PLASTIC BY THE NUMBERS
Earlier this year, at the end of May, a pilot whale washed up on a beach in Thailand’s southern province of Songkhla. Veterinarians cared for the animal for nearly a week, but were unable to save its life. Later, an autopsy revealed nearly eighteen pounds of plastic bags inside its stomach, bringing into stark focus a problem that is growing even more consequential and urgent: plastic products are making their way into the ocean with lasting and devastating consequences.
According to a 2017 study published in the journal Science Advances, nearly 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been pro-duced since the 1950s, with 6.3 billion tons thrown away. In a sepa-rate study published in the journal Science, researchers estimated that approximately 8 million tons of plastic are deposited in the ocean each year. If current trends continue, about 12 billion metric tons of plastic waste may be in landfills or the environment by 2050.
Plastic bags, bottle caps, and bottles are some of the most commonly seen items floating in the ocean, all of which are referred to as single-use items because of their particularly short life. Packaging, often used for less than a year, is one of the biggest pollutants, making up 54% of the plastic thrown out in 2015.
It’s not uncommon for these plastics to be mistaken for food by marine life, which is what researchers at Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Services believe led the whale to ingest the bags. Each year, Thailand’s beaches see hundreds of dolphins, whales, and endangered turtles wash ashore, bellies filled with plastic.
Beyond this immediate impact, plastic poses a potentially bigger threat when it begins to “decompose.” Unlike organic materials, which are degraded by bacteria, plastic can only be broken down through photodegradation: a process through which prolonged exposure to the sun’s UV rays break the chemical bonds holding the plastic together, creating tiny microplastics. Plastic can degrade in a year or less when in warm ocean water, but it can also take much longer—approximately 450 years for a plastic bottle.
Microplastics still pose a threat to digestive systems of marine life, causing irritation or damage, but what is particularly concerning is the potential threat from toxins. According to NOAA, plastic debris accumulates pollutants up to 1,000,000 times the levels found in seawater. These pollutants are then leached from the microplas-tics into whatever animal consumed them. There is fear that plastic has already entered the ocean’s food chain, infecting a wider swath of marine life and likely reaching humans, though more research needs to be done to fully understand microplastic’s impacts.
Contributing to the crisis is a lack of resources for adequately disposing of plastic, which can only be truly destroyed through incineration. Currently the U.S. burns 16% of the plastic thrown out, and recycles just 9%, which only delays its arrival at the trash heap. China, one of the world’s biggest plastic consumers, by comparison, recycles 25% of its plastic waste and burns 30%. Europe recycles the most, processing 30% of its plastic, and incinerating 40%.
SPOTLIGHT ON STRAWS
Even if recycling rates were higher, current recycling methods aren’t always able to process certain types of plastic materials, such as straws. For activists and environmentalists alike, straws have become a flashpoint because of their prevalence in society and the difficulty in disposing of theme. According to the nonprofit recycling organization Eco-Cycle, over 500 million plastic straws are used each day in the U.S., with no real way of getting rid of them. Straws are made of a type of plastic, polypropylene, that local recycling centers won’t typically process. Additionally, plastic straws are light and small enough that when put through recycling centers they’re more likely to fall off conveyor belts and end up in a landfill, or the environment. According to NOAA, straws are one of the top five pollutants found during beach cleanups.
In 2015, a video showing a turtle with a 4-inch straw embed-ded in its nose went viral, prompting widespread concern and out-rage. As public awareness of plastic straws and their detriments have grown, social media campaigns and activist groups armed with hashtags like #StrawsSuck and #TheLastStraw have helped push for limits or bans on plastic straws globally.
Laws in Malibu, New York City, and Fort Myers, Florida, have already been put in place to ban plastic straws, and more cities and states are developing legislation. Scotland is making plans to be rid of plastic straws by 2019 and Australia also has a ban in the works. Taiwan has passed the strictest ban yet, forbidding all plastic bags, straws, and cups by 2030. And in Rwanda, plastic bags have been illegal since 2006, and the government is debating additional restrictions on other plastics. While the U.S. government has yet to take any direct action, the House of Representatives recently signed the Save Our Seas Act, which aims to share technologies and infrastructure with other countries to help prevent, reduce, or mitigate waste that enters the ocean.
