End Plastic Pollution. Sea Monkey Project, Sydney Steenland

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My guests on the show today is a family of four from Australia.

Sea life is under the threat of death.

Fortunately, the sea monkeys are informing the world about ways to clean ocean plastic pollution.

They're finding ocean plastic solutions.

. And you know, there are still communities who are not informed.

They don't know that throwing plastic bags into the ocean is a death sentence for turtles and other sea life.

And not to mention that in hundreds of years that plastic will still exist as microplastic.

Micro might mean small, but it is still huge.

Well, there are ocean plastic solutions.

Meet members of the Sea Monkey Project, a family of four who sail and live aboard their 41 foot yacht.

Sydney, not quite 18 is the spokesperson for the sea monkey project.

Sydney is joined by her mom, Sarah dad, Carlos and younger brother Indie.

We moved on the boat when I was six years old,

This is the second boat we've lived on.

The first one was actually built by my grandfather and it was just 36 feet long and it only had really two rooms.

One was the bathroom and the other was just the whole living room,

kitchen and bedroom and yeah, dining table . Yeah.

But I guess I didn't really know what was going on at the time, but I thought it was really cool because, I mean, it was really fun sort of living on a boat

And, it's kind of like camping, I guess.

I've been reading all about Sydney and Indie doing all of this work with regard to saving the oceans and, and keeping plastic out

Our tagline is, is ocean plastic solutions and education.

Plastic is a very, useful item for transporting things and medical and, it's a miracle product, but, as far as it goes for human progress.

The main thing that we are focusing on is single use plastics like straws and, plastic bags, takeaway containers like poly styrene, yeah, that's the

Turtles, ingest and whales . If you're gonna focus on something, that's probably the one that, that we like, because it's just too enormous to tackle it as a whole.

So yeah, just the overall excessive consumption of, , the society now with, having everything overpackaged.

Some grapes that came from,

Korea I counted , five different packed wrappings on it.

It had, plastic container bubble wrap.

It was sitting on bubble wrap and then it had, some other like, bubble wrap type foam substance.

And then it was again wrapped in plastic, a plastic bag.

That's totally unnecessary

. Catherine: Excessive consumption and overpackaging, that is the society we are living in.

What made me wanna do all this, as this is what I say all the time, it's like as we sailed, And mostly through Asia, we found plastic everywhere.

There's nowhere we've been that hasn't had plastic.

But as we traveled, that's how we saw how bad the plastic pollution problem really was.

And it was just, it was so much of it.

There's plastic underneath people's homes in the waters of where they actually get their food, it really got into my mind.

And then when we got to Malaysia, that's when we created the Sea Monkey Project and.

. That's how I started to learn a lot more.

And the people we meet and the things that we do has made me learn so much more and be much more, I guess, passionate about it.

And

We are trying to provide the kids, or give the kids an alternative way of thinking, and that this is a normal way of life that we need to start thinking not first and

It's something that she feels personally that she needs to try and do something about to help these animals or to help the earth and try and help the things that don't have a choice.

They're just stuck with it.

For Sydney, she's passionate about the ocean.

She wants to do something with animals and, and the sea.

So the natural thing was to make a project.

I always think if you're gonna do something, then it can't be, in theory, you actually have to go out and actually.

Do it instead of just writing in a textbook and then forgetting about it.

It's the best way to learn is to actually start a business or start some sort of mission that, that you can keep growing and progressing.

And along the way she's met some very amazing and influential people, which you know, that only is going to help her in the future because she's making lots of contacts and meeting very interesting people.

We are so lucky that we discovered the cruising community, but also the people who are interested in stopping the flow of plastic into the ocean.

We collaborate together and share ideas and solutions.

It's just been a really great way of a schooling method because of all these, yeah, all these opportunities that keep coming at, at us and particularly Sydney

You're innovative and you're moving the thought process along into the future.

That university of life is truly what you're providing the kids, both of them,

As with any experience, there are apprehensions and sometimes fears.

Will Sydney shares how she deals with those ocean storms.

We were in like a really pretty bad storm in Sumatra and I do get really scared at times, but I guess I'm not real good at showing it really.

I basically sit outside and I kind of freak out in my mind, but if I'm told to do something that will help what, I'm told to do something in the storm, I have to do it.

I won't just say, No, I can't do that.

More than 1 million sea birds and animals die of, ingesting plastics every year.

Plastics are overproduced and consumers continue purchasing certain plastics when there are solutions such as well, cotton bags and other solutions.

