Understanding Ocean Plastic Pollution with Gianni Valenti, President of Gaia First

Do these microplastics and nanoplastics precipitate? Do they, you know, go up into the clouds and fall as rain?

There's a new service actually, which I'm not sure who's doing it. They actually can calculate how much plastic is in rainwater. For example, to inform the people, watch out today there's more plastic than the authorized amount, or there's less.

I've never ever heard anybody talking about plastic in rain. So yes, that's a subject we need to get out there, Gianni.

And it is quite urgent. It is quite urgent.

Yeah, man, look, once people find out that it's raining plastic, you know, if we can't get action, then we never will, right? Oh God, mad, isn't it, what we're doing to ourselves?

Hello and welcome to Rethink What Matters, the podcast dedicated dedicated to aligning the economy with the ecology and everyone for improved business performance, stronger families, and a greener, cooler planet. And today I'm joined by Gianni Valenti, President and Founder of Gaia First and TEDx speaker, and we're discussing ocean, plastic, pollution.

Thank you, Paul. Thank you. And thank you for the invitation.

But it's great to be speaking with somebody who's got Gaia in their company name, if you like. So yeah, perhaps we could start off there, actually, if you don't mind, Gianni, could you explain to everybody what Gaia is?

Well, yes. Well, Gaia is actually the name Gaia comes from, it's a goddess, it's a Greek goddess, is one of the origins of all the gods, which is actually the personification of the world. So that's why it represents the world in general and mother of everything, mother of people, life, air, and water and everything else. So I decided to call the NGO because it's an NGO. I decided to call it Gaia first because I wanted to highlight the importance of putting the interests of our shared home, our world, before our own personal or business interests. Because it's the same kind of way you place your podcast. I believe that if we all thrive, if the environment thrives, we can all keep on thriving and thrive even better.

Okay. And I believe it's also, there's also the Gaia Theory by James Lovelock. There's a book that was written back in the 1960s where he sort of came up with this idea that the whole world is interconnected, that the ecosystems, the biosphere, you know, the animals, the plants, the oceans, it's all interconnected with the weather as well, with the atmosphere. And it's a single living, breathing, you know, organism. People didn't believe that the world was just one interconnected organism.

I know what you're talking about, but I have to say that this is exactly what the situation more studies actually confirm how species interact with, for example, the presence of wolves interact with the forms, with the shape and the geographical outlines of rivers, of wood forests and everything else, how everything is interlinked. So it is like that. We are hosts of a living organism.

If you could tell us then about the work of Gaia First, what you're doing there.

So Gaia First is an NGO registered in Paris and in Miami. So we have two legal entities and we act mainly, it's an NGO, so it's a nonprofit company. So we act mainly in two different ways. One is awareness making. So we do a lot of presentation, company presentation, company operations in schools, documentaries. We collaborated with a documentary, Canadian documentary that is coming out right now. Very important. So we take, we present at the international conferences with the United Nations and more business-related ones. This is awareness. And again, we do a lot of cleanups worldwide. We have about 13 different countries that we do cleanups simultaneously throughout the year, several times throughout the year. So, and this is the awareness-making. The other one, the other side that we're doing, that we're acting on is the largest ocean cleaning operation in a sustainable manner. And that we are working with external experts on the field and we are designing ships that can go into the high waters, into the open ocean and collect the plastic, floating plastic, and convert it into hydrogen and we use this hydrogen to self-aliment, uh, whole processes so that we can stay seaborne and avoid going back and forth and wasting millions of tons of gas, oil, and wasting time mainly, and not being able to collect large quantities.

What would be the mission of Gaia First, or vision?

Well, the vision of Gaia First is the first step is actually to make sure that there are at least two of these ships running in the very short term. Because with just 2 ships in 5 years, we can clear out the greatest garbage patch, which is the size of 3 times the size of France of garbage that floats. And it's not just wrapping papers and, and, uh, bottle caps. We're talking about the, the garbage in the garbage— Great Garbage Patch is, yeah, 80, between 80 and 90% is from the fishing industry. So we're talking about nets, we're talking about floaters, we're talking about very intrusive materials that remain in the open ocean and continue fishing, continue killing. So it's very, very important we get rid of those. There are many other problems associated with this kind of plastic, which maybe we'll talk about later. Okay.

Did you say that there's large contribution from the fishing industry towards the plastic pollution? Did I miss it?

