Part 1: Liz Bonnin – Downing in Plastic

Our Blue Planet is facing one of the biggest threats in human history. Trillions of. Pieces of plastic are
choking the very lifeblood. Of our earth.

And every marine animal, from the smallest plankton to the planets largest creatures is facing this
new and growing threat.

But how much do we really know? About this plastic. Nick, very nice to meet you Mr. Come aboard.

Nice to meet.

I'm Liz Bonnin, a wildlife biologist. I'm tracking down the scientists who are trying to uncover the
scale of the plastic problem and what it means for life in our oceans. I'll be joining expeditions across
the globe in some of the most remote and inhospitable places to discover what's happening in our
oceans. Right now, my God. Look at it. I'll work with rescue missions attempting to save some of the
worst affected animals.

Oh God, the damage is unbelievable.

And meet the engineers racing to design radical solutions. The world has been shaken by the plastic
crisis, but can we turn the tide before it's too late?

This is the story of plastic in our oceans.

Australia in the Tasman Sea is Lord Howe Island.

I'm beginning my mission with a group of animals that scientists believe are the key indicators for
the health. Of our oceans. Sea birds Seabirds spend much of their life around plastic. They fly across
the world. Living on both the open ocean and the shorelines. They hunt on the surface of the sea,
where some plastic floats and beneath the waves where smaller fragments are suspended in the
water. And many eat almost anything they can find. Including plastic And one sea bird has recently
been discovered to eat more plastic relative to their size than any other animal in the ocean. The
flesh footed, shearwater (bird). 400 miles off the coast of Australia in the Tasman Sea is Lord Howe
Island. This Six Mile stretch of rock is home to the largest colony of flesh footed, shearwaters On the
planet. 40,000 of them migrate here every autumn. To the safety of the island's pristine rainforests.
Where they lay their eggs in Burrows.

It's just gone 8:00 o'clock here on Lord Howe Island in the middle of the Tasman Sea, and I'm about
to join a team of scientists and volunteers who have been gathering here every single year for the
past 12 years.

Towards the sound of the sea. The team is led by marine biologist Doctor Jennifer Lavers. For over a
decade, she's been investigating how plastic is affecting the shearwaters. She believes that these
birds hold the key to understanding how plastic could be harming all marine life.

All right, these are for self protection. The birds have quite sharp beaks and also very sharp claws, so
those will come in very handy.

OK. OK, OK, perfect. They're everywhere, they're scurrying everywhere and they're so dark they just
sort of appear. Out of nowhere a little. Bit too late for comfort for.

Me OK.
Tonight for the first time in their young lives, the shearwater chicks emerge from their Burrows.
From the moment they were born, they should have been fed a nutritious diet of fish and squid.
When their parents go hunting, they often mistake plastic for food. We hand over the chicks to Lord
Howe Islander Ian Hutton and Doctor Alex Bond, who carry out a delicate procedure.

OK, So what exactly are you doing now?

Well, we've measured this one and weighed him and now we're doing the final step, which is
leveraging, which is basically gently pumping a bit of water into the stomach. And getting him to
vomit into the basin. So if you like to hold him open Alex, let's see if we get. This down the throat.

Easy fella.

OK, so that's gone.

Into the story. Nicely done, very smooth.

Right pumping

Oh she.

And look at that. Stomach floor plastics.

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Ohh look at that yeah. The size of that. Sharp too, so the parents had to vomit that up to feed the
chick and then the chicks had that in the stomach and now just coughed it up.

So they're gradually with all the best intentions, feeding their chicks to death, potentially filling their
stomachs with big pieces of plastic.

Felt plastic on the way down there just now. I can feel it as the tube was going and I. Could feel
plastic scraping.

Can't believe how much is coming out.

Oh that man.

Oh my gosh, this is ridiculous.

I think that was blocking the throat, so he's having trouble getting it all out, and now that we've got
rid of that big bit, we might be able to remove it all. Amazing, isn't it?

I can't believe just.

Is this on average what you find about 20 pieces? How much do you normally find?

I think the record's about 260. That's a really bad bird in a chick. Yeah yeah.

In a chick.

