Meet Michelle Nowlin, Who is Helping to Solve the Problem of Plastic Pollution
Michelle Benedict Nowlin
When you envision what is possible and set out to achieve it with a team of like-minded people, you can accomplish great things. Michelle Benedict Nowlin, a professor at Duke Law School and co-director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, is doing exactly this. At Duke, she has joined with other faculty and students to tackle environmental concerns in North Carolina and the United States.
With the Center’s co-director Ryan Longest and staff scientist Nancy Lauer, Nowlin represents community groups and nonprofit organizations on legal and policy matters, working alongside teams of students from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Duke Law School. She is also part of a research collaborative that studies plastic pollution, such as how microplastics enter the body and impact human health.
The large-scale problem of plastic waste is one of the most pressing environmental issues today. It has been estimated that more than 50 million tons of plastic waste are produced annually in the world. Plastic has been found in marine life as well as in human organs, such as the heart, and it has caused harm to both animals and humans. Because of the presence of plastic in humans, scientists have asked how these materials – which contain toxins – negatively impact human health.
Plastic is not only physically harmful but also financially costly. In 2023, the North Carolina Department of Transportation spent over 56 million dollars cleaning up litter. Over the past 15 years, NCDOT has expended 270 million dollars on litter removal.
To find solutions to this issue and others of its kind, Nowlin and her team have posed questions.
How does plastic find its way to the Atlantic Ocean near Topsail Island, and inside the bodies of sea turtles? How can we stop plastic waste from entering the ocean to begin with? Why is an abundance of litter found in Durham and other urban areas? What causes accumulations of trash in rivers, and can it be decreased? And given the negative impact of plastic waste, how can we reduce it in this region, as well as in the world?
These are only a few of the questions that the Duke team has asked.
Nowlin, left, and students collecting trash that had built up in Third Fork Creek in Durham.
Solving the problem of plastic is not as simple as recycling more. While carrying a refillable water bottle and reusable bags to grocery stores are places to start, there is much more to be done. Nowlin shares that much plastic waste, even if it is sent to recycling centers, is not recycled. For this reason, an excellent starting point is to try to avoid purchasing single-use plastic items to begin with.
Nowlin currently manages eight or nine cases and research projects, four of which are related to plastic waste and ways to reduce its impacts on human health and the environment. Some of the other projects involve improving the quality of water and providing protections to endangered species protections and public lands.
“What I bring to that table is the policy expertise and the legal insights into environmental problems: this is the existing toolkit for how you can address those types of issues, and this is how that toolkit can be improved with scientific evidence to support the community’s goals,” said Nowlin.
The goal of this work is to improve the quality of life for people and animals. Through her work with the clinic, Nowlin and the team are acutely aware of the dangers of plastic waste when it enters the environment. In the ocean, sea turtles have been found to be so filled with plastic that they were unable to eat and died from starvation. Plastic can be dangerous for boats because it can get caught in motors and lead to damage.
These are only two examples of the destruction that can occur from plastic waste.
Nowlin’s interest in the natural world and preserving its beauty began when she was young. She traces her love for the outdoors to her childhood. In Florida, she spent many afternoons exploring on her own at the beach. During these times, Nowlin especially enjoyed observing wildlife native to the area and discovering all she could in this majestic locale.
She delighted in these adventures until she noticed changes occurring in the place she loved.
“I had the beach to explore all by myself for much of my childhood. I just really fell in love with the natural world and the magical things that were there. And over the course of my childhood, things changed. The sanderlings started to disappear. The Pelicans disappeared. The sea turtle nests disappeared. The maritime forests disappeared, the marsh hares and the Gopher tortoises. I could no longer hear the bobcats in the woods,” said Nowlin.
“Development kept encroaching, and that really had a profound impact. I wanted these spaces for the whole of life to be able to be preserved. But I didn’t know how to go about doing that.”
