Dear Sir,
The National Litter Monitoring Strategy should be an opportunity for social & scientific inclusion, outdoor civic pride-building community education, and the cornerstone of a mid-21st century sustainable educational curriculum but has no interactive maps; no publicly accessible data; and no citizen science. Despite multi-billion euro annual budgets (over €16 billion will be spent by our 2 departments of education this year), none of our Universities or National Research Institutions or schools or Local Authorities are working on anything related to it.
The purpose of Ireland's National Litter Monitoring Strategy is not to collect statistically significant or socio-economically relevant data. It is not intended to encourage civic responsibility or improve our changing understanding of the reality of the world we live in. The purpose of this strategy is to restrict access to information; limit what kinds of data can be collected; and determine what insiders are allowed to participate in its "scientific process".
Although plastic originated in the early 1900s, it was not until the mid-1970s when plastic pollution was first recognised to have a global distribution in the marine environment. Plastic pollution accelerated after 1971 when US President Richard Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. By requiring that oil had to be purchased in US dollars, other countries had to start exporting goods and raw materials to the US in exchange for their inflationary paper money. Just 3-4 years after this shift in the global monetary order, plastic began to make its permanent global footprint but the information about how badly polluted the world is was locked away until social media connected 100s of millions of people online and unleashed its global awareness.
In the last 50 years plastic accumulating in the world’s oceans has increased to an estimated 300 million tonnes and we are now witnessing the beginning of its exponential fragmentation. Micro & nano particles and their chemical compounds can be found in human blood, our brains, testicles, wombs, the unborn, our water, air, meat, fish, plants, and have been attributed to cancer and disease.
Starting pre-iPhone in 2008, my research on the gamification of crowdsourcing began at UCC. Back then collecting data was difficult. As 1st year undergraduate Geography students we were taught how to use GPS devices to connect with satellites and triangulate our position on the earth. Access to expensive technology in the computer lab and specialised software was required to extract the data from the device and display it locally with GIS.
Even then, collecting data was remarkably more simple and more accurate than it had ever been. For most of human history, being able to collect and communicate geographic information was only available to the richest and most powerful who used this information to decide on state lines and define the boundaries of reality. Throughout history we have seen that when new tools emerge that change how we interpret time and space (e.g. John Harrison's invention of the pocket watch in the 1720s enabled colonial warships to calculate their longitude at sea which had profound implications for navigation, commerce & science); these new inventions (i.e. today we have cars, planes, the iPhone, the internet, social media & AI) augment our understanding of and relationship with reality. Our interpretation of the world is situated and shaped by the tools we use to interact with it and when these tools change it induces paradigm shifts which transform societies.
When we were standing in the rain learning about GPS I wondered if it would be possible to facilitate crowdsourced community intelligence. I wanted to empower people to tell and share information about what was important to them (e.g. sticky floors, litter, potholes, broken glass), which I believed would be relevant for local authorities, private stakeholders and national policy.
Today, more than 5/8 billion people have been connected online - with no training - armed with incredibly powerful always-online privacy-destroying pocket wizards.
These devices have transformed our lives.
Yet there is no smartphone strategy.
No training or direction.
Citizen science is not included in the climate action plan.
There is no geospatial innovation accelerator.
Universities discriminate against the open source practices that make up 95% of the web.
Annual reporting of the “National Litter Monitoring Strategy” and “Irish Business Against Litter survey” by “trusted” sources of information who never seem to question the quality or integrity of the data, tools, methods, or sources.
In 2019 after doing x2 masters in the geospatial science of litter and plastic pollution, I taught myself how to code, built openlittermap.com and set up a limited company to apply to Science Foundation Ireland for help - who told me they wouldn’t even read my proposal.
Even Trump in his first term invested $1.5M via a 4-year SBIR grant into a similar research with the National Science Foundation:
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1853170&HistoricalAwards=false
What will our 2 Departments of Education achieve for citizen science and the inclusive study of reality with a €16.5 billion budget for 2025?
Today my only source of funding for research and innovation in citizen science comes from cryptocurrency projects like Gitcoin on Ethereum and Project Catalyst on Cardano who are reinventing the rules of money and governance with open source technologies.
I look forward to reading your next report on our National Litter Monitoring Strategy.
Seán Ó Loingsigh - OpenLitterMap