Team:UCL/Human Practices
Introduction
People living in coastal regions of some developing countries are suffering from severe oceanic plastic pollution and freshwater scarcity. These two tricky issues can sometimes correlate with each other [1] which can be explained as due to the lack of fresh water, people mostly rely on bottled water, deteriorating the status of plastic pollution, and eventually forms a vicious cycle as shown below:
Furthermore, especially in developing countries where a large proportion of GDP is contributed by agriculture (such as Ghana where agriculture contributes to 54% of its GDP [2]), freshwater scarcity can have a huge impact on their agricultural activities and therefore, their economic growth.
Overview
Given this situation, our team, PETZAP, had reached a consensus about the values of our project which are to solve the environmental issue of oceanic plastic pollution together with the societal issue of water scarcity at the very beginning of our project design. Thus, the strategy of our Human Practices work is: We adopted a problem-oriented, end-user-centered strategy. We have identified coastal regions in Ghana and Nigeria as our target market and people, especially farmers living there as the end users. To better understand how the values of our project can be maximized, we have collaborated with iGEM Ashesi Ghana team to conduct a joint survey and outreached to the Nigerian NGO RecyclePoints which had helped us launch the other survey. Both of the surveys aimed at understanding our end users' major concerns about our project once put into practice, their awareness and opinions of the severity and causes of plastic pollution and water scarcity in the regions and their dependencies on bottled water. Full consents were given by all participants and interviewees before engaging in our Human Practices work.
Based on iGEM Human Practices cycle, we have perfused inspiration of Human Practices into every stage shown in our team timeline. Works done from the aspect of Human Practices have been incorporated throughout the whole process of the project, aiming at solving our end-user's plastic pollution and water scarcity issues along with mitigating their concerns via real understanding of the project benefits.
Part 1: Team Diversity & Project Values
We have 8 team members with different professional backgrounds. Diversity of capabilities enabled our team to consider how to solve the issues of plastic degradation and seawater desalination more effectively while the same time more ethically and safely. The values we had proposed to deliver were based on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation was our primary target.
Section 1. Diversity of team capabilities
We are a team composed by 8 undergraduate students with different professional backgrounds. We have students from degrees of Natural Sciences specializing in Medical Physics and Neuroscience, Biochemical Engineering, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Bioprocessing of New Medicines (Business & Management). Despite that we have to be separated across the globe, we have contributed our own strengths to form new sub-groups, namely Science Communication and Education, Synbio Construct Design, Modelling, Human Practices and Implementation and Collaboration groups. Diversity of team capabilities enables us to think out of box whereas with one accord – consideration for stakeholders.
Section 2. Values of the project – Sustainable development goals
When designing our project, we have been mainly bearing the environmental and social values in mind. Hence, our core aim is trying to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 6, 7 and 12 which stand for Clean Water and Sanitation, Affordable and Clean Energy and Responsible Consumption and Production.
In addition, we have also been pursuing other SDGs such as SDG 10: Reduced Inequality (details in the next section) and SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure in our Proposed Implementation page. Inclusion of these SDGs on one hand, highlights the importance of our project while on the other hand, it helped us to think more broadly and diversely to ensure conflicts among different stakeholders in project design have been well considered and balanced.
As a result of our idea towards sustainability, we were contacted and featured by Marianna Limas from Just One Giant Lab (JOGL), inviting us to join their virtual interview. Virtual Interview Q&As can be seen here.
How to be responsible and good for the world?
The reasons why we thought our project would be significantly important to the current and future world are that according to our research, 55% of plastic is currently in landfills and wastelands while only 7% of plastic is recycled. This has already given our environment a severe burden. On the other hand, shortage of fresh water for agriculture has been being more apparent than before due to climate change, water withdrawals being twice the rate of the population and surge in food demand [3]. For developing regions, consequences of plastic pollution and water scarcity can be even damaging due to lack of advanced technologies and less governmental financial support. Such issues can be inter-related to problems of public health and economic growth in these regions [1]. Given that, our project brings alternative ways to both plastic treatment and water supply as we have found that those two issues are actually related to each other. Despite that our project may require a heavy investment in its initial design and implementing stage, when considering the cost-effectiveness of combining degrading plastic and desalinating sea water in one and the potential energy saving, it might worth a try. Moreover, technologies are always getting mature, the benefits our project can potentially bring to regions with plastic pollution and water scarcity can radiate even further.
