Eye-Catching Designs Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles
The company sells a range of eco-friendly items like leggings, rash guards, and board shorts that are made using recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. There are currently 16 causes represented by distinct marine-life patterns, from whale shark research and invasive lionfish removal to sockeye salmon monitoring and abalone restoration.
One such organization is Get Inspired, a nonprofit that specializes in ocean restoration and environmental education. Get Inspired founder, marine biologist Nancy Caruso, says supporting on-the-ground efforts is one thing that sets Waterlust apart, like their apparel line that supports Get Inspired abalone restoration programs.
"All of us [conservation partners] are doing something," Caruso said. "We're not putting up exhibits and talking about it — although that is important — we're in the field."
Waterlust not only helps its conservation partners financially so they can continue their important work. It also helps them get the word out about what they're doing, whether that's through social media spotlights, photo and video projects, or the informative note card that comes with each piece of apparel.
"They're doing their part for sure, pushing the information out across all of their channels, and I think that's what makes them so interesting," Caruso said.
And then there are the clothes, which speak for themselves.
Advocate Apparel to Start Conversations About Conservation
Waterlust's concept of "advocate apparel" encourages people to see getting dressed every day as an opportunity to not only express their individuality and style, but also to advance the conversation around marine science. By infusing science into clothing, people can visually represent species and ecosystems in need of advocacy — something that, more often than not, leads to a teaching moment.
"When people wear Waterlust gear, it's just a matter of time before somebody asks them about the bright, funky designs," said Waterlust's CEO, Patrick Rynne. "That moment is incredibly special, because it creates an intimate opportunity for the wearer to share what they've learned with another."
The idea for the company came to Rynne when he was a Ph.D. student in marine science.
"I was surrounded by incredible people that were discovering fascinating things but noticed that often their work wasn't reaching the general public in creative and engaging ways," he said. "That seemed like a missed opportunity with big implications."
Waterlust initially focused on conventional media, like film and photography, to promote ocean science, but the team quickly realized engagement on social media didn't translate to action or even knowledge sharing offscreen.
Rynne also saw the "in one ear, out the other" issue in the classroom — if students didn't repeatedly engage with the topics they learned, they'd quickly forget them.
"We decided that if we truly wanted to achieve our goal of bringing science into people's lives and have it stick, it would need to be through a process that is frequently repeated, fun, and functional," Rynne said. "That's when we thought about clothing."
Support Marine Research and Sustainability in Style
To date, Waterlust has sold tens of thousands of pieces of apparel in over 100 countries, and the interactions its products have sparked have had clear implications for furthering science communication.
For Caruso alone, it's led to opportunities to share her abalone restoration methods with communities far and wide.
"It moves my small little world of what I'm doing here in Orange County, California, across the entire globe," she said. "That's one of the beautiful things about our partnership."
Check out all of the different eco-conscious apparel options available from Waterlust to help promote ocean conservation.
Melissa Smith is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.
Speaking exclusively to Energydesk, he said:
"From a personal perspective, I don't really appreciate having them accuse me of being a liar. And accusing me of falsifying results by cherry-picking data. That's not what we've done. I've got little to gain from this and it's been a major headache. We just present the results we get."
New Evidence Shows Bayer, Syngenta Tried to Influence Scientists on Bee Study https://t.co/9GZUNYpBwI— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@Robert F. Kennedy Jr)1499973531.0
'Utterly Unfounded'
Both companies have accused the scientists of overstating the threat posed by neonicotinoids to both honey and wild bees, adding that the data, as they saw it, did not reflect the conclusions from CEH.
After the study was published a Bayer spokesperson told Energydesk:
"This study is one of a number of landscape studies carried out recently. The results of the CEH study are inconsistent and therefore inconclusive with variability of effects over both the bee species and the countries in which they were studied."
The company's head of UK government media relations, Dr. Julian Little, told Energydesk: "We're quite frustrated about how these results have been portrayed. The reality seems to be a long way away from the headline."
Syngenta's environmental specialist Peter Campbell told the press that CEH had misrepresented the study and argued that full results of the experiments showed neonicotinoids had no effect in the vast majority (238 of the 258) of the 258 potential effects measured.
Quoted in The Times, Campbell also suggested the results had been talked up in order to get published in a prestigious journal.
He said: "There is a pressure to get papers published. Any journal, particularly journals like Nature and Science, it has to be an interesting story. We don't get into Science and Nature with a study which says, for example, no effect of oilseed rape treated with [neonicotinoid] on solitary bees. It's not that interesting a story."
Woodcock said the accusations made by Bayer and Syngenta were "utterly unfounded."
"I'm intrigued to know what they would've wanted us to do. If you find negative results on key metrics—number of bees in hives, number of bees surviving after winter—how would they want us to present that? How could we interpret this in what they see as an unbiased way?
