How Beach Cleanup Data Helped Canada Ban Plastic

0:00 Now picture this. You rinsed your yogurt tub. You check the little number at the bottom, you put it in the blue bin and hope for the best. But then a lot of it doesn't get recycled. And yet one of the biggest legal wins against plastic in Canada started with people doing something even simpler than recycling: picking up trash on a beach and writing down what they found. And we're gonna talk about this fight on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. I am a marine biologist and science communicator here to tell you all about what's happening in the ocean. This week, we are focusing on marine pollution. On Monday, I did a great interview with Judith Weis on the second edition of her book called Marine Pollution.

0:40 Just a cool fact, she was my first interview on this podcast, and more than 2,000 episodes later, she is interviewing again. We interviewed for the first edition of the book on the first day, and we are doing it for the second day now, so which is kinda cool. I really appreciate her for coming on. But we're talking all about marine pollution, all different facts. Like, we talked about how the harbor in New York City got cleaned up on the Tuesday. We talked yesterday about how we're actually able to get pharmaceuticals out of the water if we just put the money into our treatment plants. And today we're gonna be talking about plastic, because let's be honest, you can do everything right, put everything in the blue bin, then all of a sudden you read the headline about how there's so much plastic in the ocean, in the fish, and even us, in people, in our lungs, in our blood.

1:20 It's in the air. It's everywhere, and it can feel like your effort, like, disappears into a system that just doesn't really work in all honesty. And I hate to say it, the system, the whole blue bin thing, was a fossil fuel invention. And so no wonder it doesn't work that well. It's just a way to distract you from what is actually happening, because the fossil fuel industry makes 30% of their funds, of their revenue, from making plastic. so this episode, I'm gonna be honest about what isn't working, and I'm gonna end with what actually is working. Now, I've covered plastic on the show for years, and this is the first time I've actually felt the legal ground shift under it in a way that lasts. Now, as I mentioned, we talked about New York Harbor and how that problem was fixed.

2:03 Yesterday we talked about, Switzerland and what they're doing to upgrade their plants to get hormones out of the water. But plastic is different. It comes from everywhere: bags blowing off a truck, tires wearing down, clothes in the wash, litter in the parking lot. It's really difficult to kinda get your head around everything that happens. You can't build one plant to catch it. That's why this one, the plastic, needs a different kind of fix. So let's talk about the thing that most of us really think is solving the problem. That's recycling. Now here's a number that surprises almost everyone: 9%, just 9%. A few years ago, the federal government hired Deloitte to study where Canada's plastic actually goes.

2:44 The answer? Using 2016 data, of about 3.2 million tons of plastic Canadians threw away of that year, only 9% was recycled. 86% went to the landfill, and about 29,000 tons, roughly 1%, ended up as litter in parks, in rivers, in lakes, and of course, eventually the ocean. The global picture looks almost the same. Organizations found that the world's plastic waste doubled between 2000 and 2019 to 353 million tons a year. 9% recycled, half goes to landfill, about a fifth incinerated, and 22% mismanaged, which is the polite way of saying it escaped into the environment and got into our oceans.

3:28 So why is recycling so hard? ' Cause plastic isn't one material. It's polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, PET, PVC, all the Ps. each one melts differently and has to be handled separately. Then there are the colors, and the dyes, and the additives, and the labels, and the food stuck to the inside. Mix them together and you get something that nobody really wants to buy. That's what it really is. It's all about who can buy the recycling material. That's why so much of what goes in the blue bin never becomes anything new. It's also why people who study plastic keep saying the same thing over and over again. We can't recycle our way out of this. We have to make less of it.

4:10 Recycling still plays a part, but it's not gonna carry the entire load. Now here's what happens to plastic that doesn't get recycled. It doesn't go away, it doesn't, like, break apart. there are, like, pieces five millimeters or smaller, most of them are too small to see. These are microplastics. They've been found in seawater, sea ice, fish, shellfish, table salt, rain, air. And scientists that study microplastics have this problem that a lot of other researchers don't face. They can't find anything clean. Like, there's no reference material. A good e-experiment needs a control, something that hasn't been exposed so you can compare. But microplastics are in the air of the lab. They settle out, of the ventilation.