Part 2: Market Research
We proposed to select Southern California as our target market while Ghana and Nigeria as our target markets for our project because all of these regions are coastal and have been suffering from both oceanic plastic pollution and freshwater scarcity. Besides literature market research, to have deeper understandings, we have collaborated with Ashesi University from Ghana for conducting a joint survey, contacted the Nigerian NGO - RecyclePoints and Dr Christy and phD Tyler from UCSD.
Section 1. Market research and analysis (Literature basis)
Given that our project is tackling the issues of oceanic plastic (PET) pollution and water scarcity for agriculture, potential markets should possess the following benchmarks:
- Need for fresh water for irrigation, i.e.
- Freshwater scarcity
- Large agricultural area and production of crops
- Struggling with oceanic plastic pollution (PET)
- Strong and active NGO supportive activities (Easing up communications)
As stated in the overview, we have selected Southern California as our project test market while Ghana and Nigeria as the final target markets. We have adopted a weighted based method to make our decision from a series of countries (From 1-5, 1 means extremely slight while 5 means extremely heavy).
To clarify why we have selected Southern California as our test market, besides the presence of Carlsbad Desalination Plant, which is the largest and most technologically advanced and energy-efficient seawater desalination plant in the US, we have also taken other factual reasons into account:
- California is near the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest ocean plastic accumulation that The Ocean Cleanup focuses on. The world's first cleanup system was launched in San Francisco on Sept. 8, 2018.
- California is one of the driest states in the US which could increase the risk of wildfire danger.
- California is the largest agricultural state in the US. Over 400 agricultural commodities are produced in California. The world 5th largest supplier of food, 1st producer of Almonds (90%). Desalinated water from the cells could be used for irrigations.
Since California has more talents and advanced design technologies, as the test market, it could help the future launch of the project in developing countries, making contributions to global sustainability.
According to the table, although Pakistan and Indonesia ranked higher than Nigeria in our market research, we prioritized countries with iGEM teams to establish direct contact. Lack of iGEM teams made it difficult for us to connect and prepare further steps regarding the benefits we can bring and implementation strategies in these 2 countries. Moreover, despite that Indonesia has joined Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) which Ghana joined as well and has been preparing a parallel engagement with Indonesia4, we found its NGOs were hard to be contacted especially during the current unusual time. On the other hand, we also did not include India as our target market because it is too large and heterogeneous to properly set up collaboration or focused communication.
Furthermore, we did not take developed countries in Europe into target market consideration in terms of plastic pollution. As Jambeck et al. (2015) [5] pointed out, 'If all countries had effective waste management (equivalent to high-income countries), mismanaged plastic waste could be reduced by 80%'. Thus, plastic waste mismanagement seemed to have been the major reason for oceanic plastic pollution. Although developed European countries show the largest rates of plastic waste production, total mismanaged waste from them, together with North America was less than 5%. Therefore, they do not contribute large amount of oceanic plastic pollution. However, we found that Asia and Africa are by far the worst in plastic waste mismanagement with a proportion of oceanic plastic contribution being 60% and 17% respectively [6]. But we have eventually selected two African countries, Ghana and Nigeria as our target markets because we had determined to prioritize safety of local people as plastic pollution and freshwater scarcity have already posed threats to these two countries' public health.
As shown in the backup literature for our selection of Ghana, the country generated 302,192 kg/day of plastic waste in 2010, which was equivalent to 0.04 kg/person/day, and 81% was inadequately managed, resulting in residents regularly burning plastic waste in the open. This has deteriorated air pollution which links to more than 28000 premature deaths [7]. Furthermore, another report from Muntaka Chasant (2020) [1] shows that plastic pollution in Ghana has a significantly negative impact on its groundwater quality which forces local people to purchase more bottled water while poor waste management system cannot effectively treat the bottles, causing accumulation of plastic bottles in city run-offs. Unfortunately, it has been reported that due to the lack of higher educational resources (A third of the population 3 years and older have only managed to obtain a primary level education) and high unemployment rate, many people, especially the youth in Ghana's capital city, Accra, live up with picking PET bottles from seaside for sale. They sell the bottles for $0.08 per kilo depending on the plastic's quality. However, the fact is that places where they pick up plastics usually contain toxic substances which could easily travel into their bodies through wounds on feet, causing illness and deaths. Let alone in the current status of coronavirus.