Ohh, I'm in shock. I mean I, I knew there was a plastic problem. It's just. When you see.

You say it first hand, yeah?

My head's spinning already and it's our. First chick.

OK.
That's just mad when it's just yeah. Oh my God.

It's really, really hard to watch this poor little thing regurgitating plastic after plastic after plastic, and
that wasn't even a bad one. That was 19 pieces of plastic. So yeah, I'm I feel angry and emotional
and. Full of full of feelings I didn't quite expect would be. So strong right now.

That's about it, really.

38.2 Not much.

For the next three hours, we measure them, take feather and blood samples. And empty their
stomachs to increase their chances of survival.

So in the 12 years you've been doing this in in this location, what's changed? What have you seen
happening to this breeding colony?

The numbers have definitely fluctuated, but definitely more and more of the birds have plastic in
them and we are finding an increasing number of birds that seem to be. More heavily affected.

So quite a number of years ago, you know the. Average number of pieces. Of plastic per bird might
have been. Closer to perhaps? 5 or 10 pieces per bird, and now it's much closer to 30 or 40 pieces
per bird. So so things are shifting.

By 11:00 PM the birds have stopped emerging from their Burrows, and it's time to call it a night. I am
absolutely shattered. Or only are they long emotionally draining nights? But it's a relentless job. I'm
only doing it for one or two more nights. These guys are here for 16 nights.

The three months old shearwater chicks that left their Burrows tonight are beginning one of the
most astounding journeys in the natural world. They can't fly, yet their parents have left them to
fend for themselves and they've never Even seeing the sea.

And yet instinct drives them to begin an extraordinary endeavor waddling through the dense
rainforest in the dark, across the beaches and out through the pounding surf. Once there, they must
teach themselves to fly and hunt, and for those who manage to take off, they won't touch land again
for five years when they'll return to breed. But the shearwaters who have been fed plastic are often
so weighed down. They can't fly and so weak they can't get past the surf. Many simply won't make
it.

He's really, really bad.

Oh my gosh. This is what happens when they leave the colony in poor condition. They can't get up
off the surface of the water and they get tumbled in the waves and it exhausts them and this is how
they wash up on the.

Beach this one looks so nutritionally compromised. I can't imagine that he'd ever he'd ever make it.

The key for for these. Guys in the long term is in the absence of issues like plastic or other human
pressures is. The species can deal with a little bit of loss like this. It's when we start to put other
pressures like plastic into the environment that.

It's when you start seeing too many of these chicks on this beach in this condition or worse.

Exactly, so we'll put.

Him in a bag and we'll put him in a warm spot and we'll have a look for any others.
Realistically, we'll probably just let nature run its course.

How often do you find evidence of plastic ingestion on in the chicks that you gather on the beach
that haven't made it?

Virtually everyone. There's some kind of bottle cap for small fragments, or maybe the lid of a pen or
something like that.

I mean I there are there are very few places left on the planet that are so remote and pristine.
Seemingly then Lord Howe island. And yet even here. It shows what the rest of the world is doing,
impacts wildlife on even the remote islands everywhere.

Everywhere, and it's it's a global responsibility. It's that much is is without question. We head back to
the island lab to examine the dead chicks. Do we know the source of? Most of the plastics that you
find in the flesh footage your waters.

Unfortunately not a lot are what we call unidentifiable fragments, but every now and then we
encounter. Something that is really recognizable. So this is a jar of plastics from the flesh footed
shearwater here on Lord Howe Island.

How many birds contribute to this amount of plastic?

Maybe 50 to 100, give or take and right away we see some top offenders, so really common one
let's. Have a look here.

Ohh my good Lord, that is insane. Bottle caps bottle whole bottle caps. How does that go down the
throat of a 3 month old sheer water? I don't understand.

Great question at the top of Tetra packs. Maybe some boxed? Yeah, yeah, anything that we've really
ever made from plastic is. We know every bit of plastic ever made is still out there and the birds are
precision finding. Mechanisms they go out there in the ocean. They find it. They bring it back. And so
we are never surprised at what we find. In the ocean.

