- CleanSea

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CleanSea Film Electronic Press Kit (EPK)
In this EPK
Poster
Trailer
Digipack
General information/technical details
Credits
Synopsis
Logline
Executive Producer’s Statement
Production stills
CleanSea Film FAQs
About the CleanSea Project & Consortium
PRESS CONTACT INFORMATION
Heather Leslie, Coordinator CleanSea
[email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]
Tel. +31-20-59 89 555
Address: Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), VU University,
De Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
www.cleansea-project.eu
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Poster
Click on thumbnail to download
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Trailer
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Digipack
Click on thumbnails to download
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General information/technical details
Running time
Trailer running time
Genre
Production year
Release date
Language
Country of origin
Format
Screenings
Links
Contact
20:20
01:00
Documentary film
2015
3 December 2015
English
United Kingdom
Callisto Productions Ltd.
16:9, 1920 x 1080
World première, 3 December 2015, EYE Film Institute, Cinema 1,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
This film may be shown freely to audiences excluding commercial,
fee-paying and broadcasts. Contact CleanSea for more information if
you would like to screen this film.
www.cleansea-project.eu
www.facebook.com/CleanseaProject
https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8184474
[email protected] and [email protected]
No marine litter was created during the making of this film.
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Credits
SCIENTISTS Heather Leslie, Dick Vethaak, Susanne Altvater, Frans
Oosterhuis, Pedro Fernández, Agni Kalfagianni,
Carolina Pérez (CleanSea Research Team)
and guest, Klaas van Egmond (Utrecht University)
PRESENTER Angus Purden
WRITERS Bill Kirton, Thomas Glass
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Douglas Campbell
SECOND CAMERA Stephen Donnelly
LOCATION SOUND Allan Young
TECHNICAL OPERATIONS MANAGER Lewis Holleran
EDIT ASSISTANT Rachel Clark
GRAPHICS Craig Lamberton
DVD & POSTER DESIGN Alan Dunnet
DUBBING Karen Imbusch
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Heather Leslie
PRODUCTION MANAGER Maggie Mutch
EDITOR Eric Smith
PRODUCER & DIRECTOR Tom McInnes
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Synopsis
Can you imagine a world without marine litter? An ambitious group of European researchers
asked themselves this question and got to work studying what would need to happen to achieve
that. Reflecting the direction of their goal, they call their project ‘CleanSea’.
This 20-minute documentary film explores the daunting problem of marine litter in our seas, as
the interdisciplinary team sets out to think about the issue in ways that haven’t been thought
about before. They develop new sampling equipment and go to sea, they find out what happens
when a miniature ‘plastic-filled sea’ is recreated in the lab, and they observe how nano-sized
plastics interfere with sea urchin reproduction.
They learn about the astronomical social costs of marine litter and delve into the diverse ways
our society can reduce marine litter via actions by government and the private sector. The team
concludes that a combination of individual actions, technologies, voluntary measures, and
government policies such as those promoting a ‘circular economy’ are all going to be important.
But are these activities going to be able to take root and grow in the absence of more
transformative changes in our social, political and financial systems?
Logline
A scientific voyage into the problem of marine litter and what we can do about it
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Executive Producer’s Statement
This film is the CleanSea
Project’s message to the future.
We have spent three years
researching marine litter in
European seas and what we can
do about it. When we
embarked on this voyage, I
asked many people for their
wisdoms. One of them told me,
when
it
comes
to
dissemination, scientists should
‘think beyond the article and
the power point presentation’. I
fully agreed with this at the time, and have since seen similar advice given even in the scientific
literature. We were happy to produce this film in order to communicate with an audience that
is even broader than the European Commission that receives our reports, or the scientific
community that reads our peer-reviewed articles. Scientists and those they work with in teams
have knowledge which needs to be shared and appropriately communicated in order to have a
chance of being useful and applied by society. The CleanSea team has engaged in environmental
science, and applying this new knowledge by users of the science gives meaning to the hard
work done. We as a team and as individuals have attempted to be transparent about our values
and assumptions regarding our work, and this is important. As a scientist myself, I also recognize
that society’s intentions and public opinion often have a deeper impact on policy making than
scientific data on its own. But science should nevertheless be getting itself in there, and
interactively helping to shape the debate. Because there’s not much time left to just sit back and
let things happen, it’s good for scientists around the world to share their knowledge with others,
and have conversations with journalists, with policy makers, with companies, with kids, and the
society at large through a variety of channels and media.
Heather Leslie, PhD
Executive Producer and Coordinator of the CleanSea Project
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Production stills
Access high resolution pictures here
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CleanSea Film FAQs
What is the purpose of the CleanSea
documentary film? The documentary is the
CleanSea Project’s message to the future about
our current understanding of marine litter and
what we can do about it. We wanted to bundle
our findings and insights into a compact film.