Only 5% of plastic in Ghana can be recycled while the country can generate 1M tons of plastic each year, with 30% ending up in the ocean. Thus, prioritizing to solve the issues of the country's public health, taking together its environmental and unemployment problems, Ghana may have an urgent need for a project like ours as the launch of the project can mitigate these issues while construction and operation of the infrastructure can provide new jobs to the society.
Finally, experiences of initial running in the test market, California, can provide invaluable insights into future operation in developing countries such as Ghana and Nigeria. This could help achieve the SDG 10 which is Reduced Inequality.
The following sections describe how we jumped out from our 'theoretical mind' based on our personal background research. We have contacted experts from NGOs, academia and industries as well as collaborate with iGEM teams in our test and target market to help us better shape our project design from almost all aspects. Reflections and thoughts of each connection were discussed.
Section 2. Markets current situation investigation and end-user engagement (Actual basis) – Environmental and social aspects
After identifying the values that we are pursuing and the markets where we want to launch our project, we have investigated in-depth the current situation regarding plastic pollution and water scarcity by interacting directly with people from our target markets.
Target Market 1: Ghana
As stated in the previous section, we have also selected Ghana as our target market. To have deeper understandings of the current situation of plastic pollution and water scarcity in Ghana, since we prioritized to make direct connections with iGEM teams, we contacted Trish and Michael from Ghana Ashesi iGEM 2020 team on the basis of Human Practices. Given that they can also be the potential beneficiaries of our project, we have designed several interviewing questions for them. According to what we got from Ashesi, most people in Ghana, especially in its coastal cities, buy bottled water for their daily water source because they are aware of the bad water quality in their cities. Cost of the bottled water is about $0.35 per liter. Thus, it is quite comprehensive that plastic bottle waste accumulated in the ocean as a result of ineffective waste management system since local people are considering bottled water as a safer water source while the cost of which is also relatively low.
Ashesi has also shared with us the contact detail of a Ghanaian farmer, Shyne, who is supposed to be a direct end-user of the desalinated water for irrigation and the consent had also been given by him. However, when we tried to contact him, due to the unstable signal connection, we did not get much constructive information. As our project is designed to be two-year, we would suggest next year's team further expand on the connections with people involved in agriculture. Their opinions of using desalinated water treated by GMOs for irrigation, I would say, will be the most crucial information we desire.
Besides the interview and contact details of the farmer, we have conducted a joint survey, which was distributed by Ashesi, mainly for having an idea of our potential end-users' concerns about both of our projects as well as their awareness and opinions of the severity of Ghana's oceanic plastic pollution and waste management system. Please find our joint survey here.
We have got 99 participants of the survey in total. Based on the results, we have found some thoughtful points shown below (for linear scale questions, 1 indicates extremely negative while 5 indicates extremely positive):
From the above diagrams, it seems that most of our participants (~90%) thought plastic pollution situations are severe in their cities and the plastic waste management system are quite ineffective, especially in coastal regions in Ghana.
From the other perspective, most people (~80%) in Ghana are concerned about or suffering from freshwater scarcity and about half to 80% of them rely on bottled water towards personal use. This deteriorates the situation of plastic pollution as 88.9% of our respondents thought the public's mass consumption is the main cause of oceanic plastic pollution in Ghana.
The good news is that the majority of our participants (~60%) is happy to use GMOs to tackle plastic pollution and more than half of them are willing to purchase crops irrigated by our desalinated water. Given the current situation of plastic pollution and water scarcity in Ghana as evidence, it seems that our project would be a novel and amazing solution to the problems, and it would contribute to the whole world's plastic pollution and water scarcity problems without doubt.
The results, however, also show that some end-users in Ghana are not quite sure about what GMOs are and how we would contain the GMOs in our project to ensure safety. Thus, they are expecting more information about what organisms we would use, what modifications we would make on them and the potential effects they would have.
Therefore, we have created a joint brochure with Ashesi to close the knowledge gap about what GMOs are and how they would benefit from our project.
Target Market 2: Nigeria
Another direct contact with our potential end-users was bridged by RecyclePoints, a Nigerian NGO whose programs are designed for collecting PET plastic bottles, used beverage cans, water sachets, etc. from the public, and granting points to the subscribers which later can be used to exchange for household appliances. For more information about the services RecyclePoints provides, please check here.
Similar to what we have done with Ashesi, we have arranged an interview with Taiwo Adewole, the executive director of RecyclePoints, for having deeper understandings of the current situation of plastic pollution and water scarcity in Nigeria.
