A Note From the Author
As a systems thinker, I weave together solutions from across disciplines to tackle the biggest challenge of our time.
For nearly a month in 2024, storm after storm slammed into the Philippines—six tropical cyclones in twenty-five days—leaving the Pasig River running black with debris. Torrents of floodwater, swollen by days of unrelenting rain, tore through the streets of Manila, sweeping along anything in their path. Old appliances, rotting vegetation, and countless tonnes of plastic waste surged downstream, spilling into Manila Bay and out into the Pacific. This onslaught was part of a trend scientists have been warning about for years: a warming climate is fuelling stronger, more destructive weather events across the tropics.
This is how most ocean plastic enters the sea—not from careless littering on a beach, but from rivers acting as conveyor belts for the waste of entire cities. In the case of the Pasig, the river flows through one of the most densely populated regions on Earth, where more than fourteen million people live within its watershed. With limited waste management infrastructure, much of the city’s refuse ends up in open dumps or scattered through streets and waterways. When extreme storms hit, that waste is flushed directly into the ocean.
The connection between climate change and plastic pollution runs deeper than storms alone. Plastics are made from fossil fuels, meaning every tonne produced carries a carbon footprint from extraction to manufacture. Once in the ocean, they add to the stress already bearing down on marine ecosystems, from coral reefs to plankton blooms. Recent research has shown that plastic pollution can amplify the impacts of other planetary crises, including climate change, ocean acidification, and biodiversity loss. It is not just an eyesore—it is a force multiplier for environmental collapse.
Plastic pollution disrupts every Earth system it touches—altering climate, biodiversity, and nutrient flows—and intensifying the damage already caused by breached planetary boundaries.
- Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez et al., One Earth Volume 7, Issue 12 (2024)
Globally, we produce more than 450 million tonnes of plastic every year. Around forty percent is used just once before being discarded. Somewhere between 8 and 14 million tonnes of it find their way into the oceans annually, carried by rivers, wind, and coastal runoff. Once there, plastics break apart into ever-smaller fragments, but they do not biodegrade. Over time, these particles—now numbering in the tens of trillions—spread throughout the water column, from the surface to the seafloor, entering the food chain and, eventually, our own bodies.
In a warming world, the drivers of plastic pollution are only intensifying. Heavier rains wash more waste into rivers. Stronger storms scatter debris across coastlines. Shifting ocean currents redistribute floating garbage to new places, sometimes thousands of kilometres from its source. The result is a problem that grows in both scale and complexity with each passing year.
Without major changes, the problem gets worse. The flow of plastic into the ocean could double by 2040, and by 2050 there could be more plastic in the sea than fish by weight. Every year of delay means more waste in the water, more damage to ecosystems, and fewer options left to fix it.
This problem can’t be solved just by cleaning up the mess already in our oceans. We need to cut off the flow of new plastic at its source, and rethink how we handle waste altogether. As with every climate change challenge, the goal is not simply to react, but to act with the scale, urgency, and ingenuity that the climate crisis demands.
The Scope of the Crisis
The floating garbage patches that draw so much media attention are only the most visible part of the problem. Ocean currents known as gyres act like slow-moving whirlpools, pulling in debris from thousands of kilometres away and trapping it in rotating loops. These zones, like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, are not solid islands of trash but vast, diluted regions of accumulated debris—bottles, abandoned fishing gear, packaging, and countless fragments suspended just below the surface. Lost fishing nets and lines are especially hazardous, drifting for years and entangling wildlife far from shore.
But the plastic floating on the surface is merely the tip of the iceberg. Scientists now believe that as much as 99 percent of ocean plastic is out of sight, either suspended throughout the water column or settled on the seafloor. Deep-sea surveys have found plastic fibres in sediments thousands of metres down, and fragments lodged in the stomachs of creatures living in complete darkness. In polar regions, sea ice traps microplastics for decades—only to release them back into the water as the ice melts in a warming climate.
Plastic litter you can see on the surface of the ocean, only represent 1% of the total plastic in the ocean. The other 99% are the microplastic fragments we find far below the surface.
The scale is staggering. A United Nations report estimated there are 51 trillion microplastic particles drifting in our oceans—more than 500 times the number of stars in our galaxy. They’re small enough to be eaten by plankton and larval fish, meaning they enter the marine food chain at its very foundation. From there, they move into the bodies of larger fish, marine mammals, and eventually the seafood on our plates.