On the one hand we want to make clear that
there is an urgency to address the marine litter
issue, as there is both an environmental and an
economic imperative. And we want to share
our ideas about the broad spectrum of actions
needed to address the issue. These range from
individual choices and innovative technologies
to economic incentives to positive
transformational changes in our social, political
and economic systems.
How did you come up with the title of the film,
‘CleanSea’, while the film is about our littered
seas? It is a short, sweet title that ideally suits
both the film and the project as a whole
because it states our purpose for setting up the
project in the first place. It reflects the vision of
where we want to be in the future – with our
seas clean and litter free. It’s optimistic and
goal oriented.
Who’s idea was it to make a documentary
about marine litter for this EU science project?
During the project proposal development
phase, the Coordinator suggested to include
the production of a professional short
documentary film as part of the CleanSea
Dissemination Plan. Short films can be widely
disseminated online to showcase project
results, reaching a broad audience in an easily
digestible format (compared to hundreds of
pages of detailed reporting in deliverables and
scientific articles). Compared to written forms,
image-oriented communication tends to be
more powerful and compelling to audiences.
Why choose a 20-minute film length? We
aimed for a 20-minute film as a creative form
that strikes a balance of telling the powerful
marine litter story without being too cluttered.
In this day and age, fewer people are likely to
have the attention span or time to watch a fulllength documentary. Making a 20-minute film
involves cutting some scenes and footage that
you really liked, but this is part of the normal
agony of filmmaking! The film is intended to
start the conversation. It allows viewers to
come away from it thinking about the topic for
themselves, and reflecting on their own
reactions and connections to marine litter and
the sea.
Who is the film’s presenter? Scottish television
presenter Angus Purden guides the viewer
along the contours of the CleanSea story.
During the film production, Angus quickly got
familiar with the topic of marine litter and was
able to narrate the film in a compelling way.
Besides television, Angus has also done radio,
newspaper journalism and he recently
completed a psychology degree. A fun fact is
that he once won the title of Mr. Scotland!
Where was the film shot? The interviews in the
film were shot in various locations in the
Netherlands, Spain and the UK. The presenter
pieces were shot in the Netherlands and the
UK.
What role do the scientists play in the film?
Scientists relay research findings and reflect on
the issue of marine litter through interviews.
The scientists appearing in the film are from a
variety of different fields that were needed to
carry out the interdisciplinary project, such as
marine ecotoxicology, environmental
chemistry, political science, environmental law,
environmental governance, environmental
economics, the science-policy interface, as well
as general environmental science.
Do all the scientists who worked in the
CleanSea Project appear in the film? The film
interviews scientists from a variety of
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disciplines and from a variety of European
countries, but there were not enough resources
and time to interview the ca. 100 people who
have been working on the project in one way or
the other over the past three years. One person
interviewed, Professor Klaas van Egmond, was
not a partner in the project but had such
interesting perspectives on the marine litter
problem as part of the greater sustainability
issue that we decided to visit him at Utrecht
University. His extensive experience and
important roles in both environmental
pollution sciences and governance makes him
in a great position to comment on the problem.
He is the former director of Environment at the
National Institute for Public Health and
Environment (RIVM) and the Netherlands
Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) and
author of the book Sustainable Civilization
(2014). Prof. van Egmond currently works and
teaches at Utrecht University, where he cofounded the pioneering Sustainable Finance
Laboratory.
Can I screen the CleanSea documentary film at
one of my events or at a symposium? Yes, the
film is free to screen at not-for-profit scientific
symposia, in schools or at other noncommercial public events. The dvd is available
from the CleanSea Project Coordinator, and
there is also a streaming version that will be
available online (www.cleansea-project.eu,
youtube and vimeo). Please contact
[email protected] for further questions
about this.
A tree was used as a metaphor for the actions
to be taken to eradicate marine litter. How
was this idea developed? The CleanSea Project
wanted to integrate what was learned from the
natural and social science disciplines in the
project over the course of the research and
present it at the end of the project in a
coherent way. We searched for a metaphor to
help us think about it and communicate it and
came up with the tree, a spectacular organism.
The canopy is full of leaves which transform
solar energy to power the entire tree system.