It's the most surreal thing to see. I cannot believe all of this has come out of sheer water stomachs.
Over the past 10 years, Jen and her team have had the disturbing task of recording the stomach
contents of every shearwater chick they've found.

So we've opened this chick up now and.

Quite a volume in here.

Her studies reveal that by weight, shearwaters eat the most plastic of any marine animal.

There's no doubt that this bird died as a result of this plastic ingestion. The contents of this bird's
stomach is the equivalent of a human eating 10 kilos of plastic. It's quite remarkable. But Jenn's
research has revealed that the plastic may be doing even more damage than first thought.

So if we hold this up to the line. In the last few months, she's discovered evidence that chemicals
found on plastic could be disrupting the. Bird's hormones. From these studies, we know that they
interfere with hormone production and the function of hormones in the bloodstream, and so the
bird or other animal can look completely normal on the outside and yet not actually be able to
reproduce and grow correctly.
More research needs to be done, but Jan now believes that even small amounts of plastic may
impact. A bird's health. We may have drastically underestimated the effect that plastic is having on
these animals and all of this can be in the plastics that these birds are ingesting in the Burrow.

Now you understand the complex challenge that scientists have to try and tease it all apart and
figure out the world that these sea birds now live in the challenge that they face.

This research into shearwaters has serious implications for the health of all marine life. Over 200
different marine species have been found to ingest plastic, but the question that scientists are still
grappling with is why they're eating it in. The first place. Fascinating new research suggests that
smell might play an important part. Algae growing on ocean plastic gives off a scent that acts like a
beacon, attracting a whole host of species. It's also thought that sea life may mistake tiny pieces of
plastic for fish, eggs, and plastic bags for jellyfish. But while research into what makes plastics so
attractive to sea life continues teams across the planet work around the clock to rescue as many
animals as they can. As I prepare to leave Lord Howe Island, the biggest question on my mind is how
we can even begin to clean up the overwhelming amount of plastic in our oceans. Predictions make
for grim reading. Reports say the amount of plastic we use and throw away. Is growing year on year
and some have suggested that by 2050 there will be more pieces of plastic in the ocean than fish.
I've read about valiant but small scale efforts to clean up the ocean. Plastic Beach cleans boat trolls
and diving projects, and yet, with an estimated 51 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean, they simply.
Won't be enough. But it's been reported that one pioneering project could remove hundreds and
even thousands of tonnes of plastic from the ocean. The project was devised by a 16. Year old boy.
He's now 24 and is realising his dream.

The Netherlands:

Boyan Slat, hi Liz, nice to finally meet you. I meet him in the Netherlands. So when I was 16 when
scuba diving in Greece and I looked around me and I saw more plastic bags and fish and I just
wondered why can't we clean this up? And now we have a team close to 100 people. We raise 10s of
millions of dollars.

Boyan Slat and his team have designed a floating 600 meter tube with A3 metre curtain hanging
beneath it. Pushed by the waves, it will travel across the seas, collecting plastic as it goes. Talk me
through it because it looks fairly simple, but yeah, obviously so much thought and brain power and
collaboration has gone into this.

Yeah, it has been extremely complicated to get to something simple and and this so it's a very long
floating barrier. The plastic just gets pushed around by the current like a. Giant Pac-Man. The system
roams the ocean and collects the plastic.

Scientists have identified 5 colossal areas of plastic waste. Floating in our oceans. The plastic is
gathered by enormous swirling vortexes fed by a global network of ocean currents. Boyan is
concentrating his efforts on collecting the plastic from the largest of these, the Great Pacific garbage
patch between Hawaii and California. Which is now over three times the size of France.

Pretty soon I discovered that everyone in in the field was saying, well, no way you can do that. The
ocean is too big. The ocean is too violent, you know. Just forget about it. The only thing we can do is
is not make it worse. Which first of all I think is a very depressing message.
Boyan is assembling his ocean cleanup system in San Francisco. Soon it will be launched into the
Great Pacific garbage patch to begin its work. Am I allowed to jump the gun here already and and
ask you what the ambition is for ocean cleanup? How many of these systems do you envisage being
out there doing their job?