Absolutely. Yeah, there is, uh, it's primarily, uh, the, the pollution that we find in the high waters, which is one of the most polluting type of, uh, pollution that we find in the ocean in general, is actually, it's coming directly from the fishing industry. It's what's, uh, called the lost or discarded fishing gear, ALDFGs, and there has been, um meetings and discussions and conferences just dedicated on that. So that's how important it is.

So there is the Pacific Garbage Patch, isn't there? So can you tell us a little bit about that, what that is?

So in general, there are 5 garbage patches. I would say 6 because I would include the Mediterranean area as a dispersed garbage patch. It's one of the most used, trafficked, and fished seas in the world. And there's a lot of waste there too. But so what happens is the garbage patches is really, is mainly the accumulation of garbage through tidal currents and winds. So they have a tendency of remaining in these areas that are called ocean gyres. Ocean gyres is where currents concentrate and let's say focus in one single spot. So you have this You have this action that actually collects the floating garbage that is lost around thousands and thousands of kilometers in the ocean. So it regroups that. It doesn't regroup in islands, it regroups in small spots. It's like little icebergs of materials. But on garbage patches areas, it's quite It's quite noticeable and quite heavy, the amount of material that there is.

Right, okay, just how big a problem is ocean plastic pollution?

So we've done research, well actually we didn't do the research ourselves, but we have collected a lot of data from all the research, scientific researches that have been done. So let's say that because we wanted to quantify the action that Gaia First would have on social scales, on economic scales, and other kind of humankind scales as well. And these are some of the numbers, some of the numbers, of course. So the action of cleaning up ocean plastic from the high waters would have $38.4 trillion worth of phytoplankton repopulations. This is just the action that GaiaForce would have in 5 years. 650 tons of microplastic particles avoided, 300,000 turtles and marine mammals saved from death, 4 times the power of the Amazon rainforest of the oxygen production and fixing of carbon. On the economy level, we would have $9.7 billion in yearly value generated from waste management in isolated areas, $3.3 billion yearly in prevention in tourism loss if this was not done. So we have $510 million per year of biodiversity protection benefits, $370 million in damages and losses avoided in the maritime and fishing industry. So we would help even the fishing industry and the maritime transport industry. $245 million yearly in fishing revenue loss prevented. So we would prevent also that. And humankind is in social impact is 25% of global population directly affected because they live on the, on the, near the sea. And you have 2.5 billion antibiotic-resistant infection prevented. Because I will explain, if you want, I will explain how we do that. I can explain all these numbers. And 59 million jobs related, uh, that will be, uh, that will benefit from our actions. That means that we will save 59 million people going jobless.

Wow, those are amazing figures. I did do— I've done a couple of other podcasts, one on marine conservation with Alexandra Fora of Ocean Culture Life in Jersey, you know, and she was saying how, you know, they go into the beaches to pick up litter and plastic. And same with Kathy Shi, I did a podcast on ecotourism. She's with The Dorsal Effect in Singapore, and she said exactly the same thing. They've gone to the beaches to do these litter picking and I think, I suppose, plastic picking up projects. So it is a worldwide problem, isn't it?

So yes, it is important. It is important worldwide and on the local area to actually interact and take participation, take action into doing these things. There's some differences I would like to make though. Litter picking from beaches is different from the litter that you find in the middle of the ocean. Litter that you will find on the beaches comes from land. That means it's mismanaged waste or it's just washed out waste that was not correctly serviced. So what happens is it goes into the local areas and then with waves and currents, it goes back into land. Most of it sinks to the bottom and that hasn't, that's another problem. But what's left, it goes back to the land and can be picked up. And that's very important. Okay. But where this cannot be done is in the high waters and the high waters being on top of being a very important biodiversity threat because it kills directly. It hosts resistant bacteria and virulent pathogenic microorganisms. You see, the sea sterilizes itself, okay? Sterilizes all kinds of pathogenic presence. But the fact that you have the slumps, you have this kind of soups of plastic, in the middle of the sea, this actually helps the communities of these bacteria, of these viruses and bacteria, to grow stronger and more resistant. And this actually afterwards enters the food chain, and this is the primary cause of resistance, of antibiotic-resistant diseases, outbreaks, and even pandemics. So we had the pandemics, as you know, the COVID-19. Soon there might be other ocean-related pandemics.

Do we know what percentage of this plastic pollution is bobbing around on the surface versus sinking to the bottom or just floating around in the oceans somewhere?

Yes, well, it's estimated that we have 1% floating on the top and 99% at the bottom of the ocean.

I wish I hadn't asked that question there.

