The Map of Plastic Waste

In this video I give you 5 things you can do to reduce plastic waste. The #teamseas movement is great, but there is so much more we can do to reduce the estimated 10 million tonnes of plastic and trash dumped into our rivers and oceans every day.

--- Links to Conservation Organisations ----

--- References ----
[1] How much plastic released into the ocean each day, and how much gets recycled
[3] Average plastic use per capita per year
[4] Average UK and US plastic use per capita per year
[5] 93% of bottled water contains microplastics
[6] Exposure to microplastics is bad for women’s and men’s health
[7] Plastic Recycling is and Actual Scam
[8] How many times can plastic be recycled
[9] 90% of plastic from 10 rivers
[10] The Ocean Cleanup’s poor track record
[11] A lot of ocean plastic end up getting washed up on the shorelines
[12] Reduce flow of ocean plastic by 80% by 2040

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Special thanks to Virginia Schutte and Kurtis Baute for their helpful advice.

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--- Credits ---
Writer, art, animation and edited by Dominic Walliman
I use Adobe Illustrator and After Effects for the graphics (for the many people who ask :)

--- Chapters ---
00:00 Setting the Scene
01:55 1: Regulation
02:48 2: Reduce Plastic Use
04:15 3: Recycling is Not The Answer
05:02 4: Educate Ourselves
05:56 5: Cleanup
06:24 Team Seas Funds and Other Conservation Groups

[BackYardScience]

Is #5 on the identification of plastics chart polypropylene? If so, then I can tell you that it is indeed recyclable at least 3 times. But after the third melt, it tends to start becoming extremely brittle and looses a lot of tensile strength. I know because I used to work as an auditor and lab technician for one of the biggest recyclers of plastics and polymers in North America for 3 years. I would literally take samples of the plastic coming in off the rail cars before it ever went in to be recycled. Roughly 50% of the plastic that came in that wasn't virgin plastic was polypropylene. In the applications that it was being used for, it certainly worked and held up to rigorous testing. I ran tests on the plastic itself before it could ever be used as a lab technician, but before I did that job I tested the plastic products as an auditor to ensure that they stood up to the quality tests. I pretty much made sure that the actual quality checkers and press technicians we're doing their jobs. But I can say for a fact that they recycled probably 100, 000lbs of polypropylene a day. Probably around the same for polyethylene. Especially HDPE as it isn't buoyant. Most of their products were underground pipes and water storage systems that are meant to last for 30+ years. So it has to be dense so that flooding won't cause it to try to float and come up out of the ground. But yeah, I don't know why it says that polypropylene can't be recycled, because we recycled tons of it every day at my old job. Never had to do anything special to it or anything like that. Just maybe add 1%-2% of a dye to make it turn black, and that was mostly carbon black.

[derschone]

The best take on team seas so far!

It's a really good project but kind of fails to address the scope of the problem entirely.
When people hear millions of pounds of plastic they think it's a lot because it is a lot. But there is so much more you can't even imagine it

[Invictus_Mithra]

I'm noticing a trend between companies and governments shifting the blame from themselves to us. You highlighted it here with the plastic companies and the same is true for oil companies promoting the idea of things such as a personal carbon footprint.

[mediaaccount]

The first question I had when I heard about #TeamSeas was "How much of a dent is that?" Thank you for getting straight to the numbers.

[KeyMan]

This is the best #teamseas video I’ve seen. Practical actionable advice and proper context for how big the problems are.

[BreakingTaps]

Cheers for this video, I'm linking to it from a pinned comment on my video. While well intentioned, initiatives like TeamSeas can cynically be seen as a smokescreen to make the consumer feel they are responsible for all the blame (e.g. recycling 2.0). We take part obviously, but real change has to come from legislation and holding companies accountable, which beach cleanups will not do. I wanted to speak to this in my video but didn't feel like I had enough knowledge on the subject to really talk about it authoritatively. Thanks for addressing it, will be forwarding your video to folks!

(Although I did include a hefty disclaimer about TOC... )

[Donmegamuffin]

A Fantastic, if not more critical, look at this campaign, and the problems it's trying to tackle. Great stuff!

[shipwreck]

It's my hope that the TeamSeas is more of an eye opening project. The more things like this that we do, the more people will realize that this is a problem.
It's difficult to raise alarms with an army of tiny ants. But if those ants start making lots of noise, we'll start to get noticed.
The environmental can't be repaired by movements like this, but they can repair our society's lack of knowledge about these issues. I think that's the main goal here.

[TheMvlproductionsinc]

Its refreshing to see a science focused channel see these truths in the system many ignore or dont see.

[grandunification]

Thank you so much for making this! I had no idea teamseas was happening until precisely now when every single youtuber I follow is posting a video about it. There are small things we can do, but this is ultimately plastic waste is a structural problem which needs structural solutions!!

[gavindheilly]

Thank you for this message and this movement

[dontmindme]

This is by far the best video in this campaign! So clear and helpful in understanding the problem and potential solutions. I'll be sure to pitch in with something

[MoempfLP]

The 10 rivers and the countries next to the mouth are:
Yangtze (China)
Indus (Pakistan)
Yellow (China)
Hai He (China)
Ganges (India)
Pearl (China)
Amur (China/Russia)
Mekong (Vietnam)
Nile (Egypt)
Niger (Nigeria)

These governments let millions of tons of plastic float into the ocean.

[ProgressiveEconomicsSupporter]

So happy, you also joined the initiative. So many videos of my favorite channels popping up in my list 😎🤩 spent money right away!

[Friek]

60 million dollars a day is about 20 billion dollars a year. That seems like a really cheap price to pay for plastic-free oceans. The world's GDP is about 85000 billion dollars a year, so those 20 billion are like 0.025% of that.

[andromeda]

Best video on plastics! Really opens eye why recycling doesn't really work. Keep it up!

[fuzzy_grizzly_bear]

So glad you joined the team seas group

[anironboot]

Read the National Geographic article on the cycle of plastics and how they end up in water ways. They have a hot map. Asia is actually the the "hotspot" for released plastics.

[one_under_all]

This is great🏅🤩👏. You should do more of this.

[Kokurorokuko]

Thank you for acknowledging that plastic pollution is pretty much companies' fault not normal people's. Until we put pressure on these corporations (many of which are in China) our efforts to clean to ocean will be useless.