Artivist Series - Maria Westerbos
communication/founder Plastic Soup Foundation
Maria Westerbos had a 25 year career in television before she left to found the Plastic Soup Foundation. The Plastic Soup Foundation is a non-profit focuses on issues pertaining to the environmental and health consequences of plastic pollution. Maria talks about plastics and microfibers. Microfibers are a subject most of us know little about, yet our lives are significantly impacted by microfibers. Microfibers are found in the synthetic fabrics, like nylon, polyester, and acrylic, that make up our clothes, our mattresses, and much more. Maria oversees the design of campaigns that target microfibers.
Video conversation with Maria…click here
What Maria talks about…
Maria describes the Netherlands as a friendly, flat like a pancake country. Because much of the country lies below sea level, the Dutch have become masters of controlling water. One consequence of the country being so low is that everything the French “throw in the water ends up in Holland.” During her 25 year career in television she wanted to know what the biggest problems of our time are. She was struck most by what she learned about plastic pollution, the size of the issue and the consequences for our health. Maria decided it should be her calling to take on the plastic issue. Her first big event was for National Geographic aimed at informing the Dutch people about plastic pollution. The event reached 7 million people. The success inspired her to leave television and found the Plastic Soup Foundation. Plastic Soup is a term coined by Charles Moore. Moore is an American sailor whose description of an extensive area in the Pacific Ocean full of plastic pollution is now know as the Great Plastic Garbage Patch.
In the podcast Maria focuses on plastic microfibers in clothing. She says the fashion industry has done little to address this major source of plastic in our waterways. It also has serious consequences for our health. Plastic Soup is launching a campaign in 2022 to provide information about this serious issue. A humorous, eye-catching video can be seen during her Women Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. She says the Plastic Soup campaign will address the issue with humor and trustworthiness. Her advice for those who wish to make a difference is to wash your clothes less frequently, fill the washing machine, use liquid softener, and buy a filter for the washing machine to catch the microfibers.
Show Notes
Pam Ferris-Olson (00:00): Today on the Women Mind the Water Podcast, I'm speaking with Maria Westerbos. Maria began her career as a science journalist and over more than two decades, has worked in television broadcasting and production. In 2011, Maria established the Plastic Soup Foundation. The nonprofit focuses on issues pertaining to environmental and health consequences of plastic pollution. The Women Mind the Water Podcast engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection with the ocean. Through their stories, Women Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.
Pam Ferris-Olson (00:42): Today, I'm speaking with Maria Westerbos, a Dutch woman who is well versed in mass communication and plastic pollutions. Maria and I are going to talk about plastics and microfibers. Microfibers are a subject, I think, many of us know little about, yet our lives are significantly impacted by microfibers. Microfibers are found in the synthetic materials that make up our clothes, our mattresses, and much more.
Pam Ferris-Olson (01:10): As an activist, Maria is concerned with messages and inform us about the problems inherent with microfibers. As an artist skilled in communication, Maria oversees the design of campaigns that target microfibers. I am pleased to have Maria on the Women Mind the Water Podcast. In today's episode, we will explore how Maria became interested in the plastic issue. We'll look at how she supplied her broadcasting and production experience to design campaigns to raise awareness about plastic and inspire people to take action. Welcome Maria. I am pleased you could join me on the Women Mind the Water Artivist Podcast. I'd like to begin by asking you to give our listeners an idea about what the Netherlands is like.
Maria Westerbos (01:57): Well, the Netherlands is the lowest land of Europe. So all the water, all the big rivers are flooding into our country, which also means that we have the most dirty rivers of all Europe, because everything they throw in the water in France ends up in Holland. That said, it's a very friendly, flat country, like a pancake. I remember having foreign guests who only really yelled, "This is a pancake. I can look so far. There is no horizon here," and that's the truth. The highest mountain is 300 meters, I think, and it's in the south, near Belgium.
Pam Ferris-Olson (02:40): And lots of bicycles.
Maria Westerbos (02:43): Lots of bicycles. We do everything on bike and lots of water. We are masters of water and control of water.
Pam Ferris-Olson (02:51): Okay. So how did it happen that you began your career as a science journalist?
Maria Westerbos (02:58): Well, I was studying journalism, but I was really very young and it was a little bit overwhelming. So I changed my ways and left the academy with a very nice written, how do you say that, diploma, something like that.
Pam Ferris-Olson (03:18): Right. Yes.
