PBS高端访谈:塑料对海洋危害有多严重（在线收听）

JUDY WOODRUFF: Plastic pollution is now considered one of the largest environmental threats facing humans and animals. The material is made to last much longer than a human lifetime, but that also means its impact on the planet lasts a lifetime too. Forty percent of all plastic, water bottles, bags, straws, and utensils, are used only one time before being discarded. Amna Nawaz and producer Lorna Baldwin kick off a series this week about our global plastics problem. And a warning: Viewers may find some of the images involving injured animals disturbing.

AMNA NAWAZ: Along coasts across the globe, waves of plastic are washing ashore. This beach in the Dominican Republic is inundated every day. This stretch of sand on Australia's Christmas Island is swamped by debris. Plastic is clogging landfills from Thailand to Kenya. Why? Plastic is virtually indestructible, and it doesn't break down easily. But there are also so many different types of plastic, it can be hard or in some cases impossible to recycle. And yet, around the world, our appetite for plastic keeps on growing. More than nine billion metric tons of plastic has been produced since 1950, the weight equivalent of 27,000 Empire State Buildings or more than a billion elephants. Roland Geyer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is an industrial ecologist who quantified the problem. He says, of all that plastic, an estimated 60 percent still exists on Earth today.

ROLAND GEYER, University of California, Santa Barbara: Of the nine billion metric tons that humankind ever produced, maybe 20 to 30 percent is still in use. And the rest, so, that's about six, six-and-a-half billion metric tons, has become waste.

AMNA NAWAZ: And...And it's ended up in landfills.

ROLAND GEYER: Ended up either landfills, in the environments. A tiny fraction was recycled. And then an equally small fraction was incinerated.

NARRATOR: What can be made with plastics? Cosmetic containers and carpet housing.

AMNA NAWAZ: Plastic was a new material that transformed the consumer landscape. When large-scale production began after World War II, the potential for growth seemed unlimited.

NARRATOR: This paratrooper floating down to welcome Mother Earth is depending on plastics to get him there safely.

AMNA NAWAZ: The durable material did and does make some aspects of life more safe.

WOMAN: They take better care of little custom scratches.

AMNA NAWAZ: Not to mention more convenient. And, ultimately, over decades of use, a disposable way of living evolved.

NARRATOR: It's tough and life.

AMNA NAWAZ: Its future was so limitless that, by 1967, Dustin Hoffman was given this career advice in The Graduate.

ACTOR: I just want to say one word to you, just one word.

DUSTIN HOFFMAN, Actor: Yes, sir?

ACTOR: Are you listening?

DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Yes, I am.

ACTOR: Plastics.

AMNA NAWAZ: The plastic problem is so pervasive that our own reporting teams keep running into it around the world. It doesn't matter how isolated the location. Plastic has found its way there, as Jeffrey Brown found on Easter Island in the South Pacific.

JEFFREY BROWN: Not a place you would expect plastic pollution, but this is what was found by a cleanup crew on this rocky beach just in the last few minutes.

AMNA NAWAZ: Scientists say nearly every seabird eats plastic trash, mistaking it for fish. And plastic particles are in many of the fish we eat.

MAN: The problem, the fish eat that, and we eat the fish.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes. The fish eat the plastic, and then we eat the fish.

MAN: Yes. Yes. And in our blood maybe exist plastic in the blood.

AMNA NAWAZ: John Yang found out how plastic specifically impacts turtles when he visited the Pacific beaches of Costa Rica with wildlife biologist Helen Pheasey.

HELEN PHEASEY, Wildlife Biologist: Single-use plastic is an absolute nightmare for turtles.

JOHN YANG: And this is the stuff you have just picked up on the beach here?

HELEN PHEASEY: I literally just found this here, yes. This is a really clean beach, and yet wherever you go, you find plastic. Plastic gets into the marine environment. It breaks down into tiny little pieces called microplastics. And anything that eats in the ocean will inadvertently eat plastic. And that's killing turtles. Up in Florida, they have got a hospital now where, instead of, when a turtle comes in, they no longer say, like, does the, does the turtle have plastic in its belly? They now say how much plastic is in the turtle.

AMNA NAWAZ: In 2016, a Marine biologist's video went viral, documenting the painful process as she removed a plastic straw stuck up a sea turtle's nose.

MAN: Oh, man.

HELEN PHEASEY: This is becoming more and more common. It's not a one-off anymore. And these are the things that we don't need. We don't need single-use plastic. Nobody needs the straw. And if you do need a straw, for whatever reason, like, your child or something, then you don't need it to be made out of plastic.

AMNA NAWAZ: Now banning plastic items like straws and bags seems to be all the rage. Cities, municipalities and companies like Starbucks and Marriott have announced bans are on the way. They follow in the footsteps of countries like Rwanda. In 2007, it was one of the first to ban plastic bags countrywide, and it's now considered one of the cleanest places in the world.

MAX BELLO, Conservationist: They can try to keep cleaning forever.

AMNA NAWAZ: But conservationist Max Bello told Jeffrey Brown, that's still not enough.

MAX BELLO: Even if we stopped today to use plastic, if we stop now, this plastic that is out there, we're still going to have to deal with it for the next hundreds of thousands of years maybe, because it's not going to go away.

AMNA NAWAZ: Join us all this week as we take a closer look at how the plastic we use every day is creating problems for our entire planet for generations to come. For the PBS NewsHour in Santa Barbara, California, I'm Amna Nawaz.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, tomorrow, Amna will take a look at some potential solutions to the plastics problem.