A team of students who worked with Nowlin on behalf of a client, PenderWatch & Conservancy, to help them in their fight against the development of a limestone quarry and associated Portland cement manufacturing facility on the banks of the northeast Cape Fear River. From left to right, Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment (NSOE) master’s student Taylor Pool; Duke University School of Law student Michael Elion; Duke Law master’s degree in law candidate Heide Cheuk; Duke Law student Jennifer Nearhood; Nowlin; and their client representative, Allie Sheffield, who at the time served as chair of the Board for PenderWatch & Conservancy.
The absence of these animals was both surprising and saddening, and it caused her to wonder why they were vanishing. It would take years for her to more fully understand the problem and what she could do to help. Her hometown didn’t have environmental organizations at the time, and modern environmental laws were just being enacted.
Nowlin’s love for the outdoors and animals continued through her teens and influenced her academic pursuits. As a first-year college student at the University of Florida, she chose to study English because of three primary passions, reading, writing and being outside. She didn’t yet know she’d find a role where she could do those things while having a tangible impact on finding solutions to environmental issues.
After graduating from college, Nowlin took a job at a law firm, which sparked her interest in environmental law.
“Part of my job there was to review national papers and do a clipping service for the attorneys in the firm. This was in 1987. There was a huge drought in the Midwest. I was reading about all of these different things,” she said. “And then I started reading about organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, and I started hearing about organizations like the Southern Environmental Law Center, and I thought, ‘Wow, you can do that with a law degree? Sign me up!’”
And so, she signed up. She began Duke University School of Law’s J.D. program in 1989. There, she completed her law degree and a joint master’s degree in natural resource economics and policy and graduated in three years.
In 1995, Nowlin joined the Southern Environmental Law Center, where she would go on to focus on agricultural concerns. Her appointment began only months after a serious lagoon failure at Oceanview Farms. As a result of the catastrophe, tens of millions of gallons of untreated hog waste were spilled into the New River, located outside of Jacksonville, NC, fouling the water and killing millions of fish.
Gov. Hunt, the governor of North Carolina at the time, brought together a Blue Ribbon Commission to learn about these operations, their locations in North Carolina, and the laws governing their operation. The Neuse River Keeper and Pamlico Tar River Foundation were also involved in the conversations about preventing something like this spill from happening again.
Nowlin describes attending the very first meeting of the commission along with other people in the communities.
“The Coastal Federation was there, and the North Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club, and the Concerned Citizens of Tillery. So I got to meet all of these people, learn what was going on in their communities, how the industry was affecting them, and followed all the work of the Blue Ribbon Commission. Through all of that, I became the resident expert, as it were, just by virtue of being in the right place at the right time and being able to fill a role.
“From there, we created a round table that included community organizations, mainly from the eastern part of the state, most of which were community-based organizations, not just environmental groups. And so we joined together to learn more about what those communities’ experiences were and how we could work together to solve the problems the industry created.”
She shares that through her work with these groups, she discovered that regulatory oversight and permitting standards were lacking. In response to what she was learning from people in these communities, Nowlin began to draft legislation and permitting regulations that would be able to improve conditions in the communities involved. Because the legislature was open to new oversight, it was the perfect time to introduce them.
And that is what Nowlin and her team did.
“The industry wanted to expand in other areas of the southeast. And so SELC as a southeastern organization said, ‘Can you do this work in these other states?’ So I worked with our office up in Virginia and with colleagues and partners in South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. We got legislation enacted and regulations put into place in those states as well,” she said.
“We tried to guide the industry’s expansion in ways that would better protect communities, public health and natural resources. And I think that that was a pretty successful endeavor, although more needs to be done.”
With this background of experience, Nowlin and the team translated the information they gathered into work with the Environmental Protection Agency, which was developing the first national permitting program for industrial-scale livestock facilities. The regulations for permitting continue to be in place today.
Making this kind of impact was exactly why she decided to go to law school. She will be the first to tell you that she could not have accomplished this feat without the team around her.
“I learned a lot from the community members. That was really their insight and experience. Being on the frontline or being on the receiving end of the direct impacts let me know how important this was, and it was just a real privilege and honor to be able to work in partnership with them.”
