and even if we could, you would be getting rid of all the biology, making it useless.

'We need to think about plastic before it gets into the ocean. We need to make sure there is appropriate waste management.

'Then we need to look at what we do every day. We need to value plastic. We should be buying it, not just for the cost up to now, but actually buying it through to the end of its life.'

At the beginning of 2018, the long-awaited microbead ban came into effect in the UK, preventing companies from producing wash-off cosmetic products that contain plastic particles. Products that include these purposefully manufactured microplastics, such as exfoliating scrubs and toothpastes, were not purchasable from June 2018.

Although this is a step in the right direction, it is not the end of the discussion on plastic use and waste.

'Microbeads in cosmetics are a tiny, tiny proportion of all plastic. They account for less than 2% of microplastics in the ocean, and that is an even tinier proportion of our general plastic problem,' explains Lucy.

'One-use plastic items and packaging are a much bigger problem. The next thing the government is looking at is things like plastic water bottles and one-use cups.'

But the answers to the plastic problem are not often as clear-cut as they may seem at first.

'It's an easy solution to say we just won't have plastic packaging, when actually that type of packaging means that some of our food products aren't wasted. If we use plastic bottles instead of glass, it's cheaper and better for the environment in terms of fuel used.

'I couldn't do my work if I didn't use plastic every day. It would be too expensive not to.

'Plastic is a positive thing. We just need to learn how to value it and use it appropriately.'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Just how bad is the world's plastic problem?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dr Lucy Woodall discusses plastic pollution, microplastics and ocean ecology. What can we do about plastic before it's too late?

# data[].attributes.body
kleding erbij gaan betrekken. kleding van gerecycled plastic. Denk aan jurken broeken truien.
Of juist plastic wat je op straat vind onbewerkt gebruiken als kleding dus plastic tassen, verpakkingen enz.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.vice.com/nl/article/wx8mdq/criminele-bendes-verdienen-grof-geld-aan-plastic-afval?utm_source=vicefbned&utm_content=1617710089&utm_medium=VICE+Nederland&fbclid=IwAR2BMKh8AoGBqxVdPOu-iQYCtB9iEC4529J2LNLXg6VL_tG0sDLici2U67Y

# data[].attributes.body
http://gert.tv/?p=522

# data[].attributes.body
http://roxypaine.com/machines

# data[].attributes.body
https://smile-plastics.com/

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.dezeen.com/2021/01/06/haneul-kim-stack-stool-face-masks-design/

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.dezeen.com/2018/09/27/the-rising-use-of-recycled-plastic-in-design-is-bullshit-says-jan-boelen/

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.mcu.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DSC0330-1024x680.jpg

# data[].attributes.body
vaak word plastische chirurgie als vooral iets negatiefs gezien. mensen noemen je al vrij snel ''nep' als je iets hebt laten doen, of als je je foto's op een bepaalde manier bewerkt. ik besloot daar wat dieper over na te denken en toen kwam ik bij de conclusie dat ik die mening heel kort door de bocht vind.

ik dacht daarna meteen aan de videoclip FACESHOPPING van de artiest SOPHIE. in die video gebruikt ze allerlei effecten op haar gezicht waarbij ze verteld I'M REAL WHEN I SHOP MY FACE. ik vind dat een hele interessante denkwijze omdat zij juist in dit geval photoshop gebruikt om haarzelf beter te kunnen uiten.

met die insteek zou ik graag mijn project willen voortzetten.

# data[].attributes.body
Mijn idee is om een kunstwerk te maken door middel van het ordenen van flessen doppen. Hiermee kun je allerlei toffe dingen maken. Terwijl je tegelijkertijd ook laat zien hoe tof je plastic kunt hergebruiken.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQd70fOSPA8

# data[].attributes.body
Het 1e idee dat in mij opkwam was eigenlijk meteen: fashion. Maar wat wil ik precies in mode laten zien? Daar ben ik tot op de dag van vandaag nog steeds mee bezig. Ik kwam laatst deze plastic jurk tegen en dit was precies wat er in mijn hoofd zat. Wellicht dat ik hiermee kan samenwerken.

# data[].attributes.body
plastische chirurgie, een onderwerp wat ik ontzettend interessant en indrukwekkend vind! Ik zou het erg mooi en fascinerend vinden om verschillende gezichten te fotograferen zodat je verschil kan zien in de mensheid.

# data[].attributes.body
https://wsvkunststoffen.nl/kunststoffen/introductie-mbt-kunststoffen/#:~:text=De%20eerste%20kunststof%20die%20gebruikt,Amerikaanse%20uitvinder%20van%20Belgische%20afkomst.&text=Zo'n%20beetje%20alle%20andere,van%20de%20twintigste%20eeuw%20uitgevonden.