Once in the marine environment, plastics also become part of a complex chemical exchange. Many contain additives such as BPA (a common chemical in food packaging), flame retardants, and other compounds designed to make plastics more flexible or durable. Over time, these chemicals can leach out. Plastics also pick up pollutants already in the water—heavy metals, pesticides, persistent chemicals—turning fragments into floating toxic sponges. When ingested, these contaminants move up the food chain, where they have been linked to hormonal disruption, reproductive problems, and even cancer in both wildlife and humans.
The biological consequences are increasingly well-documented. Sea turtles starve with stomachs full of plastic bags. Seabirds feed their chicks bottle caps and bits of packaging, mistaking them for food. Fish and mussels show signs of ingesting microplastics, which have also been found in human blood, lungs, and placentas. The full health implications are still unknown, but the fact that these particles can cross from the environment into our bodies is reason enough for alarm.
Most studies to date have confirmed that nano and microplastics can cause cells to die, harm DNA, and disrupt normal cell function.
- Dr. Ewa Winiarska et al., Environmental Research, Volume 251 (2024)
Plastic pollution also interacts with the climate system itself. As it degrades in sunlight, it releases methane and ethylene—potent greenhouse gases that contribute to warming. More intense storms break apart larger items into microplastics more quickly, accelerating their spread. Shifting wind and current patterns redistribute floating debris into new regions, sometimes thousands of kilometres from where it entered the sea. As ecosystems are stressed by warming, acidification, and overfishing, plastic pollution piles on yet another pressure—eroding the resilience of marine life already pushed to the brink.
This is the scale of the challenge: a pollutant that is mobile, persistent, and deeply embedded in the natural world. The unfortunate reality is that much of the plastic already in our oceans is beyond recovery, destined to circulate for centuries. What’s critically important now is cutting off the flow of new waste, so the damage does not multiply and ecosystems have a chance to heal. Still, the idea of cleaning up what’s already out there has captured the world’s imagination.
The Ocean Cleanup and the Limits of Surface Solutions
In 2018, a Dutch non-profit called The Ocean Cleanup launched one of the most ambitious environmental projects in history. Their goal was nothing less than to remove 90 percent of the floating plastic from the world’s oceans by 2040, starting with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The plan was simple in concept, if not in execution: deploy massive floating barriers that would drift with the currents, funnelling debris into a central retention zone. Every few weeks, a vessel would arrive to collect the haul, which could then be recycled into high-quality consumer goods. The first product they released—a limited run of designer sunglasses—was meant to prove that ocean plastic could be transformed into something valuable.
The project captured global attention. Images of the long, U-shaped boom stretching across the water became a symbol of technological ingenuity applied to a daunting problem. Donations poured in, and media coverage often framed it as the long-awaited solution to the ocean plastic crisis. For many, it was comforting to think that a dedicated team, armed with clever engineering, could handle the mess while the rest of us carried on as usual.
But the ocean is a harsh proving ground. Within months of its first deployment, the system broke apart under relentless wave action and wind stress, forcing a costly tow back to shore for repairs. Later versions have fared better, but the fundamental challenges remain. Equipment operating in the open ocean must survive constant battering from swells, storms, and ultraviolet exposure. Even when intact, the system can only collect debris floating near the surface, leaving the vast majority of ocean plastic—microplastics suspended in the water column and debris resting on the seabed—beyond its reach.
There is also the problem of scale. At least eight million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans every year. Even if The Ocean Cleanup could remove thousands of tonnes annually, the inflow from rivers, coastlines, and fisheries would continue to replenish the supply faster than it could be taken out. Without stopping the source, the project risks becoming a perpetual game of catch-up.
Perhaps the biggest limitation is how it shapes public perception. High-profile cleanup efforts can create the illusion that the problem is under control, reducing public and political pressure to address root causes. It’s the same trap that occurs when “compostable” or “biodegradable” plastics enter the market without clear guidance—people believe they are making environmentally friendly choices, when in reality those materials often require industrial composting facilities that most places lack. Without it, many of those items end up in landfills—or worse, foul up recycling streams.
