NAME: Taylor Maddalene
ROLE: Director, Plastics Initiative
ORGANIZATION: National Geographic Society
Perspectives: What is the National Geographic Society and what does it do?
TM: There are two sides to National Geographic. The for-profit side contains our media units and consumer product departments, which run things like the National Geographic magazine, the National Geographic television channels, and National Geographic travel. The non-profit side is the National Geographic Society, which is the oldest part of the organization, founded in 1888. The Society focuses on grant-giving, storytelling, and education to support research, exploration, and conservation around the world. Grant-giving is the “bread and butter” of the Society’s work as we have over 130 years of experience in funding exploration and discovery and have developed a great base of Explorers. The Society also manages our larger impact initiatives, like the Big Cats Initiative, the Last Wild Places project, and my initiative, Plastic: Sea to Source.
Perspectives: What is the Sea to Source Plastics Initiative?
TM: The Plastics initiative works on education, grant-giving, and research to promote awareness and reduce plastic pollution around the world. It works closely with the “Planet or Plastic?” team on National Geographic’s media side. Our education program creates resources for students around the world on the issues, as well as creates student challenges. We run the Ocean Plastic Innovations Challenge, a competition to find scalable, investable solutions to reduce plastic pollution. And we have our expeditions, which is our deep science area within which Sea to Source sits.
The team went through this discovery process over the last few years where we identified the role rivers play in plastic pollution and that this topic was a burgeoning area for science and exploration, as well as public attention. We thus decided to launch an expedition on the topic and selected two fellows to help develop our science plan. One fellow is a marine biologist, Dr. Heather Koldewey from the Zoological Society of London, and the other is an environmental engineer, Dr. Jenna Jambeck from the University of Georgia, so they complemented each other well, with expertise on land and sea between the two of them.
We chose the Ganges as the first river system to explore and test our methodology as it is one of the most important and iconic rivers, both culturally and environmentally, and is well-known around the world. Millions of people depend on it and there is tremendous opportunity for storytelling and solutions around plastics.
Perspectives: What did you learn from this expedition about plastic pollution and rivers?
TM: The second phase of the expedition is currently underway; our first phase studied the Ganges pre-monsoon, and we are now studying it again post-monsoon. While we don’t have our final conclusions yet, broadly speaking, we see that there can be opportunities in local economies for livelihood development around this issue; for example, working with the informal waste sector on plastic pollution. We are also learning a lot about the main contributors to plastic pollution, which include a lot of product packaging. Therefore, working with governments and corporations to rethink product design and distribution can be an important avenue for change. For example, one of the top products we saw in the Ganges was plastic sachets that are used to sell small amounts of personal care products or tobacco. This type of plastic solves a problem for corporations in developing countries as they allow for the sale of products even when people cannot afford the whole bottle or package. However, these sachets are usually made of low value plastic, which is not worth recycling. Additionally, these sachets have a high propensity for leakage to river systems due to their small size and light weight.
We’ll have more about our findings soon, and they’ll all be posted on our website and will be open source.
Perspectives: Are there any key differences in plastic pollution between developing and developed countries?
TM: Everyone we talked to during the expedition in India and Bangladesh recognizes that plastic pollution is a problem and was interested in addressing it. What’s especially tough about this issue for many developing countries is the speed with which plastic has been introduced to the economy, without viable alternatives. Many of these communities have only gotten plastic products within the last few decades, without proper waste management to address them downstream, and now they’re overwhelmed with them. Governments, especially local ones, have not had time to think through end-of-life regulations or the infrastructure needed to deal with the influx of plastic. Plastic still isn’t integrated into the waste stream in many developing countries.
Additionally, while products have changed significantly as a result of the introduction of plastic, many behaviors haven’t. For example, in many developing countries there’s a community norm where people take household waste and dump it behind their house, often into river tributaries. They’ve done this for thousands of years and it was never an issue because the vast majority of that waste was organic. However, households are continuing to do this when their waste is predominately inorganic materials, including plastic.
Perspectives: As Director of the Sea to Source Initiative, what does your day to day look like?
TM: No two days are the same! I sit on the program team, and we’re essentially the program managers for the Society’s impact initiatives. I coordinate across all departments in the Society as well as the media side to execute strategy around my initiative. I do a lot of dot connecting across the organization on plastics, as well as relationship building with grantees and Explorers. I also get to spend time on our expeditions and work on how to best promote their work and tell their stories.
Perspectives: The environment and climate change can be a difficult field to work in as it can feel like you’re fighting an avalanche of increasingly negative findings. What is something that’s been hopeful to you in your work?
TM: I used to work on large, nebulous topics like coral reef conservation and ocean acidification. It is hard for people to get a grasp of, let alone understand their impact on those issues. The beneficial thing about working on plastics is that it’s very concrete and easy for people to understand. It’s especially easy for people to see how their individual action can affect the issue, like not using single use plastics, and thus it’s been able to get a lot of traction in the public imagination.
Perspectives: How did you get where you are now in your career?
TM: When I was first starting out, I thought I wanted to go into hard science, but I soon hit what I describe as my “So what?” point. I didn’t want to be doing research that would only sit on a shelf and not be able to reach the people who can actually affect change. So, I swung very hard to the completely opposite side and started working in science communication, including education and consulting, which is how I ended up doing conservation work. My graduate program was very interdisciplinary with fellow students who were photographers and journalists all applying their unique lens to conservation. From them I learned there are many ways to tackle the problem, and they also showed me that you don’t need a hard science background to work in the field.
Perspectives: Do you have any advice to current students interested in a career at the intersection of environment and development?
TM: First, I would say yes to everything. If there’s an opportunity to get a coffee with someone you admire or to volunteer for an organization you’re interested in, do it! Try everything as it’s just as valuable to know what you don’t like as what you do. I would not be afraid to carve out a niche for yourself. If you’re interested in a specific topic, don’t try to fit into the profile of something that might seem more popular or valuable. What’s really valuable is when you have an idea and you run with it. Big environmental issues need big, audacious ideas in order to find solutions, and those solutions can come from people of all different backgrounds.
As narrated to Yifan Powers, Senior Editor, SAIS Perspectives.
To learn about other recent graduates' work, visit this page.
PHOTO CREDIT: "PLASTIC POLLUTION" by Mario Entero is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0