Positieve eigenschappen

Licht in gewicht

Sterk en redelijk duurzaam

Slijtvast

Redelijk trillingsvrij

Alle kleuren leverbaar

Goed ten opzichte van de alternatieven

Isolatoren van warmte en elektriciteit

Gemakkelijk te vervormen en bewerken

Artikel over een schimmel die plastic verteerd en vervolgens kan worden geconsumeerd

https://weet-magazine.nl/plastic-etende-schimmel/

# data[].attributes.body
plastic soup foundation:
https://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/2019/06/we-eten-drinken-en-ademen-meer-dan-100-000-microplastics-per-jaar/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Elk jaar sterven er wereldwijd zo'n zeven miljoen mensen aan de gevolgen van luchtverontreiniging, waarvan ruim twintigduizend in Nederland en België. In dit nummer kijken we naar de effecten van luchtvervuiling op onze gezondheid en het milieu - én mogelijke oplossingen voor het probleem.

Verder:

Het levensverhaal van muzieklegende Aretha Franklin;

Nieuw ontdekte insecten in de Amazone;

Zeldzame floridapanters;

Megabosbranden in Californië en Australië

Essay: hoe 'charisma' dieren kan redden.

'Aaibaar': welke soorten zijn te redden?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elk jaar sterven er wereldwijd zo'n zeven miljoen mensen aan de gevolgen van luchtverontreiniging, waarvan ruim twintigduizend in Nederland en België. In dit nummer kijken we naar de effecten van luchtvervuiling op onze gezondheid en het milieu - én mogelijke oplossingen voor het probleem.

# data[].attributes.body
waar is microplastic in te vinden?

bier

honing

kraanwater

theezakjes

zeezout

zeevoedsel, zoals mosselen en garnalen

Cosmetica, zoals (vloeibare) make-up, oogschaduw, lippenstift

Verzorgingsproducten, zoals douchegel, deodorant, gezichtscrème, handzeep, shampoo, tandpasta en zonnebrandmiddel

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Microplastic zit overal. Velen maken zich er weleens zorgen over. Deze kleine plasticdeeltjes kunnen schadelijk zijn voor de gezondheid en het milieu. Hoe voorkom je dat je er onnodig aan wordt blootgesteld?

Wat is microplastic?

Microplastics zijn stukjes plastic van minder dan 5 millimeter groot. Deze deeltjes belanden in het milieu en hopen zich daar op. Ze zijn niet afbreekbaar, maar vallen uiteen in steeds kleinere stukjes. En ze zijn onmogelijk op te ruimen. Microplastic - en het nog kleinere nanoplastic - komt voor in de oceanen en rivieren, in de lucht en in de grond. En in ons voedsel. Bij onderzoeken werd al microplastic gevonden in:

bier

honing

kraanwater

theezakjes

zeezout

zeevoedsel, zoals mosselen en garnalen

Is microplastic schadelijk?

Er is nog veel onduidelijk over de schadelijkheid van microplastics. In de natuur zijn wel negatieve effecten te zien. Dieren krijgen kleine stukjes plastic binnen met hun eten en zo komt het in de voedselketen.

Voor onze eigen gezondheid is er geen acuut gevaar. Wel zijn er zorgen voor gevaren op de lange termijn. Plastic bevat namelijk vaak allerlei schadelijke stoffen. Denk aan weekmakers, vlamvertragers of stabilisators. Dit soort stoffen kunnen hormoonverstorende eigenschappen hebben, of effecten op ons immuunsysteem als je ze binnenkrijgt. Wat de gevaren precies zijn, wordt op dit moment nog onderzocht.

Hoe ontstaat microplastic?

De grootste bron van microplastic is plastic afval. Denk aan plastic verpakkingen, tasjes, flessen of visnetten die in het milieu terechtkomen en daar uiteenvallen tot steeds kleinere deeltjes.

Andere grote bronnen van microplastic zijn slijtage van autobanden en slijtage van synthetische kleding tijdens dragen en wassen. Deze deeltjes worden 'secundaire microplastics' genoemd.

Een klein deel van het microplastic in het milieu is afkomstig van producten die we dagelijks gebruiken, zoals cosmetica, verzorgingsproducten, schoonmaak- en wasmiddelen. Deze heten 'primaire microplastics'.

In welke producten zit microplastic?

Via het milieu komt microplastic in de voedselketen en onze leefomgeving terecht. Een deel van het microplastic belandt op die manier onbedoeld in producten zoals: honing, bier, mosselen, garnalen en zeezout.