Once the first system is working, we'll then start the scale up from one to around sixty of these
systems, roaming the Pacific Ocean, and if we manage to do that well, then we should be able to
clean up half this great Pacific garbage patch every five years.

Between now and the launch date. What would you say is? The biggest challenge that still needs to
be solved.

I think really that's about getting the the bloody thing in one piece, just assembling it and getting
that done on time. We've communicated the launch date, so there's no way back, and definitely the
sooner we get it out the. The better it is for the ocean.

There's just one month to go before this technology is tested out at sea for the very first time.
Completing this project after five years of intense development and engineering is a mammoth
achievement. I'll find out later if the launch is successful. But one of the biggest challenges scientists
face is tackling the source of all this plastic. Around the globe. Every minute we buy a million plastic
bottles. A million disposable cups and two million plastic bags. And every minute an entire rubbish.
Truckload of plastic ends. Up in the ocean. Over a year. This adds up to a staggering 8,000,000 tons.
And it's estimated that half of all that plastic enters the ocean from our rivers, the Yangtze, the Nile,
the Ganges, the Thames, the world's rivers have been turned into plastic arteries, coursing towards
the sea. One of the worst affected rivers is the chitram in Indonesia. I'm travelling to Indonesia to
find out why rivers here and across the world are choking with plastic.

Java in Indonesia – Citarum River (One of the worst in the world):

So we've arrived on the. Island of Java in Indonesia? It is. Bucketing it down into tropical rain style.
We have just got a call from some villagers who are supposed to visit in a few days time, and
because of these rains. They're sitting in the middle of something that is so disturbing they've asked
us to head out there straight away. So that's where we're going now. I'm meeting Indra Darmawan, a
local whose village plays a reluctant part in the nation's plastic crisis.

Indra yeah hello nice to meet you. How are you today?

Are we heading this way OK? He takes me down to the. Banks of the Chittering River.

Plastic many, many plastic.

Oh my God.

There are people fishing in it.

Overnight, an enormous raft of plastic waste has appeared over a mile long and stretching across the
entire. Width of the river. I have never seen anything like. Quite like this. What is going on? What is
going on? 20 years ago, this stretch of river was teeming with fish. Now it's being flooded by a
deluge of plastic waste. Each day an estimated 2000 tons of plastic flows down this river. And today,
after the heavy rains, it's one of the worst plastic rafts locals. Have ever seen?

And Jesus is crazy. What are these?

Guys what are they doing on the boats? Many of the litter pickers used to be fishermen, but plastic
waste and pollution in the river has reduced the number of fish species by 60%. And what's left is
potentially dangerous to eat.

Hello guru yeah.

I just can't believe how people.

I can cope with this. It's this weird, weird, surreal reality that I never really expected to experience in
my lifetime, you know, but this is real. This is what's going on. And there are guys on boats just
getting on with their day's work. Picking plastic out of this massive raft that's now moving
downstream. My God. Look at it like. Just look at it. To find out how all this plastic has ended up in
the river, I travel upstream to the region of Bandung, home to 165 villages, many of which. Are on
the banks of the chittom. I've contacted a local environmental campaigner. Danny Rizwan Dani. So
this is where all the village puts their plastic. They're making their own landfill site because they're
getting no help from anyone else to do this.

On top

Is this the same scenario in? All the villages that border this this chittam.

Yeah, the names are a cat, they can be.

The villagers say that they've used the chatroom as a place to get rid of their rubbish for centuries.

Development man lingunan plastic.

But the rapid rise in the use of plastic has replaced many organic materials and swamped the river
and its banks. It's crazy.

Absolutely crazy.

Villagers say the local government here provides no facilities to collect and dispose of the rubbish.
Globally, it's estimated that 2 billion people have no access to proper waste management. That's a
quarter of the world's population who have no option but to throw their plastic waste on their own
doorsteps or in a nearby waterway. But governments are not the only ones being blamed for this.
Many think that corporations play a big part in the plastic crisis too. And wealthy global brands have
been accused of knowingly selling products to developing countries that often have no adequate
way of disposing of the plastic packaging. Much of the concern is over small plastic sachets that
make everyday goods affordable to those with little or no income. So you bought straws.

