Sustainability science: the social and ecological dimensions of plastic pollution
Join us on Friday, October 20th, from 10 am to 11 am, for a talk given by Dr. Zoie Diana, Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellow in the Rochman Lab in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto.
We would love to have you join us in person at Uris Hall, Room 333. Registration is NOT required. If you wish to attend virtually, please contact the event contact listed below for joining information.
Global sustainability challenges, such as the plastics crisis, converge across disciplines and involve diverse stakeholders. Society produces plastic at a rate that is outpacing management capacity, so this pollutant has become widespread and is now found even in remote corners of the Earth, like the deep sea, the Arctic, and even the atmosphere. Plastic pollution threatens environmental and organismal health at all levels of biological organization. To address this issue, scientific consensus suggests that all stakeholders must work together to reduce plastic pollution drastically. In this seminar, we will explore how governments worldwide have adopted policies, laws, and regulations to combat plastic pollution. We will also examine how the world’s largest companies have voluntarily committed to reducing plastic pollution. The scope and scale of the plastic issue, as compared to the government and private sector responses to date, will be examined. The future of transdisciplinary research to address global sustainability problems like the plastics crisis, as exemplified by the Duke University Plastic Pollution Working Group and through Dr. Diana’s research, will be explored.
Biography: Dr. Zoie Diana (pronouns: she/her) is an interdisciplinary scholar and Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellow in the Rochman Lab in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. She is broadly interested in pollution abatement as a global sustainability challenge. Her research explores the social and ecological dimensions of plastic pollution by characterizing the ecological consequences of the global pollutant in marine ecosystems and examining societal responses and mitigation. She co-founded the Duke University Plastic Pollution Working Group and previously earned her Ph.D. at Duke University in the Marine Science and Conservation Division and Integrated Toxicology and Environmental Health program. She is also a plastic waste consultant for the World Bank.
