The Literature Haystack

When I decided to do my paper on plastic waste in New Zealand’s marine environment, I naively imagined I would be overwhelmed with the number of sources of research data and statistics on this global problem.  It features readily in popular science magazines, on the internet and in the global news.  The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” is well publicised, as are images of trash littering the beaches and oceans, birds and marine life wrapped in rubbish, or graphic autopsy images showing the plastic waste in their stomachs that has caused them to starve to death.  Surely there is a lot of research to back this up?  

And so it was disappointing when researching this “popular” topic that reliable data sources on the questions I was wanting answered were few and far between – and in some cases absent altogether.  How much plastic waste was New Zealand producing, and how much was ending up in the sea?  What damage was this doing to our very special marine and birdlife?  What had New Zealand put in place to reduce the pollution problem and was it having any affect?

Frustratingly, while searching the resources through the Massey library, a lot of articles around the plastic waste issue were from 20-30 years ago – hardly constituting “current” data.  Looking at the reference lists on the few recent articles that I did find was useful – although interestingly the articles that these authors referenced in their research, were the same ones I had found from the 80s and 90s.

Avenue number two was the old fall-back to Google, many articles in the popular press exist on the subject and I hoped that some for these would give their references. The National Geographic website mentioned one large study happening by CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, but it had yet to be finalised or published.  An article in the New Zealand Herald talked of a journal article which sounded perfect – only to find the Massey Library didn’t have free access.  And so the frustration increased, but with perseverance (and a couple of wines) I finally had a few articles to work from for part A.  

The last piece of my formidable detective work was to find the opposing side – part B of my quest.  But who opposes reducing pollution? Surely no-one.  But looking deeper, the question isn’t about not doing anything, but about doing more.  A possible view some people in New Zealand may have, is that as long as we recycle our rubbish we are indeed doing enough - and so I hunted - but that illusive article still hides from me stating what improvement recycling has made to the marine environment. 

What I started out thinking would be a nice orderly pile of journal articles to sort through, like logs evenly piled up (think Jenga), quickly become the veritable “needle in a haystack” that only Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher could tackle.  So now, with a slightly smaller stack of articles around me than at first expected, I sit down at last to write my first draft…