And then drink string strings.

Sachets provide locals here with modern essentials like washing powder, toothpaste and shampoo,
and they cost very little.

There is a.

Huge dilemma here. On the one hand.

You have this.

New affordable lifestyle that everybody here is as entitled to enjoy as much as we are in the West
and the sachets, give them that. But then on the other hand, you've got rivers teeming.

With this stuff.

And whose responsibility is that?

Around the world, governments and corporations are starting to address the problem. Some
companies are making very public pledges to make all their products 100% reusable, recyclable or
compostable by 2025. But many believe, 2025. Is just too late. Currently thousands of tonnes of
plastic are still pouring down the biggest rivers of the world and the threats this poses to their
wildlife is only beginning to be understood. Scientists are studying how animals living in these
waterways are being affected. There are projects underway to help the manatees of the Amazon.
Alligators in the Yangtze, and the freshwater turtles, crocodiles and Stingrays who make other major
river systems their home.

Mahakam River in Borneo - Indonesia

I've come to the Mahakam River in Borneo. This mighty waterway stretches for over 1000
kilometres. It's being monitored by Doctor Danielle Kreb and her husband Budiono, who are carrying
out vital research to ensure that the few remaining river. Dolphins here are not lost forever. Today is
the beginning of your surveying for this month is.

That right, right?

Yeah, how many?

Of these Irrawaddy dolphins are left on the Mahakam.

Right? So we think they're about between 80 and 90 dolphins left in the whole entire Mahakam
river, and from the interviews with the local people, we know that they were much more numerous.

I mean, how? How in trouble are these dolphins?

We're really in trouble.

For the past 20 years, Doctor, Crabb and Budiono have been meticulously photographing and
recording every dolphin they encounter. As they spend days travelling up and down the Mahakam
River. So from 1999 to now, you've been mapping their locations where they feed. We should
beginning to understand. Their behaviour, their. Distribution, you know 70 to 80 individuals. That is
worrying, yeah. Doctor Krebs Research has revealed that the Dolphins are already affected by heavy
boat traffic and fishing Nets. On the river. But in the last few years she has witnessed the
emergence. Of a new threat.

Well, we have had three cases of dolphins that were actually having some plastic debris in their
stomachs, so the there were two dolphins with nylon debris in their stomachs, which actually from
the Nets and the other one had diapers in his stomach, so it prevents other foods from getting in. So
that diaper dolphin. Yeah, he died and he was really skinny.

All all of them had plastics in their stomachs.

To find out more about the effect of plastic and other human pressures on the Dolphins, we begin a
two day mission up the Mahakam. We search for them with binoculars and hydrophones, but
another crucial source of information is the local.

Doctor, Crabb, and Budiono have been working with the communities living along the river to find
better ways of disposing of plastic waste. As we continue our search for the elusive dolphins, our
little boats are dwarfed by a new arrival on the river. The coal oil and textile industry as well as palm
oil plantations have all made an impact here in the last few decades. And with new industry comes
more plastic waste.

What are your? Thoughts about plastics and how much of a threat they pose on top of all the other
threats the dolphin is facing.

Yeah, actually the plastic. You know ways this came along with the company. When the companies
came to this area and they built huge area for plantation or for oil mining. The workers are not really
well educated. Not really, you know. Told them that flashing everywhere so sometimes it. If you
could just.

Throw it, everything, everything away.

So the.

Do you think the dolphin can withstand this threat?

Yeah, I think it's it's. It's like this. It's very forecast to survive.

Very small chance to survive.

As the sun sets, our chances of seeing the Dolphins fade.

So that's the end. Of day one we've been on. Our little boat for about.

8 nearly nine hours.

And so far I haven't set eyes on the almost mythical dolphins here, but I'm really hoping I get the
chance to. See them tomorrow.

The next morning we resume our search.

The thing about these river dolphins is they're very unobtrusive when they come up for air.

They don't do a. Big curve like whales do orcas do. After take a breath, they tend to just.

Subtly go down under the water again so that their tails. Their flukes don't really go. Vertical before
they. Submerge it makes them really difficult to spot anyway. Plus there are only 70 or 80 on this
entire river.

