Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineering professor in UGA’s College of Engineering, and her students have partnered with Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, and the City of Miami to better understand the life cycle of plastic pollution and, more importantly, what steps must be taken to keep the Magic City and its famous waterways pristine. To do this, Jambeck and her students, in collaboration with local partners like Florida International University students, conducted a community-level analysis of the origins and fate of plastic waste, particularly single-use plastics like bottles or food packaging, using what is known as the Circularity Assessment Protocol, or CAP.
“The Miami CAP can give us the knowledge we need to help preserve and protect the economic and cultural powerhouse that is our ocean,” said Jon Paul “J.P.” Brooker, director of Florida Conservation at Ocean Conservancy. “With it, we can work with champions on the City Commission to develop landmark regulations that will keep that debris out of the Magic City’s water. Florida’s marine environment is at a crossroads and we need all hands on deck to save the iconic waters that we as Floridians love.”
The project, which builds upon Ocean Conservancy’s Shores Forward initiative, will culminate in a comprehensive report that will be released in January. “While it’s important that we accurately record plastic and other litter that we see on the ground or in the water, the CAP involves several other key components,” said Jambeck, who led a landmark study published in Science in 2015 that estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean every year.