The information we got from him can be quite strong evidence of why our project would be needed and good in Nigeria:
Plastic pollution
- Plastic pollution in Nigeria is very severe
- Coastal regions in Nigeria have quite poor waste management system
- Reasons for the oceanic plastic pollution:
- The public and government's lack of awareness of plastic pollution and importance of plastic waste treatment
- The public's massive consumption and arbitrary disposal of plastics
- Carried by waterflow from other inland places across the country
- Lack of oceanic plastic treatment infrastructures
- Concerns about GMOs involved in plastic degradation and water supply:
- Health issue
- Biological issue: Genes of organism incorporated into another
- Environmental issue: Substances released into the environment due to plastic biodegradation which might cause unknown environmental issues
Water scarcity
- Water scarcity is relatively severe in Nigeria
- Water scarcity is relatively severe in Nigeria
- He was comfortable with consuming crops irrigated by the desalinated water, but require further information regarding the safety aspect of the GMOs particularly used in our project:
- Summary of the organisms that we are using, as well as any safety concerns related to them
- Summary of what kind of modifications we carried out into these organisms (Chassis)
- List of potential effects these GMOs could have in the final desalinated water
Moreover, Taiwo had also agreed to help us distribute another survey to the broader pool of the general public. However, we did not receive expected number of responses.
As RecyclePoints stays at the 'frontline' of overlooking the situation of plastic pollution and water in Nigeria, judging from the information we got from Taiwo, the situation is quite similar to that of Ghana – severe oceanic plastic pollution deteriorating quality of fresh water, people rely much on bottled water for routine use and happy to get GMOs involved in plastic treatment and water supply as long as more information on GMO containment and effects of our project is disclosed. However, the situation of water scarcity in Nigeria is not as severe as that in Ghana. Thus, in terms of future launch of the project, we might have to focus more on plastic pollution.
Test Market: California
After having made direct contact with people from our target markets, we turned to the test market, Southern California. We have held two rounds of discussion with Dr Christy and her phD student Tyler from UCSD.
The first meeting was held on the basis of Human Practices and Collaboration. In terms of Human Practices, given the following current situations in Southern California that Dr Christy has informed us, we would say our project would benefit Southern California:
Plastic pollution
- The primary plastic treatment in CA is landfill
- Not much incineration is used for plastic treatment
- A novel aspect of plastic pollution comes from micro- or nano-plastic contained in city runoff. These particles are usually hydrophobic and are able to change containments in soil/li>
Water
- Plastics can always be seen in waste streams
- The public understands the reality that they need alternatives to get water
- The government is planning to launch a couple of pure water projects
- Carlsbad desalination plant, which is the largest and most successful desalination plant in the nation, is using reverse osmosis membranes to desalinate seawater which requires a huge amount of energy to generate high pressure
Given that the public in Southern California understands the need for an alternative way to get water and the government is planning to launch a couple of pure water projects, perhaps we could propose the idea of bio-desalination since Carlsbad has already had some experiences of seawater desalination. On the other hand, our project can probably also be expanded to design a combination of brine desalination and city micro- and nano-plastic treatment to improve city environment.
Part 3: Safety, Technology, Implementation
Suggestions and challenges could come from end-users and experts at the same time which helped us reshape and improve our project design from the aspects of safety, technical and implementation. This part is highly related to our implementation page.
Section 1. Reflection on end-users' and NGO experts' concerns – Safety aspect
As mentioned in previous sections, based on the feedbacks we got from our markets – Ghana, Nigeria and Southern California, our end-users have two joint concerns – the safety of the GMOs in our project and the consequence if they get released into the environment. This was once again highlighted by Anika from Algalita when we were conducting an interview with her.
Anika raised several questions regarding the safety aspect of our project and the answers to which we have discussed together:
- How would the GMOs be well contained?
- What would happen if they get into the environment?
- How to test and monitor the system?
Since we have been prioritizing safety throughout the project, after the discussion with Anika and conducting our own personal research, although our project in this stage contains dry lab results only, we have still come up with the reflections on all safety concerns posed by the end-users:
- Pathogenicity of the laboratory E. coli strain BL21 is considered to be low which does not carry well-recognized pathogenic mechanisms. P. putida KT2440 is non-pathogenic. We would not do genetic engineering on S. oneidensis and its wild type is also non-pathogenic.
