The True Cost of Plastic Pollution

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"I'm always happy when I'm surrounded by water...it makes me put my whole life into perspective."

~ Beyoncé Knowles

One not so recent morning while packing up our gear--sunscreen, towels, wetsuits, surfboards and snacks--to head to the beach with my daughters they stopped me mid-stride and said they didn't want to go with me.

Are you kidding? We're going to the beach. The beach!

Dad, they said, when we go to the beach with you all we do is clean up other people's disgusting trash. It's not just (yes, they played the justice card). Picking up diapers is gross and our friends don't want to hang out with us anymore.

Their lecture hit me hard right between the eyes. It's true, we always bring a few trash bags and clean the beach when we arrive. It can sometimes take a long time. It's just what the Nichols family does at the beach, I always said. But by doing so week, month and year after year I unknowingly associated one of my favorite lifelong activities--a trip to the ocean--with a tedious chore. It was a heartbreaking insight into my near failure as a father to learn that my kids and their friends abhorred going to the beach with me.

I adjusted our plans for the next several months, choosing a steep trail to a difficult to access beach with oceanographic conditions that ensured few people and no plastic would wash up on its shores. My kids started to fall in love again: with the tide pools, waves, cliffs and sand. Early morning and late night excursions, long walks and short swims, salt and wind, limpets and anemones returned to our lives and filtered into their childhood dreams. This became our home beach. Their beach. Their Pacific Ocean.

"I simply feel more in sync with myself when I'm in the ocean."

~ Kelly Slater

Eventually, we returned to the periodic beach clean-up routine up and down the coast, with more passion and purpose. But I had learned a few important lessons: love comes first, our children are not the adults' clean-up team and when we trash our environment the damage is far deeper than economic, ecological and aesthetic.

As a kid I dreamed of merging my greatest pleasures and deepest passions as a marine biologist, a life full of adventure and beauty. But due to plastic pollution, the reality has been something else. On beaches in El Salvador sea turtles lumber over windrows of plastic bottles to reach clear sand to deposit their eggs. During a reef survey in Indonesia we counted 74 floating plastic bags in one minute. Our field sites and favorite breaks are often accessed by swimming through plastic soup, mouth and eyes tightly closed. Last week after traveling to southern California with me to  give an ocean lecture my daughter was hit in the face by a Doritos bag and had a diaper stuck to her foot as we surfed.

When the ribbons of land and water along our oceans and wild waterways are despoiled society is also robbed of some of its best sources of awe, creativity, escape, happiness, healing, inspiration, introspection, joy, peace, play, privacy, relaxation, romance, solitude, transcendence, wonder...I could go on.

When plastic replaces wild nature these benefits evaporate quickly and are replaced by "red mind" emotions including accusation, anger, anxiety, blame, disappointment, disgust, disrespect, frustration, grief, helplessness, resentment, sadness and stress.

"People with autism have no freedom. In the water it's so quiet and I'm so free and happy there. Nobody hassles us in the water, and it's as if we've got all the time in the world. Whether we stay in one place or we are swimming about, when we are in the water we can really be at one with the pulse of time. Outside of the water there's always too much stimulation for our eyes and our ears, and it is impossible for us to guess how long one second is or how long an hour takes."

~ Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump

Parents, teachers, veterans, musicians, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, scientists all access their local waters in order to live better, happier, more interesting and creative lives. We take our babies, our kids, our lovers, our friends, our colleagues and our elders to the water to be closer to them, to connect. Polluted water shrinks our lives, robs us of the sacred moments our most precious memories are made of.

"That's where I first discovered my love for music, through the motion of water. My imagination ran wild."

~ Pharrell Williams

Yet our agencies, researchers and organizations rarely mention these vast "blue mind" benefits (or "red mind" costs) when justifying their work for clean coasts and oceans, focusing mainly on important threats to the tourism economy, grave impacts to wildlife such as sea birds and turtles, not to mention the invasion of toxic chemicals into our bodies and ecosystems. When we fail to include the cognitive, emotional, psychological, social and spiritual values of healthy waters we send a message that those attributes are not important. Or worse, that they aren't real.

It is true that oceans give us life, but our planet's wild places also make life worth living and help heal us when we are broken. Especially those who need healing most.

"I feel I belong in the water--I feel we all belong in the water...I cease to be a sort of obsessed intellect and a shaky body, and I just become a porpoise."

~ Dr. Oliver Sacks

Let's update the language we use to describe our mission to protect and restore wild bluescapes.

Let's go deeper and discuss the true value of wild waters and the true cost of plastic pollution.

Let's use all of the available knowledge--including neuroscience and psychology--to justify these efforts and build a bigger, more inclusive and diverse blue movement.

Let's help our children fall head over heels in love with their water and then as young adults enroll them in the fight to protect what they love about life on our blue marble home.

Let's protect and restore our waterways and oceans for the medicine they provide.

Dr. Wallace J. Nichols is Plastic Pollution Coalition's founding advisory board chair, a marine scientist, wild water advocate, Fellow National member of the Explorers Club and dad. His bestselling book Blue Mind explores the intersection between waterways, oceans, public health and the human brain. The 6th Annual Blue Mind Summit will be held May 18-20th at Asilomar, more info is available at: www.bluemindcollective.com

K. J. Wyles, S. Pahl, K. Thomas, R. C. Thompson. Factors That Can Undermine the Psychological Benefits of Coastal Environments: Exploring the Effect of Tidal State, Presence, and Type of Litter. Environment and Behavior, 2015; DOI: 10.1177/0013916515592177