Will the ocean contain more plastic than fish?

As a world class British yachtswoman, Dame Ellen MacArthur has “seen more of the world’s oceans than almost anyone else,” and she’s alarmed by all the plastic gunk that is floating at sea.

She warns that there will be more waste plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050, unless drastic changes begin to occur soon.

When interviewed by Sandra Laville of The Guardian, a British daily newspaper based in London, MacArthur called the current level of pollution “shocking and horrendous; it’s getting worse not better….”

“This is a systemic failure, and we are trying to go back to the beginning of the pipe and stop that systemic failure through redesigning the system,” she said.

“It is by working with these companies, with policy makers, with cities, with innovation to design bio-benign products – that we will tackle this. There isn’t a company out there that wants to see its logo in the ocean or in a river.”

MacArthur, 42, grew up in Whatstandwell near Matlock in Derbyshire, England. She began sailing with her aunt at age 4 and spent her spare time reading sailing books.

In 1994, MacArthur launched her career in yachting by working on a 60-foot vessel and teaching sailing classes. She achieved her yachtmaster qualification at age 18, and in 1995 she won the Young Sailor of the Year Award after sailing solo around the British Isles.

In 2005, MacArthur set a world record for the fastest solo nonstop voyage around the world, completing the 27,348-mile journey in 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds (thereby trimming 1 day, 8 hours, 35 minutes and 49 seconds off the previous record). As a reward, MacArthur was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.

“I remember quite poignantly writing in the log on the boat: What I have got on the boat is everything. It really struck me that you save everything, everything you have, because you know it’s finite, you know there isn’t any more. What you have on that boat is it, your entire world.”

Laville commented that “back on dry land, away from the intensity of racing, MacArthur began to process the thoughts she had on the water.”

“If we are using these resources in a very linear fashion we are going to use them up at some stage, and no one knows exactly when,” MacArthur stated.

Laville reported that MacArthur had researched how best to move away from the disposable economic model to one in which resources are kept in use for as long as possible, then recovered and regenerated into other products and materials.

“She decided to dedicate herself to acting as a catalyst for change – a task that required her single-minded attention,” Laville said.

“I was at a position in my life where doors had opened that I wasn’t expecting to open,” MacArthur said. 

Hence, MacArthur retired from competitive racing in 2010 and announced the formation of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity that works with business and education to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

Today, the organization is based on the Isle of Wight, just off the southern shore of the English mainland. The foundation employs more than 100 people, and the location is ideal to allow MacArthur and family to sail, but now just purely as a hobby.

MacArthur told Laville that she believes it is through global partnerships and “incredibly frank conversations” with industry that change will naturally come by proving that more money can be made from circular rather than linear economics.

“We are trying to change a system, not one business,” MacArthur said. “We need to change the way people think, the way things are designed, the materials that are put into them.”

Her optimism is such that she believes change will happen through collaboration, and she has numerous leading companies as partners, including Nike, Unilever, Google, Renault and Royal Philips of the Netherlands.

Work of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has been endorsed by the World Economic Forum, the international organization for public-private cooperation, that is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

MacArthur says a business-as-usual approach is unacceptable, because based at the current rate of projected growth, “new plastics will consume 20% of all oil production within 35 years, up from an estimated 5% today.”

“Plastics production has increased twentyfold since 1964, reaching 311 metric tonnes in 2014, she says. It is expected to double again in the next 20 years and almost quadruple by 2050.”

More plastics than fish in the ocean? Dagnabbit it all.

Thinking-about-it time is over…we need some action. Bring on Alicia Bridges to sing about it, ala her monster disco hit in 1978, “I Love the Nightlife.”

One fan says it’s pronounced “acts-shawn.”