4:51 They shed from lab coats and plastic equipment. Some labs now work in ultra-clean rooms just to get a reading they can trust. And in February 2025, a team led by researchers at the University of New Mexico published a study in Nature Medicine that made headlines around the world. They measured plastic in 91 human brain samples, from people who died between 1997 and 2024. They reported that the median amount of plastic in the brain rose by about 50% between 2016 and 2024. 50%. The media ran with the idea that we each have a spoonful of plastics in our heads. Then other scientists took a closer look. Within weeks, people spotted duplicated images in the paper's supplementary material, which the lead researcher called a clerical mistake that didn't change the conclusions.

5:39 So by January 2026, independent research has had formally challenged seven high-profile studies on microplastics in the human body, including the brain study, and flagged methodological concerns with more. One big worry, the brain is about 60% fat, and fat can produce a false signal that looks like polyethylene in one of the main testing methods. So where does that leave us? Sounds like a big controversy. Scientists on both sides agree on the core fact: plastic pollution is everywhere in the environment. What we honestly don't know yet is exactly how much ends up inside us and what it does there. We know it's in us. We just don't know how much. It's hard to tell. And this is the frustrating part, the science is hard because plastic is everywhere, and that's problem is proving itself.

6:25 Waiting for perfect proof means waiting forever. Canada decided, you know what? We didn't have to. So how do you act when the science is this hard to pin down? In Canada, it started on the beach. In 1994, staff and volunteers at the Vancouver Aquarium decided to clean up a beach in Stanley Park. By 1997, it had grown to 400 volunteers at 20 sites. In 2002, it went to national with WWF-Canada as the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean-up. Today, it runs as the Ocean Wise Shoreline Clean-up. Along the way, the volunteers did something that turned out to matter a lot. They picked up the trash and they started counting it.

7:06 Every bag, every bottle cap, every straw, recorded as data and shared with researchers and policymakers. By 2020, volunteers had organized more than 21,000 cleanups across the country on ocean coasts, lake shores, riverbeds, And year after year, the same kind of items kept topping their list. In 2018, seven of the ten most common items they found were, guess what? Plastic. In October 2020, the federal government released its science assessment of plastic pollution. It pulled together hundreds of studies, and it drew on that shoreline data as well. Its conclusion was clear on the big pieces. Plastic litter harms wildlife through entanglement and ingestion, leading to suffocation, strangulation, and starvation.

7:50 On microplastics, it said the evidence was still developing, and then it said the most important thing, that action is needed now under the precautionary principle to reduce both. We're not gonna wait until it's too late. We're gonna do this now. In 2021, the government added plastic manufactured items to the list of toxic substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. That listing gave it the legal power to regulate plastic. Its first move was a ban on six single-use items: checkout bags, cutlery, certain food service containers, six-pack rings, stir sticks, and straws. Now look at that list again. Those are the same items volunteers have been pulling off Canadian shorelines and writing down for decades.

8:32 If you really look at this, you see that people, people who participate in the shoreline helped contribute to this new ban on plastics. It's huge. It was a huge thing that happened, and it empowered people to stand up and say, "Hey, this is what we're finding on our beaches, on our shorelines, on our riverbeds, on our lakebeds, and this is what we're gonna get rid of 'cause we don't want it." And the government listened, and it was great. But then we had a problem. A coalition of plastics producers and industry groups took the government to court. They argued that plastic manufactured items was far too broad to count as a single toxic substance, and that the government didn't have the evidence to back it up.

9:13 In November 2023, the federal court agreed with them. The judge ruled the listing was unreasonable and unconstitutional. For a moment, it looked like the foundation under Canada's plastic rules might collapse. And to be honest, it wasn't about the six plastics that were banned. It was about all the rest of the things that could happen based on that plastics are toxic to humans. But then the government appealed, and while the appeal played out, the ruling was put on hold, so the ban on those six items stayed in place the whole time. And to be honest, I saw those items disappear and for the most part. Straws, it was still questionable, but a lot of people went to paper straws. I know, people don't like paper straws, but it's better than having plastic straws unless you need it.