Een ander deel van de microplastics komt met opzet in producten, omdat fabrikanten ze eraan toevoegen. Het gaat dan om kunststoffen die de producten bepaalde eigenschappen geven. Deze kunststoffen heten synthetische polymeren. Ze bepalen onder andere de dikte, het uiterlijk en de stabiliteit van het product. Je vindt microplastic daarom in allerlei producten:

Cosmetica, zoals (vloeibare) make-up, oogschaduw, lippenstift

Verzorgingsproducten, zoals douchegel, deodorant, gezichtscrème, handzeep, shampoo, tandpasta en zonnebrandmiddel

Schoonmaakproducten, zoals toiletreiniger, schuurmiddel, allesreiniger, (hand)afwasmiddel, vaatwastabletten

Wasmiddelen, waaronder waspoeder, vloeibaar wasmiddel en capsules

Tuinproducten, zoals kunstmest

Verf en lak

In wasmiddelen worden ze bijvoorbeeld gebruikt om verkleuring van de was of een grauwsluier te voorkomen. Bij een Oostenrijks onderzoek naar wasmiddelen in 2019 bleek aan 119 van de 300 onderzochte wasmiddelen plastic te zijn toegevoegd.

Plastic korrels vervangen

In scrub-producten, whitening tandpasta's en schuurmiddelen zitten harde bolletjes voor een schurend effect. Deze bolletjes heten microparels of microbeads. Deze bolletjes worden teruggevonden in het milieu en zijn niet afbreekbaar. Cosmeticafabrikanten vervangen ze daarom steeds vaker door andere ingrediënten. De brancheverenigingen van cosmeticafabrikanten NCV en reinigings- en onderhoudsproducten NVZ zeggen de microbeads in 2020 helemaal uit hun producten te verwijderen. In plaats van plastic gebruiken ze natuurlijke materialen, zoals vruchtenpitten, zand, maalsel van bamboe of silica (een soort kwartssteen).

Vloeibare plastics voegen producenten nog wel toe. Voor hen zijn dat namelijk belangrijke ingrediënten. De milieuorganisatie Plastic Soup Foundation wil echter dat ál het plastic uit producten verdwijnt, omdat niet duidelijk is wat de gevolgen van deze vloeibare plastics zijn in het milieu.

Gelukkig kunnen cosmetica, verzorgings-, schoonmaak- en wasmiddelen ook zonder microplastics worden geproduceerd. Dat bewijzen fabrikanten met één van de ecologische keurmerken (zie hieronder). Zo'n keurmerk garandeert dat een product geen microplastic bevat.

Keurmerken voor microplasticvrije producten

Producten zonder microplastic herken je één van de volgende keurmerken:

Europees Ecolabel: het milieukeurmerk van de Europese Unie voor cosmetica, verzorgings- en schoonmaakproducten, doe-het-zelf en tuinieren.

Demeter: het keurmerk van de biologisch-dynamische landbouw, cosmetica, verzorging en voeding.

Cosmos Organic: het Europese keurmerk voor natuurcosmetica; ook Charte Cosmebio, Ecocert en BDIH vallen hieronder.

Nordic Ecolabel : het Scandinavisch milieukeurmerk voor onder andere schoonmaakmiddelen, cosmetica, verzorgingsproducten en wasmiddelen.

NaTrue: wereldwijd keurmerk voor natuurcosmetica.

Zero plastics inside: keurmerk van Beatthemicrobead.org voor bedrijven die hun ingrediëntenlijst met de organisatie delen en de '100%-microplasticvrij'-verklaring ondertekenen.

Europees verbod

Wereldwijd zijn er diverse initiatieven om het gebruik van wegwerpplastics aan banden te leggen. In Europa is er bijvoorbeeld het Europees Plastics Pact. Doel is dat in 2025 al het plastic dat we gebruiken herbruikbaar of recyclebaar is.

Het Europees agentschap voor chemische stoffen ECHA werkt momenteel aan een verbod op toegevoegd microplastic dat niet biologisch afbreekbaar is. ECHA wil ze vanaf 2022 in zes jaar tijd stap voor stap verbieden in producten als cosmetica, wasmiddelen, verzorgings-, schoonmaak- en onderhoudsproducten, verf en lak, bouwmaterialen en tuinproducten.

Plasticprobleem

Kleding

Koop zo min mogelijk synthetische kleding en kies voor natuurlijke materialen, zoals katoen, linnen en wol. Of voor viscose en lyocell. Milieucentraal heeft een handig overzicht welke kledingstoffen slecht zijn voor het milieu

Was synthetische kleding zo min mogelijk. Je kunt ook een special wasnet gebruiken om de microvezels tijdens het wassen op te vangen, zoals de Guppyfriend

Auto

Laat de auto zoveel mogelijk staan

Wissel op tijd je winterbanden om en zorg voor de juiste bandenspanning, want dan slijten de banden minder

Boodschappen doen

Vermijd waar mogelijk plastic verpakkingen

Scan producten met de Beat the microbeat-app om te ontdekken of er microplastics in zitten

Kies cosmetica, verzorgings- en schoonmaakproducten, wasmiddelen, verf en beits met een keurmerk dat garandeert dat ze microplasticvrij zijn.

