Plastic pollution with Richard Thompson

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A Professor of Marine Biology who was not particularly academic at school, Richard Thompson went to university after running his own business selling greetings cards for seven years. When the rest of the world was waking up to the harm caused to marine life by larger plastic items, such as plastic bags, he searched for tiny fragments of plastic, some no bigger than a human hair; and found them in oceans and on beaches all over the world. He has spent decades studying the harm these micro-plastics might cause to marine life and is concerned. His work on plastics in cosmetics led to a UK ban on micro-beads in shower gels and exfoliating scrubs. And he advised government to ban single use plastic bags from supermarkets. Rather than demonize plastic, however, he believes we need to learn to love it more. Often plastic it is the best material for the job. Now we need to make sure that all plastic products are designed so that they can be easily recycled at the end of their useful life. Picture: Plastic water bottles pollution in ocean, credit: chaiyapruek2520/Getty Images

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Discovery from the BBC. I'm Jim Lylelele and in today's program I'm in conversation with a leading scientist about their life and research.
0:10.0	Welcome to the life scientific.
0:13.0	The amount of rubbish in the sea is shocking.
0:16.0	Millions of plastic bottles, shoes, carrier bags,
0:20.0	toothbrushes, are being washed up on beaches all over the world.
0:24.0	It's even more shocking when you remember that these unsightly piles of plastic rubbish
0:28.7	are only part of the plastic pollution problem.
0:31.6	25 years ago, most of us were blissfully unaware of all the tiny fragments of plastic
0:36.9	that are circulating in our oceans.
0:39.5	My guest today alerted the world to the vast and growing quantities of microplastics in the ocean
0:45.2	and the harm they might cause to marine life.
0:48.0	He's published hundreds of research papers, advised governments and written reports for the
0:51.9	EU and the UN. His research on plastics
0:54.8	and cosmetic products led to the recent UK ban on microbeeds in shower gels and
0:59.8	facial scrubs. Richard Thompson, professor of marine biology at Plymouth University,
1:04.2	welcome to the life scientific. Well thank you very much for having me. I'm delighted to be
1:07.6	here Jim. Now then, how widespread at all these microplastics in the ocean?
1:13.0	Well, since we first described them in a paper in 2004,
1:17.0	we've found them literally everywhere we've looked.
1:19.0	We've found them right down to the depths of the ocean, thousands of meters beneath the sea surface. We've found them in Arctic sea ice.
1:26.2	We've found them in fish in the English Channel. We've found them on beaches throughout the world.
1:30.6	So they really are very widely distributed.
	...

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