- In terms of the containment of GMOs, we proposed to make E. coli and P. putida Lys and Leu auxotrophs which indicates they could not live alone without the presence of the other. However, chances of releasing both of them to the environment is quite low. Even if that would do happen, since the PET degradation pathway is split between two different organisms, the GMOs cannot use PET as sole carbon source and would eventually die off.
- There would be chances that the GMOs might exchange DNAs with each other or with other natural organisms in nature if the engineered cells are not robust enough. Thus, we would consider and acquire a whole set of effective monitoring system before actually implementing it in the real world.
Section 2. Standing on the shoulders of giants – Technical aspect
To make our project design technically feasible, we have consulted a couple of specialists. Their suggestions have helped us reshape our project design.
One of our project's features is that we have designed two fusion protein constructs on Benchling. One is PETase-MHETase fusion while the other is MHETase-PETase fusion. However, in situ design did not inform us of the construct feasibility. Despite the result of structural modelling which had shown that PETase-MHETase construct might be infeasible, our hypothesis was confirmed by Prof John McGeehan whose team had just published a paper on the topic. He also gave us suggestion on linker sequence which further improved our work. Based on the advice, we have reshaped our design of constructs and assays we initially proposed for testing enzymatic activities.
During the second round of discussion with UCSD, we have mainly consulted about potential technical issues to ensure our project would be technically feasible. Despite that we do not have access to the lab, we have virtually designed our MDC configuration based on the literature. However, after meeting with UCSD, we were suggested to start with fewer stacks such as H-shaped design before moving on to the stacked design and finally to the concentric tubular MDC configuration. For more detail about configuration design and evolution, please check our Engineering page.
Besides the suggestions on MDC configuration that we got from UCSD, Christy and Tyler have given us a piece of constructive and crucial advice to actually solve our most tricky problem for co-culture – oxygen requirement. We initially desired to co-culture our 3 bacteria strains E. coli BL21 (DE3), P. putida KT2440 and S. oneidensis MR-1 together in one chamber. However, we cannot meet the strains' oxygen demand as E. coli and P. putida have to express the genes under aerobic condition while Shewanella can only uptake lactate and generate bioelectricity under anaerobic condition. Christy has suggested us reform our co-culture strategy. Thus, instead of cu-culturing 3 bacteria together, we re-designed and adopted a 2-step process in which E. coli and P. putida would be co-cultured in a chamber with oxygen supply while the anode chamber where Shewanella would present would be anaerobic
For more details about the second meeting with UCSD, we have uploaded the full recording of it on our YouTube channel. Access to the recording.
Section 3. Connection with Proposed Implementation – Implementation aspect
Without implementation, our project cannot not be problem-oriented and deliver the values we expected to be delivered, thus, we have connected Human Practices with our Proposed Implementation to some extent by incorporating the environmental and social, safety, and technical suggestions from the academia and NGO experts mentioned above into the suggestions from industrial experts to ensure our project is not only theoretically feasible in situ, but in the real world, it can truly be launched and benefit the end-users as what we intended. For Incorporated Human Practice in Proposed Implementation, please check our Proposed Implementation page.
- Muntaka (2020). Plastic Pollution in Ghana: Urban Trash Heroes. [Online] Available at: https://www.muntaka.com/plastic-pollution-in-ghana/.
- FAO in Ghana. Ghana at a glance. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. [Online] Available at: www.fao.org/ghana/fao-in-ghana/ghana-at-a-glance/en/.
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2020). The Global Framework on Water Scarcity in Agriculture. [Online] Available at: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5604e.pdf.
- Global Environmental Facility (2019). Ghana becomes first African nation to join ambitious partnership to end plastic pollution. [Online] Available at: https://www.thegef.org/news/ghana-becomes-first-african-nation-join-ambitious-partnership-end-plastic-pollution.
- Jambeck, J.R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T.R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., Narayan, R. and Law, K.L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347 (6223), p. 768-771.
- Lebreton, L.C.M., Zwet, J., Damsteeg, J-M., Slat, B., Andrady, A. and Reisser, J. (2017). River plastic emissions to the world's oceans. Nature communications. 15611 (2017).
- Muntaka Chasant (2019). Plastic Pollution in Ghana: Causes, Effects and Solutions. ATCMASK. [Online] Available at: https://www.atcmask.com/blogs/blog/plastic-pollution-in-ghana.