Tuesday Talks: Erica Cirino, Science Writer, Artist, and Author, “Thicker than Water – The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis”
Much of what you’ve heard about plastic pollution may be wrong. Instead of a great island of trash, the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of manmade debris spread over hundreds of miles of sea—more like a soup than a floating garbage dump. Recycling is more complicated than we were taught: less than nine percent of the plastic we create is reused, and the majority ends up in the ocean. And plastic pollution isn’t confined to the open ocean: it’s in much of the air we breathe and the food we eat.
In Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis, photojournalist Erica Cirino brings readers on a globe-hopping journey to meet the scientists and activists telling the real story of the plastic crisis. From the deck of a plastic-hunting sailboat with a disabled engine, to the labs doing cutting-edge research on microplastics and the chemicals we ingest, Cirino paints a full picture of how plastic pollution is threatening wildlife and human health. Thicker Than Water reveals that the plastic crisis is also a tale of environmental injustice, as poorer nations take in a larger share of the world’s trash, and manufacturing chemicals threaten predominantly Black and low-income communities. (Learn more: https://islandpress.org/books/thicker-water).
There is some hope on the horizon, with new laws banning single-use items and technological innovations to replace plastic in our lives. But Cirino shows that we can only fix the problem if we face its full scope and begin to repair our throwaway culture. Dive in and learn more about how you can be a part of solutions to our plastic crisis during this informative presentation.
Erica Cirino is a science writer, author, and artist exploring the intersection of the human and nonhuman worlds, and recently began managing communications for Plastic Pollution Coalition. Her widely published photojournalistic works depict numerous ways people connect to nature–and each other–and shape planet Earth. In her recent book, “Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis,” (published by Island Press, 2021), Erica documents plastic across ecosystems and elements; shares stores from the primarily Black, Brown, Indigenous, rural, and low-income communities that are disproportionately harmed by industrial pollution globally; and uncovers strategies that work to prevent plastic from causing further devastation to our planet and its inhabitants. Erica lives with her rescued street dog, Sabi, on and between two shores, Long Island and Connecticut. Erica holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies, a Master of Science in Journalism from Stony Brook University, and has served as a guest researcher studying plastic pollution at Roskilde University in Denmark.