The Steenland family embarked on an innovative journey to find ways to remove plastic from the oceans

and keeping it out of the oceans.

Hence they're upcycling projects.

We started when, when we got to Malaysia, my dad in particular, he wanted to actually do something like we went through a few ideas before we got to this machine.

The man who designed the machines, he he invented them.

The blueprints we got from the precious plastics was actually not right.

So my dad did actually kind of have to work it out on, on his own and, a little bit from scratch, I guess, but.

, Not exactly, but so I, I helped him build that machine and I actually did most of the electrical wiring on it so that, that was actually really, Yeah, that was a really

Yeah.

So that's a good, good skill to learn.

So we built the first machine and we had one person interested in it, they weren't really committed to it.

They just wanted to have it as like a home project, but that is definitely not what we wanted.

We ended up partnering with Fuze Ecoteer.

They're like an eco tourism company.

And so they, they kind of helped us, because we're partnering with them.

That helped us.

a bit bigger.

And that's when we started doing fancy things like oiling the wooden bench and powder coating all of the me the metal.

And so that we then we got really snazzy and machines.

So then we started selling them to, well, we got our first buyer.

It was

Plastic free jersey.

Yeah.

Jersey Island.

In the UK

Now we've got machine on Perhentian Island in Malaysia, that's just north of Tioman and we've got a, a machine on Tioman Island.

We have a machine in Bangkok, one in the Maripur Rainforest that's like in the center of Malaysia and in the UK so it's going really well.

So the original machine that was built by Dave Hankins.

So there's three parts of the machine.

You have the shredder, the extrusion, and the injection machine.

And, but they were originally all on sort separate table.

But what we did is put them all onto one table.

It's much more portable that way.

The shredder, that's the, basically the first step of the process of recycling.

So you have to get the clean, sorted plastic by types cuz there's seven different types of plastic and there's no, they've all got their own personalities, I guess . And

And put them through the shredder and it makes it up into tiny little granules flakes.

Yeah.

Flakes.

. And then you get the flakes and you, you take them and you can either put them into the extrusion machine or the injection machine and the extrusion, it goes into the hopper and it goes into like

And that's what we get the end of the noodle and we start wrapping it around in a circle.

And then that's how we make bowls and plant pots.

Yeah.

And or then you have the injection machine and you put the flakes into the hopper.

It goes as a tube and a melt.

And then instead of it coming out as at the very end, you actually have to put a mold onto the bottom.

And we have a mold for earrings, it's just like a disc, but the mold for it is just flat.

And we just use a hole puncher and punch out the earrings.

And we have a mold for these turtles that we mostly make.

The idea behind how we've done the machines is that essentially what I wanted to do was we wanted to , be able to create essentially a little business in a box.

So in these communities where they're poor and they need some extra funds, we can put a machine set there, and then one or two people, they can walk around the machine and keep working and then they're producing.

So they're getting paid to clean up the area and getting paid to manufacture.

We try and keep them close together and working with each

other.

One of our main goals is to, instead of having like volunteers from like local turtle rehabilitation project working on it , we want to get the locals doing it and like on Perhentian Island, they make turtles.

You're able to make a change.

You will never know the absolute wonderful imprint that you have made for that person

You're also witness to this project and the creation of your heart and your compassion

The Juara turtle project juaraturtleproject.com who owned the machine, it was they had thought of the idea of turning their ocean plastic because

Barnacles stuff.

Algae.

Yeah.

You just can't clean it enough that recyclers won't recycle it.

So there's a, it's all well and good to, to pull it out the ocean.

I mean, ideally our goal is to make sure it doesn't go in, in the first place, but once it is taken outta the ocean, there's not a lot you can actually do with it.

So, Tom, who's the leader of the, the recycling project on the island, He experimented in the, the ratio of plastic flakes.

So the shredder, we just basically threw all the ocean plastic in the shredder and it was a, and a bit of an experiment because it smelled terrible, Yeah, there was lots of

But it all went in the shredder.

Carlos was very anxious to see how the shredder would hold up because we had never done it before

But it went fantastic.

It, it, it handled it all the plastic really well.

And then Tom had figured out the ratio between sand and this, the cement and, and some rocks.

There's gotta be a bit more testing with durability later on, but so far so good.

Yeah, they're, they're holding up really well.

So, yeah, it was another discovery and and another application for what to do with the plastic waste that no one can recycle.

There's seven types, seven different types.

And at the moment, You really only experimented with type two and type five and from top and from type four, Yeah.

