On a bright summer morning, the helicopter soars over the northern tip of Svalbard. Through the large, oval windows, I watch as the thick, blue glacier glistens under the Arctic sun and the green waters sparkle. “A group of belugas on the right side,” the pilot announces, his voice crackling through the intercom. I press my face against the window to catch a glimpse of the white whales swimming below. As the distance increases, their white splashes disappear. We fly over a mountain pass, only to soar above another glacier, this one even bigger and brighter. I turn up the music in my ears; Sigrid is singing “ooh-ooh-ooh, sitting here with my head on fire” – and I am too. Everything around us is glowing in its own beautiful, ragged way.

But there’s something else. In fact, “there’s a lot” as Lisbeth Schnug Melhus, biologist and head coordinator of the annual clean-up mission, calls out. Even from the air, we see bright orange buoys, green fishing nets, and plastic cans scattered along the shore. Every year, ten locals from Longyearbyen, a small town on Spitsbergen Island in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, are chosen from hundreds of applicants to help  Svalbard’s governor remove as much waste as possible from secluded Arctic shores. This year, to my surprise, I am one of them. The journey offers a rare opportunity to explore both the inhabited and remote parts of Svalbard, but also reveals a harsh reality: despite almost two-thirds of the Svalbard archipelago being protected national parks or nature reserves, high levels of plastic pollution end up here.

“One second, we’re flying over belugas. Next we’re over a pile of trash,” 26-year-old volunteer Caroline Sund says as we step out of the helicopter and onto Polarsyssel, the governor’s vessel anchored up in Wijdefjorden for the five-day cleanup. But how? There is not a single human being in sight. Not even a cruise ship. When painter Christiane Ritter first set foot in Wijdefjorden in 1938 to spend a year in a trappers cabin, she described the coastline as “comfortless, bleak and stony” and Norway as a “ghastly country – nothing but water, fog and rain”.

What Ritter did see was a large amount of driftwood as the West Spitsbergen current carries large water masses from the North Atlantic to the the west coast of Svalbard. On the other side, off the east Greenlandic coast, the East Greenland current brings colder and less salty water from the Central Arctic to the south. As long as something is lighter than seawater and therefore floats, it can be transported over vast distances with the prevailing currents: “If it sticks out of the waters, it can have windage effects, a bit like with the sail of a sailing boat, which can accelerate the transport,” Melanie Bergmann notes. 

Bergmann is a marine ecologist with Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, and has studied plastic debris on Svalbard since 2002. There “surely is much more plastic on Svalbard than one would expect given that the Arctic region is largely uninhabited,” she says. While a significant portion comes from local activities, such as fisheries and landfills, distant sources also play a crucial role in contributing to plastic pollution. In 2016, Bergmann began analysing debris that still had labels and imprints. “We found items from very distant places,” she says. “Food packaging from China, lids and caps from the US, Brazil and Argentina, lighters from Japan, as well as water bottles from Germany.” 

So when trees drift off in Sibir or beach goers in Rio throw plastic bottles in the ocean, they can float all the way – over 8,000 kilometres – to the coast of Svalbard. Norwegian scientists have estimated that the journey can take up to a year or two. The items first stop when they reach islands or land that intercept the currents, which is why so much plastic debris washes ashore in the Svalbard area.

As oceanographer with Utrecht University in the Netherlands, Erik Van Sebille, explains: “Svalbard is at the end of a large conveyor belt circulation. A lot of the plastic from the US, Europe and so on, if it stays afloat, may end up there,” he says. The Norwegian Polar Institute estimates that there are over 79,000 tonnes of plastic in the deep water between Svalbard, Greenland and in the Barents Sea – the equivalent weight of about 50,000 cars. Every time there’s rough weather, storms or wind, that plastic washes up on shore and, if not washed out at sea again, stays there.

Fortunately, this is about to change – at least for today. Only an hour after we’ve arrived and are settled in on the ship, we gear up in survival suits and head to the nearest beach. Wijdefjorden, the longest fjord of Svalbard, opens out towards the northern coastline, and basking in the sun, it seems far from ghastly. Two volunteers and today’s polar bear guards disembark first to ensure the coast is clear. One of them is Sund. She swiftly dances out of her survival suit, steps into hiking boots and ascends the nearest hill. “Clear,” she radios back.

Once confirmed, no bears in sight, the rest of us enter land, wiggling our way out of our survival suits, grabbing white plastic bags, and spreading along the beach to cover as much ground as possible. As if the race has begun, we start hunting for all pieces of trash we can find.