So no wonder they're difficult to find. We just have to keep our eyes peeled.

Or they're behind us, oh.

He stayed up for ages. That was a Mahakam river dolphin.

Came up.

It sits around with Grey Head that way. And it was.

We're literally travelling with a Mahakam river dolphin.

With large rounded heads that lack an elongated snout like most other dolphins, these magnificent
animals have a distinctive appearance. Later that day, we catch more tantalizing glimpses, but it's
clear that the future for these remarkable mammals looks bleak. This river is teeming with sewage
with chemicals from the coal barges that come through this river with pesticides and herbicides from
the oil palm plantations that are bordering this stretch.
By marine debris.

That's everywhere I don't even know what this thing is. There are sachets, there are plastic bags.
There are bottles, and yet there is one lone River dolphin making its way.

Up this stretch.

The impact of plastic pollution is devastating. This river and its wildlife and sadly this is the case for
many other waterways across the world. But there is a growing movement to reclaim the health of
rivers, not just for the people but for the wildlife that. Depends on it too.

Plastic clean up on the Chitarum River:

Back on the banks of the Chittering River, locals are taking matters into their own hands. It's 7:00
o'clock in the morning here in Majalaya, and there's a real buzz in the air. The army have gathered
here with some girls from a high school. Two local NGO's and elders from the villages around here
and they've all gathered here this morning for a very special project. The plan. Oh, that sounded
amazing. The plan is for all of these people to clean up as much plastic as they possibly can. This is
how Indonesian villagers along with the army. Take it upon themselves to sort out the plastic
problem this feels.

Cleanup teams have stretched out along the banks, sifting through years of waste and projects like
this one are taking place along all 300 kilometers of this river. So as well as cleaning up all the plastic
that's been flowing down the river and getting caught on all the vegetation, they're cleaning up
these makeshift dumps that the villagers have no use but to set up. And as you can imagine. It's a bit
of a. Filthy job, which is why. We're all wearing these. But this is going on these little groups. Of army
guys and volunteers all along this stretch cleaning up. Basically everything they can find that doesn't
belong here. Colonel Customly is leading the charge on this section of the river. Colonel just how bad
is it to the room? How much? Plastic have you seen?

Bishop to hurry one day.

Do you think efforts like these can make a difference to the plastic crisis that you're facing?

They can.

With all the boats filled with plastic, we travelled downriver to offload our cargo. How long would
you have to work to get rid of all of this overwhelming amount of plastic? And that's just 11
kilometres of the chitter room. The Chitter room is nearly 300 kilometres long. And the plastic keeps
coming. So the clean up can't be the only answer.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the.

Scale of the problem.

The lesson.

At the main road, the bags are transferred into trucks destined for a nearby landfill and we start all
over again.

What everyone has achieved to date is brilliant.

And it bugs me that I have to have concerns, but I do because after all of the bags of plastic we took
away from that stretch, there was still more plastic than I could take in with my own eyes. The
wildlife of the chittering and the rivers local communities are buckling under the pressure of plastic
pollution. Scientists are working tirelessly to prevent them from suffering the same fate as the
chittering And to stop that plastic from entering our oceans. Back in the city I investigate further.

Adam and John: Surfer from Sidney

Adam and John, is that right? It's it's good to finally talk to you.

The growing ocean plastic crisis has galvanized engineers and inventors to design technology that
collects the plastic from rivers before it enters the sea. The first person I speak to is. A surfer from
Sydney. So I was reading about your sea bin and I wanted to know a. Little bit more about it.

This even it's quite a simple device. We've basically got a rubbish bin. We have a a small water pump
and then we filter out the debris in the middle.

Do you ever imagine bringing some sort of? Sea bin out to Asia.

We've got a order sheet with requests from about 170 countries and as depressing as it is, it's quite
an amazing time to see the opportunity of you know how we can fix it.

The C bin is an effective solution for harbours and smaller rivers, but it simply couldn't withstand the
huge volumes of plastic pouring down the most polluted rivers in the world.

