The plastic soup in the South Pacific

The plastic soup in the South Pacific
Picture a boat crossing open water far off the coast of Chile. You see no floating bottles and no tangled nets. The sea looks clean. Then the crew hauls up a water sample, and it holds tiny colored fragments that look like confetti.

A patch you cannot see from the deck
National Geographic reported in July 2017 that Captain Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Research Foundation, had found a zone of plastic pollution in the South Pacific during a six-month expedition. The zone lies off the coast of Chile and Peru. Moore estimated it could cover upwards of a million square miles. When the story ran, his team was still processing and weighing the samples, so the article gave no figure for how much plastic the zone holds.

The same article noted that Marcus Eriksen of the 5 Gyres Institute crossed that gyre in 2011 and did not spot much plastic. A patch made of microscopic pieces does not show up from the deck of a boat. It shows up in a sample, which means a count depends on who takes the sample and where.

The leak behind the soup
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says 19 to 23 million tonnes of plastic waste leak into aquatic ecosystems every year, polluting lakes, rivers and seas. UNEP also says the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic enter the world's oceans, rivers and lakes every day. A leak of that size describes a waste system with gaps in it. Some plastic never reaches a collection truck, and some sits in a dump that rain and wind can reach.

Islands that import nearly everything
In August 2024, more than 200 delegates met in Funafuti, Tuvalu, for the Fourth Clean Pacific Roundtable, organized by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP). The Pacific Islands News Association reported on the meeting using SPREP's account. According to that report, almost all goods in Tuvalu arrive by import, from food and building materials to medical supplies and vehicles. Land is limited, so the government leases plots from landowners for controlled dumpsites on each island. The report says those sites are often short of staff and lack working equipment to compact and cover the waste.

Tuvalu's Prime Minister, Feleti Teo, told the meeting that for the Pacific "the problem is becoming acute due to capacity constraints and increasing urban populations." If you run a small island, you cannot send a truck to the next town over. Every item that arrives stays on the island unless someone ships it out.

Fewer products in, a place for the rest
Sefanaia Nawadra, SPREP's Director General, told the roundtable that Pacific countries must "move from a linear model to one of circularity." He listed bans on unwanted products, such as single-use plastics, as part of that shift. He also said indigenous knowledge already contains circular practices such as composting and farming.

Bans reduce what comes in. They do not remove what is already on the island or what still arrives in packaging. Teo told the roundtable that a regional facility would "assist tremendously countries like Tuvalu with severe capacity constraints." Such a facility would take years to plan and fund. Waste piles up in the meantime.

Where Nexus Biofuel fits
Nexus Biofuel Inc., based in Kelowna, British Columbia, converts waste streams, including biomass and municipal solid waste, into usable energy. Its equipment is portable and economical, and it avoids incineration. A small island has little land, few trained crews and no neighbouring landfill. Equipment that moves to the waste, rather than requiring a large central plant, matches those limits.

Nexus Biofuel aims to cut reliance on fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create jobs where its equipment operates. Many Pacific islands depend on imported goods, and waste that becomes energy on the island is waste that stays out of a dumpsite. The plastic in the South Pacific is a problem for governments, shipping lines, manufacturers and communities to solve together. Nexus Biofuel's part is to give a town a way to deal with its own waste while the larger decisions are made.