At first glance, it’s not a lot. Where is all the trash we saw from the air? But as we walk along the shoreline, things start to appear: Old lighters, ketchup bottles, lids, baskets. The more we look, the more we see. Occasionally, someone calls out when they find something they need help with. Magnus Jakola Fjeld uncovers a larger piece of rope. “Aha,” he says, eager to pull the remains of what must have been discarded from a larger cruise ship. Not to disturb the fragile Arctic environment, however, Fjeld and a few other volunteers carefully dig around the rope, employing a shovel as a lever to lift it.

“One, two, three – pull!” But the rope is glued to the ground. Fjell is determined, lying flat over the rope, but like a stubborn olive clinging to its branch, it still doesn’t budge. Eventually, a bread knife borrowed from the ship’s chef is used to cut it free. With only five days to clean, time weighs heavy on us; dedicating too much time to one item means leaving others untouched. Reminiscent of my kindergarten days when I was fixated on collecting every interesting rock I found, convinced something terrible would happen if I left any behind, I want to gather everything in sight, even the smallest, tiniest pieces. What if that lid gets swallowed by a fox? Or what if that rope entangles and harms a fish? Apparently there’s a word for it, according to Jakola Fjeld: “the tweezer-grip disease,” he calls it.

Time passes quickly, and as the sun dips lower on the horizon (though never too low, summer means midnight sun, so the sun never sets), we gather to assess our catch. The goal is for every volunteer to clean at least two cubic yards of garbage. Back on Polarsyssel, the trash is sorted into two different containers; one for rope and fishing nets, the other for plastic waste. When the job is done, the survival suits are cleaned, and we gather in the living room, the mood is a mix of satisfaction and sobering realisation. We’ve already filled half a container with trash. Perhaps even more. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. There is absolutely no one here, I mean, except us. And yet there is so much,” Sund says.

In February, the Norwegian government added stricter regulations to protect vulnerable wildlife on Svalbard. The new rules require expedition ships travelling to protected areas to have fewer than 200 passengers, and cruise ships to only visit designated sites. Yet, waste still continues to wash ashore. “Svalbard is one of Europe’s last wilderness areas, but suffers from long-distance pollution,” head coordinator Melhus explains.

In 2023, locals collected 33 tonnes of plastic, an all-time high according to the local landfill. Beach cleanups have become a regular part of community life, with local groups and cruise ships all participating. When Svalbard’s governor first announced beach cleaning trips back in 2000, however, the governor’s environmental department wasn’t sure locals would volunteer to pick garbage for nine hours straight for a week, often needing to take a whole week off from work. The overwhelming response proved otherwise.

“It’s great to have so many committed people who are willing to spend several hours every day picking up litter. It’s hard work, and we are constantly impressed by the effort the permanent residents make when we are out cleaning. There is a lot of mutual learning in these beach clean-ups,” Melhus adds.

The Norwegian ‘dugnadsånd’, or community collaboration, is vital for life in the world’s northernmost settlement. Various activities, including the local gym, ski-slope (yes, there is one!), and cultural events rely on volunteers. Yet life here is shaped by a warming climate. The glaciers are shrinking, and – except for winter 2023 – the sea ice no longer covers the fjords as before. The Norwegian Metrological Institute has found that Svalbard is warming seven times faster than the global average, and in 2023, the archipelago experienced its warmest summer on record, with an average of 10.1 degrees Celsius in July.

While it’s easy to lose hope in a place where climate change and environmental challenges are both seen and sensed, a recent study by Norce, an independent research institute in Bergen, provides encouraging evidence, showing how beach cleanups on Lisle Langøy, an island West of Norway, significantly reduced microplastics in just one year.

“Removing plastic from the environment before it enters an active degradation phase, into microplastics, will reduce the formation of microplastics in the environment. The decrease of microplastic was over 99% in the water volumes we found on land. When we looked at seawater, the microplastics leaking into the sea was reduced by ​​99.9%,” microbiologist and senior researcher Gunhild Bødtker at Norce says.

She admits even the researchers were surprised by the results.

“To see such a massive decline of microplastic was unexpected, but also that we saw such clear differences in the size distribution. Within a year, there was a shift from larger microplastics to smaller microplastics. This suggests that the microplastics that were of a certain size in the year we cleaned, already degraded and shrunk into smaller size categories within a year. It really indicates a rapid degradation,” she says.

Removing plastic before it fragments is crucial. Bødtker, leader of North Atlantic Microplastic Centre, emphasizes that beach cleaning prevents future microplastic pollution and advocates for regular cleanups. However, it’s not a long-term solution: most plastics sink to the ocean floor. According to ecotoxicologist Ingebjørg Hallanger from the Norwegian Polar Institute, only about five percent of plastic is found on beaches. The majority resides below.