Maria Westerbos (03:20): That I did very well, and then I started studying social science and there they discovered my talent for communication. So they asked me to work next to my study, work for the university. And that's where I learned how you can have, if language can be very complicated and scientists have the tension of making very complex articles and I learned very early how you can make that easy, accessible for other people.
Pam Ferris-Olson (03:56): Okay. So at what point did you become interested in the plastic issue?
Maria Westerbos (04:01): Well, I was working 25 years in television already, and I had a researcher working for me and I asked him to look into all the big problems of our time. So the lack of sweet water, the lack of food, the lack of energy, everything, and the loss of the biodiversity, the bees dying. And I said, "Come back with me when you have found solutions, or if you find things that are not solvable." And he came back in the end, everything was solvable and he came back with two things, that was the bees, the starvation of the bees, and he came back with the plastic soup. And at that moment, I got struck by lightning and I'm not the only one in the world that has that sensation. And he told me what happened under my watch with plastic and that it doesn't go away and that the oceans were overwhelmed by our trash and that. So I only thought, "How is that possible?"
Maria Westerbos (05:15): And he said, "What are you going to do?" And I said, "Let other people pet the beast, I'm going to focus on Plastic Soup. This is my destination." And I changed my ways completely. When I organized in 2009, a huge event with television for National Geographic to tell Holland to start with about Plastic Soup. And I invited Charles Moore who is known for this covering the plastic soup. And I invited ministers and everybody high, UNIP was there, industry, and we reached that day I think, 7 million people, and we only had at that moment, 60 million or 50 million people. So it was an incredible outreach. That was the first time the world or Holland heard of The Plastic Soup. And that was also the moment that I thought, "I cannot keep on going and making television."
Pam Ferris-Olson (06:19): So, that changing of career was to found Plastic Soup?
Maria Westerbos (06:24): Yes.
Pam Ferris-Olson (06:25): All right. So that's a very evocative name, Plastic Soup. Would you say that Plastic Soup is an apt description of the Netherlands?
Maria Westerbos (06:34): No, it was Charles Moore and he knew somebody and they talks about what he saw in 1997. He was with his catamaran sailing a race. The catamaran broke down. He was in the middle of nowhere, far from the coast. And there, he saw plastic drifting by, and then he thought, "What's this? This is impossible. It cannot be." And he came back to land and he changed. He was struck by lightning, as I was after him. And he changed his ways. He sold his company and started researching the issue and called it Plastic Soup. So the name is coming from the states, not from us.
Pam Ferris-Olson (07:23): All right. So how do you go about designing a campaign to engage people in the topic of microfibers? And I'd like to know if you've considered eco anxiety when you design your messaging?
Maria Westerbos (07:37): Yes. That's why, and when it's about fibers, that's very hard, especially since we know that these fibers are causing inflammation in our lungs, are absorbed, are getting this little, that they enter the bloodstream and from there, travel through our entire body. Our immune system is getting a very, how do you say, overload.
Pam Ferris-Olson (08:09): Over attack, yes, right.
Maria Westerbos (08:14): And stresses out and then the immune cells die. So what I did to start with is in 2018 in Canada, where I was talking in front of the entire Sustainable Apparel Coalition with over 300 brands in the venue, I told them if I can prove that we are getting sick from your coats, I will sue you. If nobody's listening and not finding answers, I need you to look for answers, change your fast fashion, into slow fashion, make better yarn, make sure that it cannot enter our sewage systems anymore because washing machines can't stop it. There are innovations that can solve it. So I started with alarming industry and at the same time, looking for solutions. My team started looking for solutions. In the end, well, they don't listen. So industry is not very active. They say they're active, but they're not doing so much. So we are now this year, we will, in May, we will start a campaign where we will tell the world that it's not only fast fashion changing in slow fashion, but that its fatal fashion.
Pam Ferris-Olson (09:37): So, do all fibers, all clothes that we wear, have the microfibers that we're concerned with or a particular type of cloth?
Maria Westerbos (09:48): No, it’s especially polyester, acrylic, and nylon. Those are the culprits. And then the nylon is the most aggressive for the immune system. And then that not underestimates the chemicals that are in those yarns also, and those chemicals are hurting our health also.
Pam Ferris-Olson (10:10): Okay. So maybe you can use the foundation's microfiber campaign pain as an example, how has The Plastic Soup Foundation approached the topic in designing an ad?