None of this is to say The Ocean Cleanup’s work is without merit. Every piece of plastic removed from the ocean is one less hazard to marine life, and the project has sparked global conversations about the need for action. But as its founder Boyan Slat has acknowledged, cleanup alone will never solve the problem. Without stopping new plastic from entering the ocean, these systems will always be outpaced by the tide. That means looking upstream—to the rivers, cities, and industries where this pollution begins—before it ever has the chance to reach the sea.
Moving Upstream – Stopping Plastic From Reaching the Sea
If the ocean is where plastic pollution accumulates, rivers are how most of it gets there. For years, the narrative was simple: ten rivers—mostly in Asia and Africa—were responsible for up to 90 percent of ocean-bound plastic. The implication was that targeting those few waterways could drastically reduce the problem. But newer research has revealed a more complex picture. In reality, roughly a thousand rivers account for about 80 percent of the total, and most are small or medium-sized streams flowing through densely populated areas with poor waste management systems.
The Pasig River in the Philippines is the most polluted of them all. Winding through the capital city of Manila, it runs through a watershed that more than fourteen million people call home. With limited formal waste collection and a patchwork of open dumps, much of the city’s refuse ends up in streets and drainage canals. When heavy rains arrive, that waste is flushed into the river and swept downstream to Manila Bay. From there, it joins the North Pacific currents and begins a slow journey into the open ocean, where it may drift for decades before breaking apart into microplastics.
The Pasig is not an exception. The Philippines contains seven of the ten most plastic-polluted rivers in the world and contributes roughly one-third of all plastic entering the ocean each year. It’s a reflection of the country’s geography—thousands of islands, most of them densely populated along the coast—combined with limited waste collection systems. Taken together, it means small rivers, not the massive ones, are doing the most damage. And that means focusing on these waterways offers the best chance to stem the flow.
More than 1,000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean, which range between 0.8 million and 2.7 million total metric tons per year, with small urban rivers among the most polluting.
-Science Advances, Volume 7, Issue 18 (2021)
Recognizing this, The Ocean Cleanup shifted much of its focus from the open sea to the rivers themselves. Their answer is the Interceptor—a solar-powered vessel anchored in place with floating barriers that guide debris toward a conveyor belt. The waste is lifted from the water, stored in onboard bins, and later transported for disposal or recycling. By stopping plastic at the source, these systems have the potential to prevent tens of thousands of tonnes from ever reaching the ocean.
Other groups are tackling the same challenge with different tools. In San Diego, a volunteer-run non-profit called Clear Blue Sea has developed FRED—the Floating Robot for Eliminating Debris. Shaped like a small catamaran, it uses solar power to run a conveyor belt that scoops debris from the water’s surface. It can be piloted manually or programmed to follow a GPS route, and its sensors help it avoid marine life. FRED’s small scale and reliance on donations mean it’s unlikely to tackle the problem at scale, but it’s proof that innovative, low-cost designs can be built and deployed by local communities.
While the highest concentrations of river-borne plastic originate in lower-income nations, wealthier countries are far from blameless. Canada is among the highest per capita waste producers in the world, generating roughly 684 kg per person per year, with about 86 percent ending up in landfills. Only a fraction of its plastic—about 7-12 percent, depending on the year—is ever recycled. Much of what is collected for recycling is shipped abroad, often to countries without the infrastructure to handle it safely—such as the Philippines. Once there, it may be burned in open pits, dumped into rivers, or left to accumulate in informal landfills. The fiction that exporting waste absolves us of responsibility has allowed the problem to persist for decades.
According to a World Bank investigation, the annual production of municipal solid waste (MSW) worldwide is estimated to be 2 billion metric tonnes. Between one-third and forty percent is disposed of improperly, burning or dumping it outside.
- International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Volume 77 (2024)
Recycling itself has limits. Mechanical recycling can only process certain types of plastic, and each cycle degrades the material’s quality until it must be discarded. Chemical recycling methods like pyrolysis can, in theory, break plastics down into their base components, but they require large amounts of energy and can release toxic emissions. Even at its best, recycling only delays disposal—it doesn’t prevent it. And some studies show that recycled plastics can leach more harmful chemicals than new plastics, raising health concerns even as they reduce waste.