朱迪·伍德拉夫：塑料污染现在被视为人类和动物最大的环境威胁之一。塑料的持久性时间比人类的一辈子都要强，但这也同时意味着这对地球的影响也是一样的长。各种塑料制品，比如水瓶、塑料袋、吸管、餐具中有40%在仅使用了一次后，就被丢弃了。阿姆纳·纳瓦兹和制作人洛娜·鲍尔温本周发现了很多与塑料有关的问题。高能预警：观者可能会觉得一些有动物受伤的画面不堪入目。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：在全球各地的海岸线上，都能看到带有塑料的波浪不断冲刷着海岸。多米尼加共和国的这个海滩每天都要受到垃圾的侵袭。澳大利亚圣诞岛的这篇沙子上也满是垃圾的残骸。从泰国到肯尼亚，垃圾填埋场里塞满了塑料废品，为什么会如此呢？塑料几乎是坚不可摧的，很难降解。但塑料的种类有很多，有时候循环起来很难。但全球各地对塑料的需求却在持续上升。自1950年以来，人类已经生产了90亿公吨的塑料，这重量相当于27万座帝国大厦的重量，也就是10亿多头大象的重量。罗兰·盖耶任职于圣巴巴拉市的加利福尼亚大学，他是一名工业生态学家，他曾量化过与塑料有关的问题。他认为，人类目前所生产的塑料中，大概有60%的塑料依然存在于地球上。

罗兰·盖耶，加利福尼亚大学，圣巴巴拉市：人类总共生产了90亿公吨的塑料，或许只有20%-30%是仍在使用的。剩下的那些塑料，也就是大概65亿公吨的塑料，已经成了垃圾。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：然后被运送到了填埋场。

罗兰·盖耶：除了填埋场之外，环境里也有废弃的塑料。有一小部分得到了回收。还有同样的一小部分被焚烧了。

叙述者：用塑料能制造什么呢？化妆盒和房屋地毯。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：塑料是一种新型物质，它改变了消费者的习惯。二战后，人类开始大规模生产塑料，那时候，塑料的发展看起来大有可为。

叙述者：慢慢贴近大地的伞兵要靠塑料才能安全着陆。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：塑料持久性强，从某些方面来讲，确实让人类生活更加安全了。

女：塑料可以更好地保护定制的小涂鸦。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：而且塑料让我们的生活更加便捷。后来，经过几十年的使用，我们发展出了一种可处理的生活方式。

叙述者：痛并生活着。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：塑料的未来大有可为，1967年的时候，达斯汀·霍夫曼通过电影《毕业生》学到了这个职业生涯的建议。

演员：我只想对你说一个词，就一个词。

达斯汀·霍夫曼，演员：什么词？

演员：你在听我说话吗？

达斯汀·霍夫曼：是的，我在听。

演员：塑料。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：塑料问题无处不在，所以我们的报告团队一直都在全球各地了解这个问题的情况。无论多么偏远的地方都有塑料问题。塑料无孔不入，杰弗里·布朗发现，就连南太平洋的复活节岛也有塑料问题。

杰弗里·布朗：本来以为复活节岛上不会有塑料问题，但保洁人员在刚刚过去的几分钟里，在这片岩滩上发现了这个。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：科学家说，几乎每只海鸟都会吃塑料垃圾，误以为塑料垃圾就是鱼。所以人类吃的很多鱼里都有塑料分子。

男：问题在于，鱼吃塑料，而人吃鱼。

杰弗里·布朗：没错。鱼吃塑料，然后我们再吃鱼。

男：对，就是如此，我们的血液里没准还有塑料分子。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：约翰·杨发现了塑料是如何影响到海龟的，当时他走访了太平洋哥斯达黎加的海滩，跟他一起的还有野生动物生物学家海伦·菲斯。

海伦·菲斯，野生动物生物学家：一次性塑料对海龟来说是噩梦一般的存在。

约翰·杨：这是您刚才在海滩那捡到的是吗？

海伦·菲斯：是的，我就是在这里发现的。这个海滩倒是很干净，但是无论走到哪，都能看到塑料。塑料会进入海洋环境中，然后分解成塑料微粒。所以，海洋生物总会无意中吃到塑料。这对海龟的伤害是致命的。在佛罗里达州有一所医院。每次有海龟被送到这家医院的时候，医生不会再问“这海龟肚子里是有塑料吗”这样的问题。

他们现在会问“海龟肚子里有多少塑料”。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：2016年，某海洋生物学家的视频迅速走红，这则视频记录了她从海龟鼻子里取出卡主的塑料的过程有多么痛苦。

男：我的天啊。

海伦·菲斯：这种现象越来越常见了。这不再是一次性事物了。这些都是我们不需要的东西。我们不需要一次性的塑料。没有人需要吸管。就算需要吸管，那不管是孩子需要还是出于其他什么原因，都不再需要用塑料做的吸管了。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：现在，禁止使用塑料制品（比如吸管和塑料袋）成了非常流行的做法。无论是城市、直辖市还是星巴克、万豪酒店这样的公司，都纷纷宣布会禁止使用塑料制品。先人一步的是卢旺达。2007年，卢旺达是首批禁止塑料袋的国家。现在，卢旺达已经是全球公认的最干净的地方之一了。

马克斯·贝罗，自然资源保护论者：卢旺达可以试着永远保持这样干净。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：但自然资源保护论者马克斯·贝罗在接受杰弗里·布朗的采访时表示，这样做还不够。

马克斯·贝罗：即便他们今天停用了塑料，环境里现有的塑料也需要我们花几百年甚至上千年的时间才能处理干净，因为塑料很难降解。

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：这一周，请大家加入我们，进一步观察我们每天使用的塑料给整个星球以及子孙后代带来的问题吧。这里是阿姆纳·纳瓦兹从加州圣巴巴拉市发回的《新闻一小时》报道。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：明天，阿姆纳将继续了解塑料问题的一些潜在的解决方案。