"Science papers are short. There about 1,500 words. The discussion is tiny on this. It's like a paragraph. So it's not like we spent vast amounts of time discussing the details of this. You literally present the results more or less as they are, along with some broad statements on what you observed."
The study, which was part-funded by Bayer and Syngenta, with the rest paid for by the UK government-backed Natural Environment Research Council, examined the impact of two neonicotinoids—clothianidin (made by Bayer) and thiamethoxam (made by Syngenta) on wild bees and honey bees in three European countries: Germany, Hungary and the UK.
The experiments occurred in the field, with bees feeding on oilseed rape crops, treated with the neonicotinoids. From the start of the work in 2014, the research was hailed as significant. It was the first time neonics had been tested on such a large scale.
The results differed from country to country, with bees largely unaffected by the chemicals in Germany, but badly hit in the UK and Hungary. Overall, the scientists concluded that the chemicals had a negative impact on the ability of wild bees to reproduce, while also showing, for the first time in real world conditions, that neonicotinoids harm honey bees.
Bayer and Syngenta have both highlighted the results from Germany.
"They're trying to reduce the size of our experiment, by putting it into individual countries. And when you do that you reduce the replication to such a level that it's basically impossible to find a difference between an effect of neonics or no neonics," said Woodcock.
"Bayer and Syngenta said that if you look at each country individually, then you don't get the effects you see in our study. If you do any experiment, you have to think about replication.
"Think about tossing a coin in the air: if you tossed a coin once in the air and you got heads, would you assume that you would get heads every time? No, you would do it again and again until you understand there is a 50:50 chance of the coin landing on heads. And every experiment is like that. The more times you replicate something, the more chance you have of understanding what's going on.
"This is a problem that is well established in the literature. Previous studies have been criticized for having very poor replication because if you don't have the replication you could report the absence of an effect of neonics even when one was present.
"They're trying to muddy the waters. Because people aren't aware of how the regulations work and what the regulatory body wants to focus on. They're trying to say look at everything, rather than saying actually what they've presented here are the core metrics by which pesticides are regulated. That's a bit cynical."
'Statistically Flawed' Studies
Neonicotinoids have long been controversial, with recent research showing that the chemicals have a negative impact on bees and other pollinators.
In 2013, the European Commission decided to issue a temporary ban on the pesticides in the EU, citing the risk the chemicals pose to bees.
After taking evidence on the impact of the chemicals on bees for the last few years, the commission is reportedly likely to call for an outright ban on the chemicals at the end of 2017.
Bayer and Syngenta have repeatedly funded research showing that the agricultural chemicals do not harm bees and other pollinators.
Woodcock highlighted a number of papers from the last few years and accused both companies of putting out "statistically flawed" studies.
He said: "What shocks me is how they can put out statistically flawed or massively under-replicated studies that show no effect and don't bat an eyelid. But then they tear apart any study that shows a negative effect as statistically wrong and unrepresentative."
During the interview, Woodcock cited research published in 2013 by Plos as being particularly flawed.
The study, which credits Syngenta's Peter Campbell as an author, examined the impact of repeated exposure to thiamethoxam on honey bees and found the chemical posed a "low risk" to the insects.
An assessment of the work published earlier this year in Environmental Sciences Europe by scientists from St. Andrews University found the study to be "largely uninformative," "misleading" and based on "inadequate" data.
Asked for a response to Woodcock's comments of the quality of its research, Bayer referred to previous comments made after the release of the CEH study.
Syngenta told us: "We stand by our position that this is an inconclusive study that asks more questions than it answers. It should be noted that a number of other independent scientists who have reviewed this paper expressed similar concerns via the UK Science Media Centre.
"The data generated in the study whilst variable, provides valuable and unique insights that help to better understand the ways in which neonicotinoid pesticides can be used safely. The report is a helpful contribution to the ongoing debate about pollinator health."
'I'm Not Surprised They Weren't Happy'
Sunday Energydesk revealed that while the research was being carried out, Bayer and Syngenta made repeated attempts to get hold of the raw data from the experiments on wild bees which were funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, only to be rebuffed by the scientists.
Email correspondence obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, also showed that both companies also sent their own studies to the scientists showing that the chemicals were a low risk to bees, but were largely ignored.
After publication, Syngenta sent us a statement which read: "CEH appear to have responded to funding, interaction, and requests for data by drawing an even stronger negative conclusion regarding the impact of neonicotinoids on bees."
Woodcock, an ecological entomologist at CEH who has in the past been commissioned to do research by the UK government, told Energydesk he was not surprised that Bayer and Syngenta had reacted negatively when the results from the experiments came in.
"I'll be honest, it wasn't a surprise to me that they weren't happy. We knew as soon as the results came back as being negative, they weren't going to be happy and I understand that.