Young indie shares his knowledge regarding the different types of plastics

We, we've got the expert here, who knows.

We'll bring him in.

I'm classified as the expert because we did this I guess plastic education for this school in Kuala Lumpur, but we did it in Tioman where we are now.

And I had to tell all of the kids about the different types of plastic.

So type one, which is polyethylene terephthalate is plastic bottles mostly it yeah, water bottles.

And it's, I haven't seen it in a lot of other types of packaging.

Yeah.

Type two, which is high density polyethylene is mostly like conditioner bottles, like well, shampoo and bottle caps.

Yeah.

The HD stands for high density, meaning it's really thick.

So usually if you get a very durable plastic it'll be type two, I guess.

So, and then type three, which is pvc, polyvinyl chloride.

That's what it was.

Polyvinyl.

polyvinyl chloride.

I don't know a lot about.

That's why I said to all of our kids.

Yeah, the, well like you just said, water pipes.

You don't see it a lot in everyday plastic, I

guess

So then type type four is low density polyethylene.

That is usually bags, plastic bags.

The LD stands for low density, so it's really thin and we, we don't recycle.

We haven't been able to recycle plastic bags yet because they're so flexible.

It, we can't really shred it.

Type five, which is polypropylene, is the probably the most popular single use plastics.

It straws, it's bottle, its packaging like tupperware containers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's usually like, well, we went to a supermarket and I looked at these containers.

It was little candy containers, like TicTacs, tick taxis, type five theft packaging.

And then type six is styrofoam poly styre.

Poly styrene.

Yeah.

Please always avoid that . It's very bad.

Yes.

I don't think anyone can ever really recycle it because it's mostly air.

Oh yeah, we forgot Type seven.

Type seven is just literally labeled other and that's like compact discs.

And nylon fabrics and yeah.

. , Catherine: I never thought about nylon fabrics being considered a plastic.

Yeah, well, was it like 95% of, I think it was 97% of all plastic in the Great Pacific garbage patch is microplastics.

And that can mean, little tiny pieces of plastic or fibers.

When you do your laundry, like if you have lots of plastic based clothing, about 10,000 fibers will go into the drains and into the oceans

The Cora Ball.

Inspired by Coral because how they filter through micro, micro algae or something living in the ocean.

And, they made this ball that you can just check into your laundry and it will, I don't know how it works really.

It's like, it's not very that fine, but it still manages to collect so many bits of fiber.

It actually comes out as like a fluff and then you can pick it up.

You can take it out and put it in the rubbish bin.

Probably, it's probably creating like a static electric charge and, and it pulls it in cuz you can see static electricity when you rub against a lot of nylon shirts, you can feel it.

So that's probably what's happening.

It's probably like a static electric charge or something like that.

And it's attracting all those little micro fibers, so like your, your polar fleeces and it.

And your moisture wicking shirts and all that sort of stuff.

of it is letting a

plastic

coat.

Education.

Yeah.

It's , we've kind of gone into the rabbit hole of finding out all these things and, and being horrified as well.

Yep.

Everybody makes their own conscious decisions,

It is really, really, really hard for people to make an informed and educated decision because they don't have the full story and It is seriously hard to find the full story.

It, it takes a long time.

So only once you get the full story the whole way around, can you sit there and actually say, Okay, consciously I'm gonna do this or I'm gonna do that it, You can't really.

Poke blame or, or put people at fault because they don't know.

So that's, that's a big part of what we are trying to do, is we are trying to provide that education and that bit of knowledge so that people can then make an informed decision.

And they might not, they might not go to the extreme or the length of what we are doing, but they're still got the information that they can go to, the level that they are comfortable with, that they're happy to do.

And that's all that we can ask

We came to shore once and when we docked our dingy and we were walking along with jetty, you could see the the fishermen were getting blocks of ice and checking

Frozen water inside plastic bags with rubber and rubber bands.

So they were cutting, they were cutting the plastic bags off and chucking them into the water just off the side of the jetty because they didn't know.

And they don't know how it affect every day.

There was so many bags but they just, they didn't really know because this was quite a poor community and it was fairly isolated.

But you can see there was trash everywhere.

And, but what we did was we, we stopped and we helped them cut the plastic bags off, but we kept the bags and put them into another bag.

And then we took the bag and we showed them what we were doing and we went and chucked it into the nearest dumpster.

And then we just kept going and we.

Yeah.

Goodbye and stuff.

But then when we came back the next day, they were collecting the bags themselves and putting it into the dumpster.