Microplastics herkennen op de verpakking

Microplastics zijn tussen de kleine lettertjes van de ingrediëntenlijst lastig te herkennen. Het meestgebruikt zijn deze:

Tandpasta: Polyethylene (PE) en/of Polyethylene glycol;

Vloeibare zeep: Polystyrene/Acrylates copolymer;

Scrub-producten: Polyethylene (PE) en/of Polypropylene (PP).

Andere plastics zijn onder andere:

Acrylate Copolymer, Acrylate Crosspolymer (ACS)

Dimethicol

Methicone

Polyacrylamide

Polyamide, Nylon

Polyacrylate

Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)

Polyquaternium

Polyethylene (PE), Polyethylene glycol, Polythylene terephthalate

Polypropylene (PP), Polypropylene glycol

Polystyrene

Polyurethane

PVP (Polyvinylpyrrolidone of polyvidone/ povidone)

Siloxane

Op Beat the microbeat.org staat een uitgebreidere lijst van microplastics.

Consumenten bezorgd

Van de ruim 11.500 leden van het Consumentenbondpanel die in maart 2020 onze enquête over microplastic invulden, maakt maar liefst 74% zich vanwege microplastic zorgen over z'n gezondheid.

De ondervraagden blijken best bereid bij te dragen aan het verkleinen van het plasticprobleem.

75% recyclet zijn plastic

61% gebruikt zo min mogelijk plastic

19% koopt liefst kleding van natuurlijk materiaal

11% wast synthetische kleding bewust wat minder vaak

Bij het boodschappen doen houdt 45% rekening met microplastics. Bijvoorbeeld door te letten op plastic verpakkingen. Maar het gebrek aan duidelijke informatie is een groot probleem, vindt ons panel. De helft zegt in de winkel nooit rekening te houden met microplastics, vooral omdat ze niet weten hoe. 86% zou het liefst een logo zien op producten die microplastics bevatten.

Smaakt naar meer?

De Consumentengids is hét tijdschrift voor kritische consumenten. Ontdek welke producten en diensten goed uit onze tests komen. En wat je rechten zijn als consument.
Lees meer artikelen
Lees ook:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Microplastics in voeding en andere producten

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Microplastic zit overal. Velen maken zich er weleens zorgen over. Deze kleine plasticdeeltjes kunnen schadelijk zijn voor de gezondheid en het milieu. Hoe voorkom je dat je er onnodig aan wordt blootgesteld? Microplastics zijn stukjes plastic van minder dan 5 millimeter groot. Deze deeltjes belanden in het milieu en hopen zich daar op.

# data[].attributes.body
ik wil in mijn project laten zien  hoe veel microplastic mensen binnen per jaar. ( dit is verwerkt in eten, tandpasta etc.)
hierin wil ik ook verbinden hoe de 'toekomst mens' hier door uit gaat zien.

hierin word verwerkt kleding, eten.
1e moodbord >

# data[].attributes.headline
18 juni; Prototypes presenteren ; selectie door commissie YKSI + DDW

# data[].attributes.subject
18 juni; Prototypes presenteren ; selectie door commissie YKSI + DDW

# data[].attributes.headline
Bezoek expo Kunst + Kunststof ; d.d. 14 mei

# data[].attributes.subject
Bezoek expo Kunst + Kunststof ; d.d. 14 mei

# data[].attributes.headline
1 april v.al. 14.00u Pitches Young Talents YKSI 

# data[].attributes.subject
1 april v.al. 14.00u Pitches Young Talents YKSI 

# data[].attributes.body
1. Kita Keus

2. Iris Bekker

3. Gundega Strauberga

# data[].attributes.body
Aan de rechterkant van deze Padlet is ruimte om interessante bronnen en contacten met elkaar te delen →

# data[].attributes.body
Welk subthema binnen Rethinking Plastic onderzoek je? Waar ligt je focus/belangstelling/drive/passie?

# data[].attributes.body
Hoe ga je je doel bereiken en welke ontwikkeling denk je door te maken op het gebied van:

- Experimenteren
- Onderzoeken
- Samenwerken en netwerken
- Betekenis geven
- Reflecteren
- Persoonlijke ontwikkeling

# data[].attributes.body
Mijn idee is om een soort beeld te maken van afval plastic. In mijn beeld wil ik de zee / natuur centraal hebben. En dan voornamelijk wat er in leeft. Zo kun je van plastic flesjes, dopjes en nog veel meer van alles maken. Dit is meer een project om te laten zien hoe de natuur steeds meer van plastic begint te lijken door alle plastic afval.