I know, it's terrible. We, unfortunately, there's no way that we can reach those depths because in some places it's 4,000 kilometers. And as we have seen with the Titanic II, the submarine that exploded, they're not easy depths to reach. So it's a massive problem. We do not know what's happening in the ecosystem down there. We just know that the 1% that is affecting, that remains on the surface, it's incredibly affecting the whole biodiversity sphere locally and internationally because that plastic will become microplastic. And once it's microplastic, it will vector all kinds of chemical compounds. Toxins, uh, not just through food but also through rain and through wind and through all kind of, uh, all kind of propagation of, uh, of the molecules.

Right, right, right. So what are microplastics? If you could just explain that for us.

Yes, microplastic is the degradation of plastic. Plastic doesn't biodegrade, it doesn't disappear Well, let's say it's not readily digested. Now, more and more there are organisms we find, there are mushrooms, there are bugs that can actually digest plastic. But the process is quite slow and usually it's on land and not in the sea. So what happens is plastic with the wind, with the water, with the sun breaks down into smaller and smaller fragments until it becomes so small which is called, which reaches the level of microplastic and it gets, it can get even smaller to become what's called nanoplastic. And it's so small, it's certain, it's just a few microns of thickness that it can actually transpass the membranes of protection membranes of the body, which can be skin, but also cellular. So what happened is nowadays we can find microplastic in blood. And in human milk. Okay.

Oh, really? You found it? We can find microplastics, not even nanoplastics in milk.

Microplastic. Exactly. So, and besides that, we can find it in the North Pole. We can find it in the snow of Himalaya. We can find it in the Mariana Trench, plastic. I just wanted to say the problem with plastic is not that the plastic itself, because plastic, it's inert. Quite inert. Okay, so microplastics would be in theory inert. The problem is with plastic, it acts as a sponge. So it actually absorbs all kind of hydrophobic molecules. What are hydrophobic molecules? Molecules that do not dissolve into water, they actually repel water. And what kind of molecules these are? These are, for example, insecticides, hormone-disrupting molecules, growth deregulation molecules, and all kinds of toxins of that kind. Most of the toxins that we produce, for example, for the clothing industry, but also for the food industry, for the agricultural industry, for everything, instead of being just released into nature, it's absorbed by this microplastic. That is in nature, and through this microplastics accumulates on the apex predators, which is us, right? So that's why we become the collectors of all the garbage, microgarbage, and microtoxins that we're actually producing.

And what, what, what, what links have been made between these microplastics that, you know, that we're all ingesting absorbing and, you know, the diseases that many people suffer with?

Well, there is a certain— well, it's quite evident there are loads of research concerning about fertility loss, growth problems, cancer generations, puberty deregulations. You know, we have more and more children that have an advanced puberty or deregulated puberty, and this is directly linked to the use of plastics and the microplastics. Now, just, I don't want to be alarming, but what we find today as in microplastic in our bodies and in the environment is the degradation of plastic that was made 20 years ago. Since then, we, the production of plastic has not doubled, has 4 times augmented. And right, that is all the importance of cleaning where this actually accumulates, which is in the high waters. Because although in land accumulates, but in a way we can still control that, in the high waters we cannot. So that will become automatically microplastic in the next 10 years, and we will be full everywhere.

Do these microplastics and nanoplastics precipitate? Do they, you know, go up into the clouds and fall as rain?

Yes, in fact, there is a new service actually, which I'm not sure who's doing it, but they have tried to use it here in Paris, is the Plastic Meteor. They actually can calculate how much plastic is in rainwater. for example, to inform the people, watch out today, there's more plastic than the authorized amount, or there's less. So it's actually a real problem, quantifiable. So yes, it's all over the place.

I've never, ever heard anybody talking about plastic in rain. So that's a subject we need to get out there, Gianni.

It is quite urgent. That is quite urgent.

Yeah, man, look, once people find out that it's raining plastic, you know, if we can't get action, then we never will, right? Oh God, man, isn't it what we're doing to ourselves?

Yeah, well, because it's gradual, so we don't really see the asteroid coming, is it?

Well, we want to look up that film exactly. But, you know, you know, as soon as you start telling people it's raining plastic, that's Surely, if you've got research, is there research out there that shows it's raining plastic? Does that exist?

Yes. Yes.

Okay, cool. You know, the other thing we have to do is we have to be, we have to create a positive vision of the world here. Otherwise, no one freezes and they don't do anything. So, yeah.

The positive, there is a positive thing because we know this. So the important thing is to understand that plastic is not the evil monster. It's just that the conception of it was badly done because we only thought on the short term. But what we have to start doing is thinking long term. So maybe restructure a new plastic element in order that we take in consideration of full circularity of it and not just use it and then it disappears.