Your modeling and your education work,

It may be just a little small piece in the world and just a few people, but word spreads and they'll continue to do this

We also began doing things like harvesting fishing net and rope that has been entangled in mangroves and in, in the ocean floating around the ocean and, tangled amongst rocks on islands.

So we saw that this was quite a valuable material that's still quite durable.

But it's actually very, very bad for the environment.

So it makes up a very wide percentage of plastic pollution in the ocean.

I may be wrong, but , from what I last remember, it was like 40% of plastic pollution is actually from fishing industry.

So we went and we collected these materials and we began upcycling them in our headquarters and we began upcycling them into things like key chain loops and um, uh, draw string bags, uh, with a net.

But that was sort of the birth of our newest line of products that we are extremely proud of.

So these products are, 100% upcycled material, , backpacks, toe bags, and fanny packs.

So these, we, we saw all of these materials that have been discarded, , in the water sport industry, the fishing industry.

When I say water sport industry, I mean sailing, I mean, uh, surfing.

, wind surfing, kite surfing, all stuff like that.

Uh, materials like the sails, wetsuits or fishing nets or , rope bits and pieces like that.

And we've been putting these all together into these unique water resistant durable bags, and . , even the stitching is a hundred percent recycled, , plastic.

These are all upcycled backpacks and we are very proud of them.

So during recent times, during Corona 19, uh, since it affected our project quite largely, we decided to take on a new approach to our project.

So we realized that recycling will never be the answer.

And we have sort of stepped a little bit back from recycling and more into up- cycling, which means giving an item a much higher value than what it was valued before, but we're also working more on education..

Covid 19 happened and now we are here with our own, , Plastic education comic book that was illustrated by my mother, compiled by her and a boat friend.

It teaches kids as young as, I'm gonna say, seven or eight, all sorts of things like, uh, where plastic came from, why it's bad, how you can avoid it, and how you can be an ocean hero.

A big component to what we do is creating education material and and mainly for kids because we find they're, they're are just more open to learning about things.

And there's not actually a lot of information for, for the youth about global issues.

But, I think, I think that kids have got a lot of power and like if they, if they get the knowledge, they'd likely to tell their parents, like, Oh, let's

Or why, cuz kids are very curious and once they find out different things, they will tell their parents about it.

So that's a key factor in what we do is get the kids informed and then they hopefully will will spread the word to their communities.

We have the green turtle and the leather back turtle, and those were actually made to raise awareness for turtles in Malaysia because the green turtle is the most common one that comes to Malaysia to nest.

But the leather back is actually extinct in Malaysia,

There's a lot of kids that are actually making a stand.

Sidney Sarah and Carlos share their last inspiring words.

So really the wildlife that's been on our planet has been here for so much longer than humans ever have been.

And they've all worked together to make a giant just a symbiotic ecosystem where they all work together and they manage to make it so perfect

I guess.

It took so long to evolve that, but then when humans come along and they start being selfish , they're not considerate of the things that have been here so much longer than us.

Do you know how, like, children are taught to be nice to elderly people because they're much wiser and they've been here so much longer.

We're not doing the same thing to the planet, and I mean, just for this planet to evolve so perfectly, I guess just to be destroyed by humans is in not that much of, in not that long of time.

We've got so many solutions to things that work, but it's just a lack of, in lack of caring that none of these things have gone forth yet.

, it just hasn't happened yet and , you just need to care really.

I think that's the thing is is the making conversation is really important.

And then , the blindfold comes off with a lot of these things that, that we didn't know before.

And then you can just get better and better.

There's always room for improvement.

No one's perfect, but we just have to start somewhere and then Yeah, and then you never know where it, where it leads.

Really greedy businessmen they don't understand that not even they can survive without the planet.

Simplification.

It's just, . It's very re very liberating.

Very liberating, that's for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

you have quality time with each other and you have that time for conversation.

Just pick something to do something that is a start and start to try and make a difference.

Doesn't have to be big.

Just, Yeah.

Just start,

You'll find nature so much more enjoyable.

If you would like to buy a turtle and support our project where the funds go directly into funding our project to build machines, fund beach cleanups

You can go to our website, theseamonkeyprojects.com, and you can also learn about plastic waste and what we do and how we do it.

And see all Mom's awesome cartoons.

To learn more about the sea monkey project or to support their efforts of pulling plastic from the sea.

Go to SeaMonkeyProjects.com, S E a M O N K E Y.

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We wish fair winds and plastic free seas to you all.