The canopy would collapse without the
structural support of all the branches, and the
root system is the foundation of the system,
and also provides nutrients right up to the
tiniest leaves. We saw this as the best
metaphor we could come up with for how the
marine litter can be addressed on multiple
levels: without the energy of small scale
initiatives, individual consumer choices,
symptom relief actions and many other
experiments now ongoing that act to
strengthen awareness and cultural acceptance
of marine litter as a problem, there would be
little support for more transformational,
systemic changes that powerfully reduce
marine litter to take root. At the same time,
without a solid foundation and without
attention to the deep drivers of marine litter in
our highly materialized economic system based
on consumption and production and planned
obsolescence, we will be less able to achieve
healthy, productive seas. In the wrong system,
energetic but small scale actions or the ‘power
of one’ for instance, may be much more
difficult to scale up. While the systems we
operate in have a profound effect on our
behavior, most of us, (esp. in individualistic
societies), do not recognize how powerful these
effects on us can be – it is so commonly
underestimated that social psychologists have
given the misunderstanding a name:
fundamental attribution error. In short, we
need lots of people on board working across all
levels of governance.
The ‘circular economy’ was mentioned in the
film as a good framework for thinking about
how to reduce, reuse, remanufacture products
and recycle materials. Keeping materials in the
loop means they’re not available to become
marine litter down the road. Were these
principles applied in any way in the film
making? Yes, some of the film production
choices were inspired by the content of the
film, for instance, a dvd package was chosen
that was fully recyclable and made from
renewable resources. During the premiere of
the film, the event organisers have made the
effort to make it a zero waste (‘zee wee’) event.
For instance, by preventing waste production
such as unrecyclable banners or individually
packaged items in the catering, by reusing
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participant badge holders, and by having a plan
for recycling any materials that were leftover at
the end of the day.
What has CleanSea learned about the marine
litter issue that others might not realise?
Perhaps an effect of working on the marine
litter issue as CleanSea researchers have done,
is that it intensively drives home how
enormously interconnected this environmental
problem is to other sustainability issues of our
time. It seems like implementing the European
Marine Strategy Framework Directive on its
own will be a powerful antidote to marine
litter, but not nearly enough to get to the point
of Good Environmental Status in our seas.
Because marine litter is not only a marine
problem. It’s something that results also in part
from how we regulate and manage a whole
variety of areas: packaging, product design,
process technologies, manufacturing, waste,
wastewater treatment, ecodesign, port
reception facilities, cosmetic ingredients,
tourism, festivals, recycling infrastructure,
international trade, technological innovations,
cleantech, the financial sector, the energy
sector, and many, many others. CleanSea has
realised how hidden some of the best practices
might be, and how seemingly straightforward
‘solutions’ are not always as promising as they
seem at first glance – they themselves can
create other problems and create costs and
possibly other environmental damages and
social costs in other parts of the system. The
good news is that while the challenges become
clearer, there is a growing list of initiatives and
institutions dedicated to combating marine
litter. There are many experiments happening
now, some investments are being made, and
we see the discourse is changing. Old patterns
of production and consumption and old
industrial age business models are making way
for the new. We can hear children of today
asking, Where can I recycle this? instead of
Where’s the garbage can, as we adults grew up
with. The youngest generation of Europeans is
increasingly aware of the issue through their
teachers, the arrival of recycling systems easily
visible in their homes and neighbourhoods,
outreach from a variety of public and private
institutions, and the internet which they have
embraced en masse. There’s certainly cause to
hope that litter on land and at sea will one day
become obsolete. Something that will have to
be explained to the grandchildren of the future
is how society ‘back then’, people used to allow
all that garbage go into the sea…. until the day
when brave, good governance of the problem
finally took effect. 
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About the CleanSea Project & Consortium
CleanSea is a large European Framework Program 7 research project in a program aptly called
‘The Oceans of Tomorrow’. CleanSea devoted three years of interdisciplinary research to
improving our understanding of marine litter impacts, providing tools to monitor the situation
and generating a torrent of ideas to keep litter out of European seas. From across Europe, 17
partner organisations from 11 Member States collaborated under the leadership of scientist, Dr.
Heather Leslie of the Netherlands. In this short period (2013-2015) CleanSea has become wellknown initiative through the team’s research output and intensive engagement in scientific,
policy, industrial and civil society realms. CleanSea’s aim was to provide new, powerful research
and knowledge to a world that’s transforming before our eyes. While the project has an end
date, the momentum for the pursuit of marine litter obsolescence that it has helped to create
should continue...
Institute for Environmental Studies VU University
University of Exeter
EUCC Mediterranean Centre
Deltares
KIMO Netherlands and Belgium
Own Capital Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research
denkstatt Bulgaria
Örebro University
University of the Aegean
Norwegian Institute for Air Research
Corpus Data Mining & Image Analysis
Callisto Productions
KC Denmark
Ecologic Institute
Investments in Sustainable Innovations
National Institute for Marine Research and Development “Grigore Antipa”
Hellenic Center for Marine Research
Netherlands
UK
Spain
Netherlands
Netherlands
Belgium
Bulgaria
Sweden
Greece
Norway
Sweden
UK
Denmark
Germany
Netherlands
Romania
Greece
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