9:55 There's always that option. Now, on January 30th, 2026, the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the decision. And its reasoning is worth hearing. It said plastic manufactured items do qualify as a substance under the law. It said the government had enough evidence to reasonably conclude that plastic can cause harm, and it said the government didn't need to test every individual type of plastic one by one before acting. So basically, the court accepted that you don't need the perfect proof to protect the environment from something this widespread, so the listing stands. Now, the Industry Coalition has asked the Supreme Court of Canada to hear the case, and as I record this, the court hasn't decided whether it will. Either way, the ban stays in effect.

10:38 So what does that win actually get us? First, the ban itself. The government projected that banning those six items would keep about 1.3 million tons of hard to recycle plastic out of the waste stream over the next 10 years, and prevent about 22,000 tons of plastic pollution. Now second, something a little bigger, Canada created the Federal Plastics Registry. Companies that make, import, or sell plastic packaging, electronics, and single use products now have to report how much they put on the Canadian market, what kind of plastic it is, and what happens to it at the end of its life: recycled, maybe composted, burned, or buried. For the first time ever, a country is tracking plastic from the factory to the landfill Now for the honest part.

11:23 Not everything was held. In late 2025, the government proposed dropping its plan to ban the export of those six single-use items, citing trade pressure and the economy. And the later phases of the registry, which would have covered more products, has been postponed. So we're not out of the woods yet, but the foundation is still there. The listing survived its first court fight. the domestic ban is in place, and the registry is collecting data every year. You can't reduce what you can't measure, and Canada is finally measuring. Now this is the piece New York Harbor had and Plastic never did. A way to see where the problem comes from. So when we start looking at all this, if you don't live in Canada, that's fine.

12:05 it's a great country, but it's fine. I get it. Not everybody can live in Canada. But the thing is, is whether you live in Canada or not, you can join a shoreline cleanup that records what it finds. A lot of the organizations that participate in this records it, or you can record it and send it to somebody, like an organization that will take your data. Now, in Canada, the Ocean Wise Shoreline Cleanup, formerly the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, lets you join one or start your own at any beach, lakeshore, or riverbed. Outside Canada, of course, you can look for Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup or a local group that logs this data, just like I said. Now, the data card is the point, Your tally goes to the same kind of dataset that helped build Canada's case.

12:46 And I always think when you come to help the shoreline, you stay for the people. You, come for the impact, but you stay for the community. You don't wanna start saying, "Hey, we should ban plastic straws," and just see all the people come out, the bots and everything, to say, "Hey, we love plastic straws," and this and that, for the people who don't really need it. And there are people who do. Now I just wanna, think about this. Like, picture a volunteer on a beach in 1994, writing straw just on a data card. 30 years later, that same item is banned across the country, and a federal appeal court has confirmed that the government can regulate plastic as toxic. Plastic is still the hardest pollutant in the series, we now have the legal tools, the data, and the registry to start turning off the tap. Somebody recently said it, plastic is really just solidified oil, 'cause it's a petroleum product, so the next time you pick up a piece of plastic on a beach, write it down, because it counts, and your effort counts.

13:38 And I think that's, not only does it help yourself, but it helps your government, it helps the scientists, it helps policymakers to really understand how you can get rid of plastic and make a case to ban plastic. I'd really love to hear your thoughts on your efforts to clean up plastic. It's great to hear everybody's efforts and their motivation of why they wanna do things, whether it's to just get outside and do something, whether it's to clean up your local beach or riverbed or lakeside, or you just wanna be with a community that thinks the same way you do in person. There's nothing wrong with that. We are in like a lonely pandemic, and we need to get out and see people and be with people that have something in common. And those people who wanna protect the shoreline, who wanna protect the planet, they have a lot in common with you guys.

14:23 So I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, and I'd love to hear from you. If you are on Spotify and you're listening to this, they have a comment section. Let me hear you talk about what you wanna talk about in the comments, whether you all wanna talk about this episode or you wanna comment on something else, or you can just hit me up on my socials. The links are in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.