Nowlin, far right, pictured with Brianna Elliott and Duke Marine Lab boat captain in Core Sound. Elliott is a former clinic student and Duke NSOE graduate. She received a Master of Environmental Management and a Ph.D. from Duke. She worked with Nowlin on the project to reduce sea turtle bycatch. Elliott focused her dissertation on bycatch in international fisheries.
Her experiences with the SELC laid the groundwork for her future role at Duke. While Nowlin was practicing at the SELC, she worked with Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Hospital in Topsail Beach. Nowlin was helping them understand how sonar used in the Navy’s proposal for an undersea warfare training range in the Onslow Bight would affect sea turtle populations and other marine life, and how to participate effectively in the mandated environmental impact analysis process. Ultimately, the Navy chose to construct the training range off the northeast coast of Florida, near naval facilities in Jacksonville, Fla. and coastal Georgia.
After she joined Duke as a supervising attorney in 2008, the sea turtle hospital contacted her to let her know about sea turtles who were being injured in fishing nets and to ask what might be done to assist them.
“We worked with them to file a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act and were able to bring about a settlement with the state of North Carolina that ended up reducing sea turtle bycatch in the gillnet fisheries by about 80%. And so that was just a phenomenal success. It was a controversial lawsuit, but you always need to balance economic development needs with their environmental impacts,” she said.
Although it took three years for the settlement to be implemented fully, Nowlin was thrilled to have had a hand in safeguarding sea turtles, one of the animals she has been fascinated with ever since she first observed them as a child in Florida. As wonderful as this result was, it couldn’t protect turtles from another enemy: plastic.
Not long after this case, the sea turtle hospital contacted Nowlin again.
“They said, we’re getting a lot of turtles showing up with plastics in their guts. Sometimes it’s causing starvation and death. It’s definitely causing a lot of sickness and impairment. What can be done about that? So we started looking into plastics and had thought about possible legislation that would ban single-use plastic bags across all coastal counties,” said Nowlin.
“Right about the time that we started looking into that, the legislature rescinded a plastic bag ban on the Outer Banks that had been in place for three counties. The Outer Banks had been quite successful in reducing plastic litter along the beach and near the shore environment. But the legislature clearly signaled in rescinding the law that they weren’t going to think about a 20-county ban on single-use plastic bags.”
The concern was a large one, she explained. For one thing, sea turtles were being harmed and, in some cases, dying. In addition to the sea turtles, other species also accidentally consume plastic. Commercial fisherman shared their concerns that people would be deterred from eating seafood because fish had eaten plastic. As she and her team began to think about how to resolve this, one thought came to mind.
All rivers lead to the sea.
After researching how plastic travels to the ocean, she and her team confirmed that much of the trash originated from inshore locations. They began amassing data, conducting stormwater surveys and broader river surveys. As part of this research, Nowlin and other individuals surveyed stormwater outfalls and catalogued their findings.
A group of Duke students count fragments of polystyrene foam pulled from the Third Fork Creek in Durham.
A pivotal moment in this project occurred during a Durham City-County Environmental Affairs Board meeting. After Nowlin and her team spoke about the stormwater surveys they were administering, Crystal Dreisbach, founder of Don’t Waste Durham, said something powerful that helped to shape Nowlin and her team’s next steps.
“She said, ‘That’s really great to keep plastic out of the waters. But what we’re trying to do is keep plastic trash from being generated to begin with.’ And we thought, of course. You go to the source.”
Following this conversation, Nowlin and her team developed information based on key questions.
“We asked, ‘What is the economic cost to the community of having to clean up all of this debris? Where is it coming from? What are the causes of the proliferation of this debris? What communities are experiencing the worst problems with plastic trash?’”
The team at Duke began to do street surveys across Durham to map the accumulation of litter, so that they could ask why it was proliferating in specific places. As a result of these surveys, they discovered that Durham only collects trash for residential neighborhoods. Commercial locations, as well as multi-unit housing and apartment buildings, are outside the scope of the city’s collection services.