So to what extent are new plastics being created to, you know, that don't degrade in a way which is harmful to, you know, the ocean's life, life on Earth.

All right. So they are developing things, or more like it's scientists and other researchers are trying to find new type of plastic to enter new market segments. Because the industry is very well tied to the cheap production of plastic, which is ever so cheap and ever so fast. 'Cause plastic is malleable, it's easy. And even if there are limitations, we can go around limitations with new types of plastics that just contour problems. Now the real power is not in administrations, is in the hands of people, of consumers, because more consumers will choose different methods of packaging, different plastics, different solutions. then the market will adapt. And then if the market adapts and finds new solutions, then it is the market itself that's going to push administration to incremental solutions.

So are there other plastics being made which aren't made from hydrocarbons?

Yes, there are some plastics made from hydrocarbons. Algae are very good options, mushrooms, skeleton exoskeletons of insects, and that's also— or in crustaceans as well. Of course, then we have another problem. But, um, I think these are all very promising, but we have to really push it. And people, consumers, have to push the request for them, because without that, uh, production prices are going to be way too high compared to the, to the plastic ones, to the standard plastic ones.

So to what extent can we monetize this problem of plastic pollution? Taking the plastic, for example, that you're, you know, you're collecting up there and monetizing it, finding, you know, uses for it in creating new polymers, for example.

This is exactly what we're doing. We're doing in the high waters, we are collecting it and we are breaking it through chemical recycling, let's call it like this. We are or also pyrolysis. We are breaking the molecular structure and we are extracting hydrogen. So we are actually producing hydrogen energy from plastic. This can be done in the high waters, can also be done on land, and there are possibilities. There are already companies doing it. But you can also break down the molecular structure of plastic into ethylene, which is the basic building block of of any type of plastic. So that could be another way of reusing the, the molecular structure of plastic into something else. Yeah, just to tell you that those landfills, usually they're— they have, they have a plastic lining that goes at the bottom of it to prevent liquids escaping and polluting everything else. The problem is they were made 20 years ago. And 20 years ago. That's the timeline of plastic before it starts really to degrade and fragment. So in the next few years, we're going to see the breaking of the leakages of this massive containers. And that's when things might become a little bit more urgent. Okay.

You did mention the sources of plastic pollution at the beginning of the podcast. Because I know that fishermen came up, but can we just revisit that again? Who are the main contributors of plastic pollution? Are there different countries? Are there different industries? Where do we need to start to make them?

We have packaging, food and beverage, consumer goods, uh, everything that is connected with consumers. That's one of the biggest plastic production industries is consumer goods. And that's why consumers have the power to change that. The other industry is the fishing industry. That's another massive problem. And there again, the consumers can choose not to eat less fish and to change their diets and stuff. But it's really also down to rules and regulations and controls, which is a little bit more difficult. So it's not a simple simple task to do.

Is it, to what extent is it a result of people not disposing of their litter or their plastic properly?

So there are other two points that are very important with the recycling, with the wrong side of the recycling of bottles, is because the first one, it's us, we have one PET bottle being regenerated within 10 different PET bottles. The first PET bottle that maybe could have contained some, um, um, a neurotoxin, like for example, uh, insecticides. This insecticide will be inside the material and therefore will be also present into the 10 regenerated new bottles that maybe this time will hold water for drinking. This is one problem. Second problem is the product— the, the actual recycling system itself produces microplastic in a very high level. So although you're recycling plastic, you're producing a lot more microplastic, which is then let into the environment through the waterways. And everything in the end will end up in the landfills or disposed anyway. And also recycling has a timeline in the sense that you cannot recycle something 100 times. You can only recycle it once or twice, then the material, the physical structure is so— it's changed so much through the process of recycling that it will not be useful anymore for that kind of purpose. So that's to be accounted for as a problem with recycling. And also bear in mind that we do not recycle what is there recyclable, because most of it is disposed not properly, so we lose it. Secondly, it's too contaminated to be, to be used within recycling systems. And three, the volume is too high. We do not have the capability of recycling everything that could be recycled. So on one side, we have way too much recyclable material that cannot be handled. On the other side, even more is not even recycled, taken into consideration. So what's happening in the end, out of all the recyclability, only 2 or 3% is actually recycled.

So you're obviously having to operate in international waters, aren't you, where there are no agreements, you know, for anything. How much does that affect your work?

