“Saving Our Seas: Compounding Catastrophe Pt. 2: Shaping the Solution”
We know that plastic pollution has become a major environmental and health issue across the planet, as much of the waste ends up in landfills, and sometimes, the ocean.
“We call plastic a threat multiplier,” says Monterey Bay Aquarium‘s Chief Conservation & Science Officer Margaret Spring. “It’s effecting climate change, biodiversity, and human and animal health.”
But momentum is gaining ground, all around the globe. “The progress I’ve seen in the last two years has been astounding,” says Spring. “Because the State of California has taken a leading role on this issue.”
That action taken by the Golden State is Senate Bill 54, also known as The Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act. “Along with being a mouthful, it’s also the most comprehensive and impactful plastics legislation to date,” says the Nature Conservancy‘s Plastic Projects Director Patrick Jurney. “It’s a game-changer.”
The bill, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2022, reduces the amount of plastic we’re making in the first place, ensures that plastic is actually recyclable or compostable, and then requires that 65% of plastic in California is recycled, up from the current percentage of 8%.
“It also works to protect disadvantages communities and secures $5 Billion to restore and protect Caliofrnia land and waters, which is huge,” says Jurney.
But in March of 2025, California missed a critical deadline to begin implementing SB54, as Gov. Newsom intervened after months of aggressive lobbying against the regulations. Newsom ordered Cal-Recycle to restart the rulemaking process, citing concerns that they would impose unacceptable burdens to businesses and costs to consumers. However, proponents of the measure say it is the law in California and encourage Newsom and lawmakers to follow through.
At the same time, there have been major innovations on the plastic recycling front, including a breakthrough at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab at UC Berkeley to vaporize plastics and use those gasses as building blocks to make new plastics.
“Nobody knew how to break them apart, and we found a way to controllably break them apart,” says Faculty Scientist and Henry Rappaport Professor John Hartwig.” It was a major result… the best we’ve ever had in our career and we’ve had some pretty good ones.”
Elsewhere scientists are working to develop better ways to reuse old plastics, like the Massachusettes startup MacroCycle, which found a way to upcycle plastic waste into new products.
“We have a technology that can selectively extract the pt in polyester plastic from containment waste streams, allowing us to selectively extract those valuable resources in the form of plastic,” says MacroCycle Co-Founder and CEO Stwart Peña Feliz. “We then take the plastics and we can increase the quality on a physical and a chemical basis.”
And that’s not all, “It can be fully electrified with renewable energy to be able to achieve recycling with zero carbon emissions,” says Feliz, “We see ourselves being a big part of the solution, but we won’t be the only solution.”
“There’s a lot of scientists that have been focused on it,” says Hartwig. “And when we get focused on something, we tend to come up with some solutions.”
This segment aired on the KTLA Weekend Morning News on Saturday, March 22, 2025.
Click here to see Compounding Catastrophe Pt. 1: Plastic Problems.
To watch the full series anytime, log onto KTLA.com/sos.