In other words, as Nowlin points out, businesses or housing complexes must contract out for trash collection.
“It seems reasonable to assume that where those housing complexes are located, the types of contracts they enter into for waste management play a significant role in where waste accumulates across the community. And so, we took all of that information on behalf of Don’t Waste Durham and presented a pretty comprehensive proposal to the City Council for how we could address that problem,” said Nowlin.
Plastic bottles separated for counting.
Because of the team’s research and work on the proposal, other organizations across the state began to contact the Duke team, both to describe the patterns they were seeing in their regions and to ask for help in finding solutions.
“Asheville, Buncombe County, Cherokee, all the way down to communities on the coast, everybody’s concerned about this because they say, ‘We can see it. We can see it accumulating in our communities. We can see the trash trucks going into the landfills around the state.’ There’s just a real strong interest in reducing the amount of plastic debris or plastic trash that is generated as well as cleaning up the trash that’s on the street.”
Even though Nowlin and her team shined a light on how to reduce litter in their published research and proposal, they encountered some roadblocks. In 2023, two days before the Durham City Council was set to take action on the proposal, the legislature added a provision in the budget bill that prevented the local government from regulating plastic containers.
“The bottom line now is that state law requires municipalities to provide recycling and waste management services. Yet they have no ability to take meaningful measures to reduce the amount of trash that is generated,” she said.
“And that has environmental consequences. It has social justice consequences because of where landfills are located across our state. They’re located in unincorporated communities populated primarily by people of color who did not want these landfills in their communities. And now, they’re suffering the consequences of the odor and the groundwater contamination, the air pollution from the truck traffic and things like that. It’s a real injustice that I think has been perpetuated here.”
Nowlin shares that while the preemption of local government authority to minimize plastic waste set back their client’s goals, the Clinic team continues to work with local communities to develop alternative methods. For example, they have helped their clients advise local governments about actions they can take on government-owned properties, such as convention centers. They are working with Riverkeeper groups around the state to track the amount and types of trash pulled from rivers during monthly cleanups. An online dashboard created and maintained by the Clinic’s staff scientist, Nancy Lauer, compiles the information and makes it available to the public, and provides insights that can aid future legal and policy efforts.
Nowlin, center, pictured with clinic law students at a gathering of students pursuing certificates in Public Interest/Public Service. From left to right, Janet Bering, Elsa Haag, Jess Kuesel, Henry Gargan, Nowlin, Bridget Eklund, Hannah Elson, Jon Choi, and Victoria Rose.
They submitted comments on the efforts of federal agencies to reduce plastic pollution through procurement processes, and on the NC Division of Water Resources’ Triennial Review of Water Quality Standards, which featured a student-designed predictive model to identify “hot spots” within watersheds where plastic waste is likely to accumulate. They have organized workshops and issued reports evaluating the economic impacts of plastic pollution on environmental and human health. And they regularly speak to groups of scientists – as well as community organizations – about the legal processes and levers that can be used to address concerns about impacts to human health.
As Nowlin and her team work to accomplish these goals – understanding how plastic is harmful, reducing litter, improving the environment, and enhancing the quality of life for everyone – what are some things that people can do to make a difference?
She says that it is important to think about how subsidizing oil and gas extraction contributes to this problem because it enables companies to cheaply make plastic. That, she says, has led to the widespread use of plastic as a packaging preference. She also recommends that companies and producers take responsibility for the waste they create and find ways to reduce waste internally and to incorporate environmental design into product creation.
Pictured left to right are Michael Mocciaro, who works as the paralegal for the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Duke, Nowlin, and Clinic co-director Ryke Longest, at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science last summer to visit the new litter of red wolf pups, an endangered species native to N.C. that the museum breeds in captivity as part of an effort to save the species.
When asked what individuals can do to mitigate this issue, she highlights thinking about daily choices.