"They've got a massive commercial interest in this. They pay for the data and the data is appended to the end of the paper. It's freely available and the idea is that other people can have a look.
"This is our interpretation and we believe it a robust interpretation. It's open to other people to look at. But the way they're doing this seems to be focused on getting a result they want, rather than doing it in a robust manner."
Future of the Debate
Looking ahead at what impact the research might have on the future of the neonicotinoids debate, Woodcock said he doesn't believe it can be proved conclusively that the nicotine-based chemicals harm bees, but he said: it is sufficient to show there is something going on."
He added that there is some evidence, as shown in the experiments in Germany, that a high-quality natural environment for bees, can increase their chances of surviving not just neonics but also climate change and other factors that are thought to have led to declining bee populations.
"If you can create high-quality habitats and resources in an agricultural landscape that helps bee populations, they are more likely to take a lot of the impacts of environmental change exposure to something like neonics. This is not something that's been conclusively shown, but good habitat is likely to help.
"It's easy to say ban neonics, but you've got to take into account what the alternatives are. Simply saying there's no effect of neonicotinoids is not the way to go. There needs to be a sensible acknowledgment that there is a problem so we can work out a solution that best serves society and the natural environment."
In the midst of three pending mega-mergers between agrichemical corporations, Donald Trump's recent pick of Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris to head the American Manufacturing Council signals yet more serious potential conflicts of interest in top government posts that could damage American farmers, the health of the public and the environment. The council serves as a liaison between the U.S. manufacturing industry and the federal government.
Tuesday, shareholders of agrichemical giant Monsanto approved a proposed takeover of the company by Bayer. Meanwhile, Liveris' company, Dow Chemical, is in the midst of negotiating a merger with DuPont.
Monsanto Shareholders Approve Bayer Merger to Form World's Largest Seed and Chemical Company https://t.co/2cEeaJjiZt @GMOFreeUSA @GMOTruth— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1481756711.0
"Andrew Liveris should be disqualified for the position due to his likely conflicts of interests. Serving as head of the American Manufacturing Council could allow Liveris to use a government post to benefit Dow Chemical and to line his own pockets," said Friends of the Earth Food Futures campaigner Tiffany Finck-Haynes.
The final decision on the mergers will fall to the Department of Justice, where Trump named Jeff Sessions as potential Attorney General. Sessions, who has received campaign contributions from Monsanto and Bayer, will head the agency investigating the economic impact and antitrust implications of the proposed mergers.
"Donald Trump's picks demonstrates that he is willing to allow corporate interests to control the food that's grown in our country and determine what's on our plates," said Finck-Haynes. "Despite his promise to 'drain the swamp,' his actions prove he is more concerned with advancing corporate interests than protecting the American people, workers and farmers."
The top six agrichemical and seed companies are currently negotiating mergers, which could result in just three powerful multinational corporations controlling this industry. If Monsanto and Bayer, Dow and DuPont and Syngenta and ChemChina form their proposed partnerships, they will control nearly 70 percent of the world's pesticide market, 80 percent of the U.S. corn-seed market and more than 61 percent of commercial seed sales.
The day before Trump's announcement, DuPont's Chief Executive Ed Breen, said a Trump administration won't impact the proposed Dow-DuPont merger. Edward Liveris and Breen, chief executive officers of Dow and DuPont, are expected to earn $80 million from the merger. Meanwhile, Dow already plans to eliminate 2,500 jobs and 8 percent of its Michigan workforce due to its takeover of the smaller company Dow Corning and DuPont is implementing a cost-cutting plan by planning to cut1,700 workers in Delaware, in preparation for the merger.
"Trump's appointment signals that he will rubber stamp these mega-mergers, limiting farming and food options and increasing prices for farmers and consumers," said Finck-Haynes. "The mergers would also further tilt the balance of power away from independent science and the health and safety of the American people towards the influence of chemical corporations."
Several U.S. state attorneys general will reportedly join the federal antitrust investigations of the pending multibillion dollar deals between DuPont and Dow Chemical Co and Bayer AG and Monsanto Co, respectively.
Consolidation of these four already massive companies into two juggernauts—not to mention ChemChina's $43 billion planned combination with chemical and seeds company Syngenta that cleared U.S. scrutiny in August—will completely reshape the global seed and pesticide markets. If the deals are approved, Dow Chemical and DuPont will create one of the largest chemical makers in the U.S, while Bayer and Monsanto will form the largest seed and pesticide company in the world.
