A Plastic Ocean with Jo Ruxton

Beaming Green

I feel honoured to speak with UK-based Jo Ruxton this week, who is the producer of the film "A Plastic Ocean" (A film my partner and I screened when we launched our not-for-profit Let's Waste Less in 2017 that forever changed the way we viewed single plastic and our throw-away culture). View the trailer

Plastic is accumulating across the planet at an alarming rate and adversely affecting the health of wildlife, wildlife habitat and humans. Because plastic takes decades to break down, experts predict that there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050.

In this interview I speak with Jo about what she observed while making this documentary and some of the challenges they faced.

We also speak about:

• how Jo has observed a change for the worse in her 40-year career documenting our oceans, with plastics having a devastating effect on so many ecosystems and species
• why plastic in the ocean has a negative effect on animals, the environment and us, once it gets into our food chain
• how micro plastics journey from land into the ocean, taking around 20 years to break down
• how the problems of plastic in the ocean are compounded by BPA leaching and its absorbent properties that trap chemicals, like agricultural run off and DDT
• how pristine environments like Lord Howe Island and its sea birds are affected as a result of the plastic we (often) unthinkingly throw away
• why recycling offshore is not sustainable and recycling alone is not enough to resolve the problems that plastic create
• how her organisation Plastic Oceans Foundation is making a difference and why there is hope for a better future.

It was an engaging and sometime emotional interview for me as I realised that there was so much more I could be doing to make a difference.

Bio - Jo Ruxton

Jo Ruxton is a passionate campaigner for the oceans, her career in conservation began in the ‘80’s when she started the first marine programme for WWF in Hong Kong, where she lived for 14 years. During that time, she was a key advocate for the establishment of the first marine protected areas there.

She was a lead member of the BBC Natural History Unit’s diving team for many years and has been producing and directing underwater sequences since the first days of filming on the award-winning Blue Planet series in 1997. During her 12 years at the BBC she was involved in numerous underwater films from Antarctica to the pristine reefs of the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean for the BBC and the Discovery Channel.

Disappointed in the lack of conservation messages in the BBC films she worked on, she decided to leave to work independently and when she started to hear about the problem of plastic waste in the oceans, she knew she had to tell the story as it was. She began to raise the funds needed to make the documentary feature, A Plastic Ocean and it was 2 years before there was enough to begin filming. The more she learned about the subject the more determined she was to tell the story as research was revealing a much bigger problem than she had ever imagined. It was 8 years before her multi-award-winning film, A Plastic Ocean, was finally released in 70 countries and in 15 languages.

Jo co-founded the Plastic Oceans Foundation as a registered UK charity nearly 11 years ago to help the fundraising process and to continue the legacy of the film with evidence-based education programmes for schools, business and public awareness. (want to know more visit beaming green.com)
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