Turning the Tide on Plastic Pollution

Dana M. Dourdeville Lecture on Engineering in Service to Society given by Jenna Jambeck, Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering in the University of Georgia College of Engineering. “Turning the Tide on Plastic Pollution.” Plastic debris and its impacts on the environment have been widely documented. By linking worldwide data on solid waste, population density, and economic status, Dr. Jambeck made an initial estimate of plastic entering the ocean annually. Shifting to where the burden of plastics is carried, Jambeck and her team created the Circularity Assessment Protocol (CAP). CAP has been collaboratively used in 56 cities in 16 countries assessing circularity at the community level. A 2022 MacArthur Fellow, Jambeck will not only discuss the methods and results of her research, but also impacts and related policies around the world. She will present an intervention framework to reduce plastic ending up in our environment while sharing stories of integrating technology and citizen science, science communication, and community-level efforts to address plastic pollution around the globe.Jenna Jambeck is an award-winning explorer, associate professor, and director at the University of Georgia. She has been conducting research on solid waste issues for over 28 years with related projects on marine debris since 2001. She also specializes in global waste management issues and plastic contamination. Her work on plastic waste inputs into the ocean published in Science magazine has been recognized by the global community and translated into policy discussions by the Global Ocean Commission, in testimony to U.S. Congress, in G7 and G20 Declarations, and the United Nations Environment Programme. Jenna conducts public environmental diplomacy as an International Informational Speaker for the U.S., including multiple global programs of speaking events, meetings, presentations to governmental bodies, and media outreach around the world. In 2014, Jenna sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with 13 other women in eXXpedition to sample land and open-ocean plastic and encourage women to enter STEM disciplines.She is co-developer of the mobile app Marine Debris Tracker, a tool that continues to facilitate a growing global citizen science initiative that has documented the location of over 8 million litter and marine debris items removed from our environment throughout the world.Please join us for a reception prior to the lecture from 5:00 – 5:30PM. Refreshments will be served.