Extended producer responsibility—where companies are required to fund and design systems for managing their products at end of life—can help close some of those gaps. By shifting the burden upstream, it creates an incentive to use less packaging, design for reuse, and keep more plastic out of landfills. Europe has shown that strong EPR rules can raise recycling rates and reduce waste. But plastic still ends up in the system—collected, processed, and eventually discarded. EPR can slow the flow, but it won’t stop it.
If we want to turn the tide, the first priority must be keeping plastic out of rivers altogether. Better waste management, investment in collection and processing, and holding producers accountable for their products are all essential steps. But even the most effective prevention measures won’t address the mountains of plastic we’ve already created—waste sitting in landfills, buried in dump sites, or circulating in the ocean itself. Dealing with that legacy pollution will require a different kind of solution, one capable of eliminating waste entirely while creating value in the process.
A New Path – Plasma Arc Gasification
Stopping plastic at its source is critical, but it leaves one enormous problem unsolved: the billions of tonnes of waste we’ve already produced. Much of it is in landfills, slowly releasing methane and toxic leachate into the environment. Some is circulating in the oceans or buried in riverbeds. Without a way to eliminate this backlog, even the most ambitious prevention measures can only slow the pace of accumulation, not reverse it.
Plasma arc gasification offers a way forward. Plasma—the fourth state of matter, beyond solid, liquid, and gas—is the most abundant form in the universe, yet on Earth it appears only rarely, in fleeting bursts of lightning. This technology harnesses plasma’s extreme heat to break down waste, transforming it into useful by-products instead of leaving it to decay for centuries.
The process takes place in a sealed vessel called a plasma converter. Inside, an electrical current arcs between two electrodes, heating a stream of inert gas until it becomes plasma—reaching temperatures of over 14,000 °C, nearly three times hotter than the surface of the sun. Waste is fed into this chamber, where the intense heat breaks it down into its basic molecular components. The same process has even been used to vitrify hazardous and radioactive waste into glass-like residues, trapping contaminants in a stable form that can’t leach out. What emerges can take several forms.
Waste materials, including plastics, contain high amounts of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and the conversion rate of those materials into syngas through plasma arc gasification can exceed 99 percent.
The main product is synthesis gas—or syngas—a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and other trace gases. Once cleaned, syngas can be burned to generate electricity, refined into hydrogen fuel, or used as a feedstock for new products. Alongside the syngas, the process produces a glass-like material called slag, formed from inorganic substances such as metals and minerals. Slag can be repurposed as aggregate in construction, keeping it out of the waste stream entirely. Finally, the intense heat generated during the process can be captured and used to create steam, which drives turbines to produce even more electricity.
Unlike incineration, which burns waste with oxygen and releases significant carbon emissions along with toxic pollutants, plasma arc gasification operates in an oxygen-starved environment. The absence of combustion means far fewer harmful emissions, and when coupled with proper gas cleaning, the process can achieve near-zero release of pollutants.
From an economic standpoint, the technology has clear potential. The syngas can be used to run the plant itself, making the system largely self-sustaining once operational, with excess electricity sold back to the grid. Hydrogen extracted from the syngas could supply a growing clean-fuel market, and tipping fees—charged to accept waste—would provide another steady revenue stream. Just one facility could process thousands of tonnes of solid waste per day while generating both energy and income.
Furthermore, hydrogen isn’t just a by-product—it’s the prize. A single large-scale facility could produce 120,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year—more than 20 million refills in today’s fuel-cell cars. That kind of scale would turn garbage into a cornerstone of the clean energy economy. The detailed math is in the appendix, but the takeaway is clear: plasma gasification is a waste solution and a serious hydrogen pathway for a net-zero Canada.
Plasma gasification is a viable solution for treating waste of any composition, with the potential to recover energy and reduce environmental costs.
- ACS Omega, Volume 9 / Issue 19 (2024)
The environmental benefits also go beyond waste elimination. By replacing landfills, plasma arc gasification prevents the release of methane—a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. The production of syngas also creates alternative feedstocks for fuels and materials, reducing the demand for virgin fossil fuels in manufacturing. And because the process can handle mixed waste streams, it sidesteps the sorting challenges that make traditional recycling so inefficient.
