On October 3rd the first ever Plastic Health Summit was held in Amsterdam. The summit was put together by the Plastic Health Coalition, a group of NGOs, scientific research and advocacy organisations which was created by the Plastic Soup Foundation. The aim of the coalition is to promote and support scientific research into the effects of plastic on our health hopefully identify the solutions. Just One Ocean is one of the coalition partners and we’re proud to have participated in this important summit.
The Plastic Health Summit brought together a host of leading scientists, policymakers, influences, and innovators, united in one common goal: the search for answers to questions which have not yet been asked, answers that can hopefully make a difference to our children’s health in the future.
It was a packed programme, with 36 speakers from 14 different nationalities, all sharing their knowledge, experience, concerns and research results during the plenary and breakout sessions and the final round table discussion.
Just One Ocean’s founder and CEO David Jones was there representing the charity and the University of Portsmouth, giving two presentations during the day. The first one formed part of the “science talks” section where he discussed the results of some research into microplastics in tap water that he had undertaken earlier in 2019 on behalf of the BBC. The second presentation took place during the Breakout Session – ‘Influencers’. David used this opportunity to speak about the importance of public engagement and the plastic crisis. The summit was filmed and videos of all the talks are available on the Plastic Health Summit website. You can watch David’s presentations by clicking on the links below.
The day ended with a plenary session on solutions and a round table discussion. The most important take away from the summit is that there are still too many unknowns and much more research is needed. There is no doubt we will need more Plastic Health Summits in the future.