Well, first of all, There are some agreements in international waters. There's the IMO, which is International Maritime Organization, that does set rules and regulations. So there are some rules and regulations set up. The problem is that there's nobody to control it. So that's why everybody— because you're not allowed to throw garbage in the high waters, you're not allowed to wash your tanks in the high waters, but people do because there's no control. So It's not really that the loss of regulation is the loss of control and monitoring. This on one side is quite a problem because it produces the Far West in the high waters. On the other side, actually, it would help certain things like advancing on recycling, high-grade recycling possibilities, such as what we're doing with pyrolysis. Producing hydrogen because this is, on the contrary, on land, it's halted bureaucratically because it does produce energy from waste in a clean way. So let's say there are other interests that may be halted.

So what would you say the 5 things are that we would need to focus on in order to eradicate ocean plastic pollution?

Well, first of all, I would say change consumer habits. I think that's the key. So in general, avoid, to the extent that a diet can allow it, a balanced diet can allow it, avoid meat and fish because it's also linked to plastic usage and the, the, the destruction on the environment in general. So fish and meat, uh, reduce it to a minimum amount. Secondly, um, consumer goods, try to buy with less amounts of, uh, single-use plastic and packaging. So try to buy either big portions or try to buy, uh, non-container, uh, solutions. There are some shops that you can just go and buy, for example, grains or lentils or pasta or whatever out of a plastic thing, a glass container. That and try to reuse plastic, even single-use plastic, and look for alternatives. If there are any alternatives, choose those alternatives, um, which of course are intelligent alternatives, um, try to use them because the simple fact of choosing them helps markets shift. So we have the, the power of what, what I call the credit card as is what actually we can control and change the world we live in through the way we spend it.

Do you have a good news story for us? Is there something you can share with us that's going well?

Yes, there's a very good story. Actually, there are several things that are coming up. There's more and more attention that's being brought into the situation, which was kind of denied before or hidden. Now there is the International High Waters Treaty that is coming to terms in the world, in the United Nations, and that has grouped everybody. There is the very good news that Gaia First is there and we're fighting side by side for you. So I am promoting anybody to join us and follow us on our social media. There are things moving and because we know the dangers and because we're now showing, showcasing all the interlinks. I think this is giving leverage and this is giving interest for people to do things differently. Now we're an intelligent species, and as we have intelligently destroyed our future, we can now intelligently repair it and make it more profitable for everybody.

And are you seeing governments You mentioned the International High Water Protection Treaty. Are you seeing governments reacting then positively to, you know, the problem of ocean plastic pollution and passing new laws and policies and regulations to help?

Yes, yes, of course. There is more and more attention to it. Of course, details of this treaty still have to be confirmed, and this should be done in May next year. But there's already an intent and there's already funds dedicated to this protection treaty. So there is really an engagement with governments and administrations worldwide, which is very important. Why? Because the populations have become more aware. People have become more aware thanks to podcasts like yours, internet. Social media. And this makes a real social pressure on the administrations. So it's not them that just woke up and said it's, it's fine. It's us who have actually woken up and said, hey, we have to do something and they have to react.

That's great. And are you seeing businesses also following suit and changing the way that they implement packaging themselves?

Yes, yes, I'm noticing a lot, especially on the luxury brands, which is very encouraging. I see a lot of luxury brands that are ditching plastic and mono-usage packaging systems. It's very encouraging because it's the fact is the high fashion is the leading market in terms of communication because since it's luxury, it sets a standard and then everybody else tries to mimic that standard, try to mimic and raise their level to that standard. So they're actually setting the pace, and that's very good.

What would be your biggest frustration then, Gianni?

Well, the earlier the better. We, uh, for example, we are still, uh, not struggling, but we, we are still trying to finalize our €750,000 that we need to finalize research and development. This is blocking us. This is blocking our rapid advancement into the creation of the boats. So frustration may come on the waiting to collect those funds. But I'm positively convinced that people are real heroes. So I don't worry that the future will be a much prosperous one for everybody.

And if people want to help, if they want to reach you, if they want to help Gaia First, you know, on its journey and acquire that next boat, maybe two more boats, what would they need to do? Where can they find you? How can they reach you?

So they can either look online. We are www.gaiafirst.org, or they can look into our Instagram, which is gaia.first. Or we have all the other resources, we have Twitter or X, we have YouTube channel. YouTube channel is full of interesting and informative material. So just, but reach out to the website and you can find contacts and you can contact me.

Thank you very much, Gianni, for your time and helping us to better understand the real problem that plastic is causing in the oceans. You know, the real problem of ocean plastic pollution. Thanks very much for your time, Johnny.

Okay, thank you, Paul, and I hope I've been quite helpful here.