One major global success in the fight against straws came when Starbucks announced in July of this year that it will eliminate plastic straws by 2020, removing as many as one billion straws per year. Other restaurants and food service companies in the UK, like Costa Coffee and Waitrose, have started putting bans in place, and in May of this year Queen Elizabeth II issued a rare royal decree banning plastic straws and bottles from all royal estates. In America, by comparison, there has been slower but steady movements. The food service company Bon Appétit has banned plastic straws in all 1,000 of its outlets in the U.S., and McDonald’s recently announced that it will begin testing plastic straw alternatives in some locations.
Within the U.S. there has also been pushback against plastic straw bans from groups with a vested interest in plastic straw production. The American Chemistry Council and the Plastics Industry Association have stated that while they are not entirely opposed to the idea of reducing plastic straw consumption, they believe that legislation is the wrong way to approach the matter. The ACC has proposed restaurants only give straws to those who ask for them, and Scott DeFife, vice president of government affairs for PIA, said in an interview that the marine debris crisis would not be solved by banning plastic straws in restaurants. He suggested, alternatively, that the debris issue is a result of an inadequate waste management system.
The ACC and PIA are not entirely wrong. Current waste management processes, at least in the U.S., are not equipped to dispose of or properly recycle all the plastic products we generate. Activist movements and bans on single-use items certainly help reduce use and increase awareness of plastic’s environmental impact, but it is only a small part of a much larger problem.
HOW TO HELP
Plastic is used in nearly all aspects of life. A number of recently published articles and videos have shown average people attempting to live without plastic for a week, and the results in every case show that it is nearly impossible to eat, drink, clean, and live with the level of comfort and cost we have come to expect without using plastic.
So what can you do? Reusable shopping bags are already familiar to most, as are water bottles and reusable coffee cups. Glass-bottle milk delivery is an option in some areas. For person-al bath products, the company Lush offers plastic-free shampoo bars.
To help address the plastic that’s already in the ocean, supporting The Ocean Cleanup is a great start. The nonprofit was founded by young Dutch inventor Boyan Slat, after a diving trip in Greece at age sixteen, where he saw more plastic than fish. At just eighteen, Slat quit school and began work on his ocean cleanup machine, essentially a series of floating pipes connected to screens beneath the surface of the water, which will slowly move across the ocean, pulled by currents, and collect plastic debris as it goes. Boats will pass by to collect debris and empty the nets. After the company’s founding in 2013, it began a crowdfunding campaign to help raise money for research. In just 100 days, 38,000 funders from 160 countries raised over 2 million dollars. The company later attracted millions more in research and development funding, but their initial success is a testament to the power of individuals who want to make a difference.
While still in testing stages, the machine is set to launch sometime in 2018 and begin tackling the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, home to an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic weighing in at nearly 80,000 metric tons. It is the world’s largest garbage patch, and was the subject of a study by The Ocean Cleanup in 2018 to determine its make-up. The authors found that 94% of the pieces of plastic in the patch are microplastics, but make up only 8% of the total tonnage. And of particular interest: most% of the patch’s weight is made up of abandoned fishing nets, with the majority of the rest composed of other fishing gear like ropes, traps, crates, and baskets. Nets that have been purposely or accidentally abandoned, called ghostnets, kill approximately 100,000 marine animals each year through strangulation, suffocation or injury.
The study, which examined the patch by conducting net tows and flight surveys, challenges the prevailing assumption that consumer plastics make up the majority of marine debris, and strongly indicates that the plastic conversation needs to discuss abandoned and lost fishing gear as much as any other source.
If the Ocean Cleanup is successful, it estimates that it can clean up half of the GPGP in just five years. While microplastics can be very difficult to catch, the company hopes that removing larger debris, like nets, can have a powerful impact.
The plastic crisis is not without hope, and small steps can make great progress, but it is not a matter that can afford wasted time. It cannot be addressed solely by companies, governments, or individuals. We must work in tandem to come up with alternatives that are both cost effective and viable for the average person. Humans won’t be here forever. We mustn’t let plastic be the legacy we leave behind.