Maria Westerbos (10:25): Well, what we do is we don't want to, what you say, go for eco anxiety, because I think that's very difficult. And what I also do think is that you cannot tell people, you are getting sick from your clothes. That's too difficult. That's there, you scare people. You scare people with that message. So what we are looking for is now we are going to rank the breaths and see how they work on sustainability and the loss of fibers, and we will address a message to them and evolving the big audience and tell, what are you going to do about it? So we are going to serve on the evolvement of the big public. We are going to ask women and especially women all over the world, to raise their voice and tell industry to change their ways.
Pam Ferris-Olson (11:22): So in the Netherlands when you're putting together a comp campaign, which is more important, the visuals or the language?
Maria Westerbos (11:30): Both. I believe in humor, I did send you a little clip about people doing the laundry and well, you have seen it probably. So, that's a lot of fun. You bring fun in there and we give people advices, how you can reduce your own fiber loss. We help them and we involve them. And what we do is we call it the Wheel of Change. And we are like a communication bureau. We act like mass communicators. So we focus on knowledge, we work with scientists to be sure of everything we say. We are not saying just something like that. And then we address industry. We ask them to change their ways. We do that behind walls. So we don't involve the audience there yet, the public. And if that doesn't work, we start campaigning publicly. So, we are making it big.
Pam Ferris-Olson (12:39): I love that, what's called mermaid video. Its intriguing, because it's sucks you in because you think you're watching sexual foreplay. And then at the end, it's a message. And I'm going to play that in the background, if you don't mind, when I put the video together, because it really is fun. And definitely, I imagine it catches lots of eyes and people are watching and then I won't spoil the ending, but you're really like, "Oh my goodness, what just happened?"
Maria Westerbos (13:11): I believe in that way of communicating. And with that, you give people an URL where they can find tricks and tips to reduce the loss of fibers themselves.
Pam Ferris-Olson (13:26): So, is it difficult to design a message that is for a broad audience? There must be differences between the Dutch audience and the audience and the US in terms of either what's engaging or the color palettes. Is there a difference or do you just go... No?
Maria Westerbos (13:46): No. I can tell two things about that. Last year, we had an outreach of 2.8 billion people on our Plastic Soup Foundation name and 2.7 billion on our campaigns. And people often think that we are in New York, in a skyscraper and have 1,000 people working for us, instead, 30 people at the I rivers in middle of Amsterdam. So, what we do is we serve on the emotions of people. What we do is we address an issue with humor, but always trustworthy. And Holland is the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the world.
Maria Westerbos (14:41): So, our biggest producers who also were the founders of Big Brother and The Voice, they always say, "If something succeeds in Holland, it succeeds everywhere." So I'm living in a very nice garden where you can try out everything. So I'm blessed in that way. I don't believe in very dark messages. It's about hope. Let's twist the coin and look at the other side of the coin and if we join forces with art and with humor, with music, I don't care. We can do it altogether. We can make a difference. We can beat the desire of making more and more money and exploring the world.
Pam Ferris-Olson (15:30): I hope you're right on that one. So do you think after the two plus years of being in COVID, people are just exhausted or do you think they're seeking calls to action, because they want to feel that they can exert control?
Maria Westerbos (15:46): Youngsters have more trouble with climate anxiety because they are not used of having setbacks, big setbacks. But the world is getting more imbalance again. I do think it changes our world and the way how we look at each other. And if I am right, we will have the opportunity now to make it better. The next 10 years will be it.
Pam Ferris-Olson (16:17): It's crucial, right?
Maria Westerbos (16:19): It's crucial, that's it.
Pam Ferris-Olson (16:21): So, what advice do you have in terms of what people can do to make a difference, to address the issue of microfiber pollution in the ocean?
Maria Westerbos (16:29): Don't wash your clothes so often, buy a little bit less. Fill your washing machine to the fullest, use liquid softener. If you can, buy a filter, an add on filter that will get all your fibers or catch all your fibers before it goes in to a sewage plant.
Pam Ferris-Olson (16:54): How does clothes softener help?
Maria Westerbos (16:59): It's makes the yarns stronger. It's very strange, but it [crosstalk 00:17:04].
Pam Ferris-Olson (17:03): Interesting.
Maria Westerbos (17:05): It glues together.
Pam Ferris-Olson (17:06): Okay. Well, Maria, I'm grateful that you made the time to be on the Women Mind the Water Podcast, thank you for joining me. I'd like to remind listeners that I've been speaking with Maria Westerbos for the Women Mind the Water Podcast series. This series can be viewed on womenmindthewater.com. An audio only version of this podcast is available on the Women Mind the Water website, on iTunes and other sites. Women Mind the Water is grateful to Jane Rice for the use of her song, Women of Water. All rights for the Women Mind the Water name and logo belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.