"Plastic pollution in the environment"
Dr. Sarah-Jeanne Royer is an oceanographer and a specialist on plastic degradation in the environment. She is currently working in the research team of The Ocean Cleanup and an affiliate faculty at the Center for Marine Debris Research at Hawai’i Pacific University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Overall, Dr. Royer also investigates the different sources and sinks that connect plastic to the ocean such as the impact of the fishing industry with respect to the total mass balance of plastic discarded in the ocean. Prior to this work, she investigated the emissions of greenhouse gases from plastics in the environment at the Center for Microbial Oceanography, Research and Education. She also worked with Prof. Nikolai Maximenko on marine debris at the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii where her research was linked to the pathways and fate of marine debris and plastic accumulation in the ocean in relation with the North Pacific Garbage Patch.
For more than a decade now, she has been working with several organizations to share her science, bring awareness to the growing issue of plastic in the environment and organized several educational workshops. She has been highly involved with the organization named Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii, which is the biggest organization of beach cleanups in Hawaii. For eight years she served as their science advisor and started using data collection from volunteers for citizen science projects. She is also the science advisor for Parley for the Oceans. Her long-last objective is for policymakers to use data from scientists and volunteers to design better laws and policies to reduce plastic production & consumption.