Small-scale facilities already operate in parts of Asia and Europe, and the process has been demonstrated on a range of feeds, including hazardous wastes. What has slowed adoption is not feasibility but economics. Landfills remain artificially cheap, while building a large-scale gasification plant demands major upfront capital and investor risk. Yet when the hidden costs of landfills are included—methane emissions, groundwater contamination, and squandered energy potential—the balance begins to shift.
With the right investment, Canada could transform its waste problem into a leadership role. With enough facilities, we could process all of our annual waste while steadily eliminating the legacy stockpiles that sit in landfills, leaking methane year after year. Within a generation, those sites could be gone. Beyond our borders, Canada could even offer processing capacity to nations grappling with plastic crises of their own—turning waste into a traded resource rather than an environmental liability. With abundant clean power and a wealth of technical expertise, Canada is well placed to show how waste can be transformed from liability into opportunity.
What stands in the way now isn’t physics—it’s priorities. Finance the build, put rules in place to clean the syngas and handle slag safely, and make it happen. These are engineering and policy problems, not scientific ones. The technology works. The open question is whether we’ll build it at the scale the crisis demands—and turn waste from liability to resource.
Beyond Plastic – Restoring Ocean Health
Plasma arc gasification could transform how we deal with waste on land, but the oceans need more than plastic removal to recover. Climate change is altering the chemistry of seawater itself, driving ocean acidification at a pace not seen in millions of years. As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, a portion dissolves into the ocean, forming carbonic acid. This lowers the pH of seawater, weakening coral skeletons, dissolving the shells of marine organisms, and disrupting the food webs that support life from plankton to whales.
Emerging technologies are now exploring how to reverse some of this damage. One approach, sometimes called “ocean scrubbing,” uses specially equipped ships to remove dissolved CO₂ from seawater. The process works by drawing in seawater, passing it through a system that alters its chemistry to release the dissolved CO₂, and then discharging the treated water back into the ocean. The captured carbon can then be stored permanently or used as a feedstock for industrial applications. Because the ocean and atmosphere are in constant equilibrium, removing CO₂ from seawater encourages the ocean to absorb more from the air, reducing atmospheric concentrations over time.
The upside is twofold: it directly tackles acidification—restoring the chemistry corals and shell-forming life depend on—and it adds a scalable carbon-removal lever that doesn’t use vast tracts of land or compete with agriculture.
In just over two centuries since the industrial revolution began, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to human actions has increased ocean acidity by 30 percent. This has far reaching implications for the ocean and the creatures that live there.
- U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (2025)
For Canada, this offers the chance to lead on two fronts at once: eliminating waste and restoring the chemical balance of the oceans. Our extensive coastlines, marine research institutions, and clean-energy resources make us well positioned to test and scale these technologies in partnership with global initiatives. Just as we could offer waste processing capacity to countries facing plastic crises, we could also contribute to the development of ocean restoration methods that benefit the entire planet.
Desalination provides another opportunity. Around the world, more and more regions are relying on it to turn seawater into drinking water. By pairing desalination with ocean scrubbing, the same seawater intake and outflow systems could be used to remove dissolved carbon dioxide while producing fresh water. Canada won’t build its future on desalination—we’re rich in freshwater—but in drought-prone regions (like California, Texas, and the Middle East), these plants are already essential. Pairing them with ocean-scrubbing chemistries could turn critical water infrastructure into climate infrastructure, too.
Protecting ocean health will require an integrated strategy. That means stopping plastic at its source, deploying advanced waste-to-energy solutions like plasma arc gasification, and investing in technologies that address the chemical and biological stresses amplified by climate change. The benefits ripple far beyond the water itself. Healthy oceans regulate the climate, support billions of livelihoods, and provide a food source for much of the world’s population.
With so much chaos in the world, it’s tempting to see ocean health as a distant concern—something to revisit once other fires are out. But it cannot, and must not, be forgotten. The oceans and the life within them are critical to humanity’s survival, and their destruction is a cost we cannot afford to keep paying. With the right investment, we can clean up the damage we’ve done and breathe new life into the waters that sustain us. And Canada, a nation brimming with potential and bordered by three oceans, has a rare chance to push the world toward a new era of environmental stewardship. We can lead now, or watch as more slips away than we can possibly imagine.
Curious about why I wrote this book? Read my Author’s Note →
Want to dive deeper? A full list of sources and further reading for this chapter is available at: www.themundi.com/book/sources