“There are a multitude of things that people can do, and it really involves just changing habits and slowing down a little bit. What I would love to see is that we really embrace and return to our roots of being a culture of reuse and repair. My grandparents, your grandparents, they didn’t waste things because materials were expensive. Those materials still are expensive. It’s just that we’re experiencing that cost in very different ways now – the costs of pollution are socialized.
“If we could return to a culture of reuse where everybody brings their bags when they go shopping, maybe you buy more things in bulk, you do more reuse. There are lots of reuse businesses that are popping up now, for everything from dish soap to shampoos. You can also buy in bulk, like at a store like Part and Parcel, which is here in Durham. You can get dried fruits and nuts and coffee and staples, like we did 60 to 70 years ago. Reuse can be as simple as making sure that you’re taking your water bottle with you.”
Some other ideas she shares are having reusable items for ballparks and using non-disposable silverware in restaurants. By taking small steps collectively, you can have a big impact. Knowing you can do what you can to keep the world beautiful makes you think about what a difference you can make.
In addition to these ideas, Nowlin says there are many ways to reduce the plastic you use in daily life. For example, she recommends purchasing clothes made of natural materials, such as cotton, flax, wool, and leather because clothing made of polyester, nylon, elastin, spandex, and fleece are all different types of plastic that shed micro-and nano-plastics and leach plasticizers, which are chemical additives like PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances). These additives are placed in the polymers to provide certain characteristics.
When buying kitchen utensils, cookware and food storage containers, consider the materials of the items. Nowlin recommends eliminating nonstick pans because the coating is a plastic material containing PFAS. Another idea is to replace plastic spatulas with those made from silicone. Rather than buying plastic containers for food, opt for items made of glass, metal or wood.
Shopping for groceries is another routine you can adjust to help reduce your plastic consumption. She encourages individuals to shop for produce at the farmers’ market or to buy unpackaged fresh produce at the grocery store. Another idea for using less plastic is to think about what you ask for when ordering takeout food. Instead of requesting a plastic bag, you can bring your own bag and let the cashier know you don’t need condiment packets, straws, and plastic utensils.
Nowlin and her team’s efforts are amazing. When asked about her role, she shares that working with students in the clinic has been a wellspring of energy, joy and inspiration. She likes to show her students that when you become an attorney, you have many avenues for improving the world and different routes available to choose from to do so.
“One of my objectives as a professor is to really pull back the curtain for the students and say you don’t have to practice environmental law as you read about it in magazines,” said Nowlin.
“You can do it through the city attorney’s office. You can do it as a pro bono attorney, bringing your commercial law skills to benefit a local nonprofit by serving on their board, reviewing their contracts, things like that. Being an attorney for a food service entity, or an insurance company addressing risks from climate change. There are just a multitude of ways in which people can take that degree and have a meaningful impact in ways that really align with their values and their vision of the community that they want to live in. We now have 17 years’ worth of graduates that we keep in touch with and follow, and they’ve turned out to be fabulous mentors themselves for up-and-coming lawyers.”
Beyond her wonderful students, two other sources of inspiration are her family and her faith. They ground all that she does.
“I just had excellent models in my own parents and their community and my grandparents about public service, that you’re not just an idle, passive recipient of the goodness of the world. You go out there and create that goodness so that other people can enjoy it too. And everybody gives what they can.
“Lawyers have a particular set of skills that they can contribute to the community. And I think that the tenants of our profession really compel us to do that, to do justice in the community and not just earn a paycheck. And so that’s really what motivates me to get involved. It’s an expression of my faith and my belief in the legal system itself. And it’s just fun. It’s fun to get to know people. I meet people I wouldn’t necessarily encounter in my day-to-day life.”
Nowlin’s practice illuminates how the problem of plastic is multi-faceted, and it has broad implications on human health, for social justice and the environment. She and her team’s research is shedding new light on how we can resolve this issue so that the world remains beautiful and healthy for future generations.
Jessica Junqueira is communications manager for the North Carolina Bar Association.