There is one solution which is called Mr. Trash Wheel and they're pulling out thousands and
thousands of pounds of trash. Per year and this is something that's suited for high volumes.

This wheel has been built in Baltimore Harbor. It lifts plastic rubbish from the river and drops it. Into
a barge.

The trash wheel. Is actually very simple machine. The water wheel gets its energy from two different
sources. One is the flow of the river that brings the trash. The other is we have solar panels on the.
Trash wheel

Ah yeah, that sounds incredible.

Since the wheels. Started turning in 2014. It's collected almost 1,000,000 plastic bottles, half a
million plastic bags and 11 million cigarette butts that are made-up of tiny plastic fibres.

We've picked up over 35 tons of trash in one day.

Go to.

But with each wheel costing around half $1,000,000, this technology could be just too expensive for
many local councils. In countries like Indonesia in

Amsterdam, engineers have been experimenting with bubbles. A tube full of holes is placed near the
bottom of a river. The air bubbles are forced to the surface, trapping the plastic and funneling it to
the riverbank, ready for collection. This design has great potential, but it's still in the prototype
phase. I'm also keen to find out about solutions that are coming at the ocean plastic problem from a
completely different angle.
David Christian – Young Entrepreuner

I've arranged a meeting with this young entrepreneur who's been developing an alternative material
to plastic. Now if it's as good as the reports I've been reading online. It feels to me like this could be
a real game changer.

Hello yes yeah I'm Liz hi.

David Christian has been experimenting with a natural resource that could replace plastic packaging.
He's focusing on finding an alternative to the billions of plastic sachets used in Indonesia and other
developing countries. What is this made?

Of it's made of seaweed, without using any chemical process, so we can use it for.

The cereal bar.

Yeah, like like from the bar and then from. The coffee saucy.

So you basically just. Have to burn this.

In a in the hot water and then stir it.

Right?

I'm going to taste this coffee because you promised me it would not taste of the.

Sea, yeah this. It's very hot.

That's great, that's a great cup of coffee.

This is for soap. So you don't need to open the soap, you can just wash. Our hand, that's it.

Just yeah and start rubbing.

Stop driving.

That dissolves really quickly.

When I think about the amount. Of little plastic soaps in plastic packaging in all the hotels around the
world. Wrapped in separate little small plastic bags and how this could completely change that
industry for the better. That's huge. David and his team have also used their seaweed technology to
design fast food packaging. Presume the only nutrition in in this.

Is in the wrapper.

And disposable cups.

Thanks mate.

Food packaging makes up over a third of all plastic waste in the ocean. While there are still some
concerns about how seaweed farms might affect coastal ecosystems, the potential of this design is
enormous. Our big companies that make all of these sachets. Biting your hand off at.

The moment yes, and until now we already get inquiries from more than 200 companies, including
those big companies.
I mean the potential. Well, is huge that much. I is very clear from from what you've achieved so far, I
needed to meet Someone Like You who has their feet firmly on the ground, but who is finding an
absolutely exciting and viable solution to all this. So I really I wish you all the best in. The future
thank you so much. That was really great. It seems to me to be such an exciting, but more
importantly, a really concrete solution to the plastic problem, and it's coming from a young
Indonesian. He's only 25 years old. It's coming from a country that's one of the biggest plastic
polluters in the world. I cannot wait to see what this guy chooses in the next few years. At the
beginning of my journey, I met another inspirational entrepreneur with ambitious plans to rid our
oceans of plastic. After five years of working on his dream, the ocean cleanup system is finally being
launched. Just look at this guy. He started thinking about this problem when he was 16 years old and
he didn't stop until he found an answer. He engineered and he re engineered he took. Bold,
courageous action and that to me. Is breathtaking. Next time I discover how fishing industry plastic is
devastating marine life.

Ohhhhhh God, the damage is unbelievable.

Can you believe this is what goes on when we carry on with our lives? I meet the scientists whose
latest research has revealed how plastic is destroying our oceans most precious ecosystems.

What does this mean for this reef?

And I find out why plastic is now threatening one of the most inaccessible wildernesses on Earth.

We are in a very remote part of the planet yet. The plastic reaches. Even here.