Bayer-Monsanto Merger a '5-Alarm Threat to Our Food Supply' https://t.co/LxMGJTi77P @GreenpeaceAustP @globalactplan— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1474707640.0
Reuters reports that about seven states, including California, have joined the probe of Dow's planned merger with DuPont that would create a $130 billion chemical behemoth. A separate group of state attorneys general have also joined the Bayer-Monsanto investigation. The states are reportedly concerned that companies will increase pesticide and herbicide prices for farmers, and will have less incentive to compete and introduce better and cheaper products.
Critics ask, who will hold these agri-tech giants accountable if the deals close? These mega-deals are especially daunting in a time when U.S. farmers are seeing their incomes falling from slumping crop prices.
According to Reuters, the state attorneys general will be able to supply information on how the mergers would affect their jurisdictions and conduct joint calls to gather data from the companies and its critics and supporters of the deals.
"The involvement of the state attorneys general increases scrutiny of the mega deals and will complicate what are already expected to be tough and lengthy reviews by U.S. antitrust enforcers," Reuters wrote.
Consumer groups have also expressed fears that "farmers get paid less for their crops, more pesticides are used and there are fewer options for consumers at the grocery store," as Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food & Water Watch, told EcoWatch after the announcement of Bayer's $66 billion acquisition of Monsanto in September.
The state attorneys general will reportedly investigate DuPont's Altacor and Dow's Intrepid, two chemically different but overlapping insecticides applied on high-value crops such as almonds, pistachios, grapes and apples.
Another concern is Bayer and Monsanto's overlapping cotton seeds. Bayer licenses genetic traits that make seeds resistant to the herbicide Liberty, while Monsanto licenses traits that make seeds resistant to its herbicide Roundup.
Monsanto and Bayer control the two top cotton seed brands in the U.S., respectively, the St. Louis Dispatch reported. That's about 70 percent of all cotton acreage in the country.
"One of the worst things you could do is to link Liberty and Roundup in the same company," Peter Carstensen, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin and leading agricultural antitrust expert, told the Dispatch. "There's no incentive for somebody to develop a third alternative."
DuPont and Dow told Reuters in separate statements they expected to win approval for their deal. Bayer said, it's looking forward to "working diligently with regulators to ensure a successful close." Monsanto did not comment.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) has added seven bee species to the endangered species list, a first for bees. Native to Hawaii, these yellow-faced bees are facing extinction due to habitat loss, wildfires and invasive species.
The tiny, solitary bees were once abundant in Hawaii, but surveys in the late 1990s found that many of its traditional sites had been urbanized or colonized by non-native plants. In March 2009, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation petitioned the USFWS to list these bee species as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
"The USFWS decision is excellent news for these bees, but there is much work that needs to be done to ensure that Hawaii's bees thrive," wrote Matthew Shepherd, communications director for Xerces, in a blog post responding to the announcement.
Yellow-faced bees are the most important pollinators for many key trees and shrubs in Hawaii. They once populated the island from the coast up to 10,000 feet on Mauna Kea and Haleakalā. They get their name from yellow-to-white facial markings, and they are often mistaken for wasps.
According to Karl Magnacca, an entomologist with the O'ahu Army Natural Resources Program, the bees evolved in an isolated environment and were unprepared for the changes brought by humans. These included new plants, domestic animals such as cattle and goats, as well as ants and other bees that compete with the native Hawaiian bees.
One of the seven species, Hylaeus anthracites, is now found in just 15 locations on Hawaii, Maui, Kahoolawe, Molokai and Oahu. Protection of these areas could be a start to aid the bees.
"Unfortunately, the USFWS has not designated any 'critical habitat,' areas of land of particular importance for the endangered bees," wrote Shepherd.
The listing comes just a week after the USFWS proposed listing another bee, the rusty patched bumble bee, to the endangered species list. During the past 50 years, about 30 percent of beehives in the U.S. have collapsed, according to the the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
This Bumble Bee Is About to Go Extinct! https://t.co/QAfKEfFWIE @BurtsBees @vanishingbees— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1475113512.0
On Sept. 9, a new study published in the journal, Scientific Reports, found that the world's most commonly used insecticide, neonicotinoids, caused queen bees to lay fewer eggs and worker bees to be less productive. A Greenpeace investigation of internal studies conducted by chemical makers Bayer and Syngenta showed that these chemicals can harm honeybee colonies when exposed to high concentrations. In January, the EPA found that one of these neonicotinoids, imidacloprid, can be harmful to bees.
Buzz Kill: How #Pesticide Industry Blocks #Bee Protections Nationwide https://t.co/b8Vy8c5b1v @foe_us @foeeurope @food_tank @nongmoreport— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1466445533.0
The National Pesticide Information Center states unequivocally, "Imidacloprid is very toxic to honeybees and other beneficial insects." The EPA has proposed prohibiting the use of neonicotinoids in the presence of bees.
The USFWS ruling protecting Hawaii's yellow-faced bees becomes effective Oct. 31.