Beaches are, in other words, just a temporary storage space. Hallanger, who refers to beaches as ‘microplastic factories’, explains that movement, sunlight and cold temperatures help to break plastic down into smaller pieces. “When you stand there, and there’s kilos and kilos of trash, it’s easy to lose spirit. It’s a never ending job. But it helps! You prevent it from going anywhere else. So if there is one place you can actually make a difference, it’s on the beach,” she says. 

Plastic waste is undoubtedly a global issue, she believes, and thus needs to be dealt with globally. “But a lot of the waste on Svalbard also comes from local activity and the Barents ocean. This is an issue we are responsible for ourselves, too. We are littering the areas around us.” Her words are echoed in a new report looking at garbage consumption by Arctic terrestrial predators. When analysing Arctic fox faeces, researchers found chocolate wrapper and a milk powder bag derived from abandoned campsites in Northern Greenland. The results highlight that garbage consumption is a potential issue if human activity in remote Arctic regions increases.

Foxes aren’t the only ones struggling; seabirds, one of the most threatened groups of birds worldwide, are undergoing severe population declines due to plastic indigestion. Animals also get entangled in plastic debris, especially ropes and nets from the fishing sector, affecting both seals, polar bears, walruses, fish and birds. 

Last year, when local beach cleaners headed to Forlandet, an island off the west coast, they stumbled upon two reindeer with antlers entangled in an old fishing net. The beach cleanup turned into a rescue mission, and the volunteers managed to catch the two animals, cut off the nets and free them from one another. Had they not been found, they would probably be dead.

This needs to stop, volunteer Raphaelle Descoteaux says thoughtfully, on our second day of beach cleaning. Descoteaux is a Canadian marine biologist at the local university center, UNIS, and moved to Longyearbyen two years ago. She works with plankton and researches how southern species may travel to Svalbard due to warmer temperatures and Atlantic currents. “I wonder how many we’d need to clean the entire coastline. Hundreds? Thousands?” In the sand she passes a dead reindeer skull. Its antlers are fully entangled in thin, white strips of plastic. As we walk back to the pile of trash that she’s gathered, I pick up my camera. Descoteaux turns around: “I don’t really want to smile, for the picture,” she says. “It feels wrong.” 

How do we protect remote and vulnerable ecosystems like Svalbard? According to marine ecologist Bergmann, the single most efficient way to reduce plastic pollution is to follow the waste hierarchy and produce less plastic, and strengthen reuse-systems aimed at plastic prevention. “This is also the cheapest measure, especially in remote environments,” she says.

But deep down, the deep-sea scientist is concerned. Even if plastic emissions are halted today, “the legacy of plastic waste will lead to increasing microplastics in Arctic ecosystems, which are already under pressure from anthropogenic warming”, she says.

In late November this year, the UN might have agreed on what could become the first global treaty to curb plastic pollution. 180 countries have so far agreed to develop the legally binding agreement to halt the explosion of plastic waste. While the initial agreement was celebrated as a breakthrough – and with the heavy applause that subsided in Nairobi two years ago –  the actual negotiations to define the terms are proving much more complex. Will the meeting in Busan finally land a treaty all countries can agree on? Microbiologist Bødtker at Norce thinks it’s about time: “Plastic debris has an impact on all ecosystems. And the suffering that animals go through because we cannot stop using plastic… No,” she says, pausing. “It’s unacceptable. It’s time, and also totally doable to stop plastic pollution”.

As Polarsyssel makes its way back to Longyearbyen – a day earlier than planned due to an incoming storm – the two containers at the back of the ship are filled with waste. In total 14 cubic metres of garbage. Not quite 2 cubic metres per person – but almost. In the ship’s living room, we lean back in brown leather chairs to relax our tired backs, reflecting on our experience as the North of Spitsbergen passes by. The trip has been a bittersweet reminder of the beauty and fragility of the Arctic environment.

“I do wish I saw a polar bear though,” Sund says. Even for Svalbard locals, polar bears are unique, and normally, there are not more bears than people on the island, with around 300 resident polar bears on Svalbard all year round. In winter, however, when the sea ice is intact, there are around 3,000 bears that move in the Svalbard area and in the Barents sea area.

After two hours of looking through the binoculars, however, we give up, and succumb to board games. Though not for long; “A polar bear! Now,” one of the deck crew shouts. We run outside… and there she is. A mama bear and her two cubs. She stands firmly on rocks, and for a second, she looks directly at us. As a reminder of what must be saved and protected.

The annual ‘garbage-hunt’ may be over for this year, but the fight against plastic pollution on Svalbard is far from finished. For all of us, the journey continues, driven by our deep love for nature and the determination to protect it for future generations – of humans and bears.