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“How Humans are Turning the World Into Plastic”

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“How Humans are Turning the World Into Plastic”

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United Nations

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Modern life would be impossible without plastic - but we have long since lost control over our invention. Why has plastic turned into a problem and what do we know about its dangers? This video is a collaboration with UN Environment and their Clean Seas campaign, If you want to take action to turn the tide on plastics, go to cleanseas and make your pledge. We also partnered with askscience on reddit - on you can talk to experts and ask questions about about plastic pollution today!

Sources used in the video

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Plastic pollution: how humans are turning the world into plastic

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Modern life would be impossible without plastic - but we have long since lost control over our invention. Why has plastic turned into a problem and what do we know about its dangers?

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By Renee Cho

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Editor's Note (11/27/2017): This post was updated with new statistics on plastic waste generation and recycling, as well as new information on methods of reuse.
What would modern life be like without plastic? According to The World Economic Forum, plastic production has exploded over the last half-century, growing from 16.5 million tons in 1964 to 343 million tons in 2014; it is projected to double by 2036. Where does all of it go when we're done with it?

In 2014, Americans discarded about 33.6 million tons of plastic, but only 9.5 percent of it was recycled and 15 percent was combusted to create electricity or heat.

Most of the rest ends up in landfills where it may take up to 500 years to decompose, and potentially leak pollutants into the soil and water. It's estimated that there are already 165 million tons of plastic debris floating around in the oceans threatening the health and safety of marine life. And an average of 8.8 million more tons enter the oceans each year, including microplastics, tiny particles less than five millimeters long from cosmetics, fabrics or the breakdown of larger pieces, which may be ingested by marine wildlife.

Relatively little of our plastic waste is recycled because there are various types of plastic with different chemical compositions, and recycled plastics can be contaminated by the mixing of types. Plastic waste is also contaminated by materials such as paper and ink. Separating plastics from other recyclables, and different types of plastic from each other, is labor-intensive and so far there has been no easy solution.

Although the Society of Plastic Industries developed seven codes to distinguish types of plastic for recycling, in reality, only two-polyethylene terephthalate (PET, used for synthetic fibers and water bottles) and high density polyethylene (HDPE, used for jugs, bottle caps, water pipes)-are routinely recycled. But in more and more cities like New York and Chicago, low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic bags are now being recycled too. And increasingly, the recycling industry's use of near‐infrared spectroscopy, which can identify the chemical composition of plastics, is improving the efficiency and speed of recycling.

Plastics that can be recycled are first sorted, shredded and rid of impurities like paper. The shreds are then melted and formed into pellets, which can be made into other products.

MoistureShield in Arkansas, and Virginia-based Trex recycle polyethylene into outdoor decking material, fencing, and doors and windows. Coca Cola is increasing the amount of recycled plastic in its bottles to 50 percent.

Plastic is made from petroleum or natural gas in a chemical process that combines smaller molecules into a large chainlike molecule, often with other substances added to give it particular qualities. (Some, like phthalates and bisphenol A, can have harmful health effects.) Plastic production is estimated to use four percent of global oil production-both as the raw material and for energy in the manufacturing process. Because these polymers embody energy from fossil fuels (and actually have a higher energy value than coal and wood), leaving so much of it in landfills is not only an environmental hazard, it is a huge waste of a valuable resource that could be used to produce electricity, heat, or fuel.

The Plastics Division of the American Chemical Council asked the Earth Institute's Earth Engineering Center to explore ways of recovering the energy inherent in non-recycled plastics. The 2011 report, which was updated in 2014, determined that the amount of energy contained in the millions of tons of plastic in U.S. landfills is equivalent to 48 million tons of coal, 180 million barrels of oil, or one trillion cubic feet of natural gas. If all this plastic were converted into liquid fuel, it could produce 5.7 billion gallons of gasoline, enough to power 8.9 million cars per year. And the fact is, there are now technologies that can put all this waste to good use.

The report examined three ways of utilizing non-recycled plastic for energy production: converting it directly into liquid fuel, using separated plastics as fuel in special types of power plants, and increasing the amount of garbage burned in waste-to-energy facilities.

Plastics can be converted into crude oil or other types of products through pyrolysis, a high heat process that does not use oxygen. Agilyx, an Oregon-based company, has developed a system that heats polystyrene from foam cups, packaging materials, and Styrofoam to create a styrene monomer, a building block of the plastic industry. The final liquid product can be sold to other refiners to produce oil or to make more polystyrene.

Plastic2Oil in Niagara Falls, NY, uses unwashed, unsorted waste plastic to produce ultra-low sulfur fuels that do not require further refining. The company maintains that its process is "highly green, clean and scalable."

A number of other companies in the U.S., Africa, Asia and Europe are investing in technology that produces liquid fuel from plastic wastes.

According to the updated Earth Engineering Center report, power plants specially designed to use non-recycled plastics as fuel could theoretically produce 61.9 million MWh of electricity, enough to power 5.7 million homes.

Burning more garbage inwaste-to-energy facilities would recover the energy inherent in plastics and reduce greenhouse gas emissions since landfills emit methane (a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide) as garbage decomposes. Unlike incinerators of the past, modern waste-to-energy facilities produce electricity and heat in boilers designed for complete combustion. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said they produce electricity "with less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity."

If the amount of garbage sitting in U.S. landfills in 2011 was burned in waste-to-energy facilities, it could theoretically yield enough electricity to power 13.8 million households and reduce coal use by 100 million tons a year. In 2015, 71 waste-to-energy facilities and four other power plants in the United States burned 29 million tons of garbage, generating nearly 14 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.

A 2009 United Nations Environmental Programme report on converting plastic waste into a resource described the production of gaseous fuels, using high heat to decompose plastic waste, and solid fuel derived from a mixture of waste plastic, paper, and wood. The materials are first shredded, sorted then made into pellets. A number of companies in Japan are producing both solid and gaseous fuels. The Showa Denko company, headquartered in Tokyo, uses heat gasification to recycle plastic waste into ammonia, used to manufacture many products, and CO2 for carbonization.

Liter of Light, a grassroots movement with partnerships around the world, has found another way to recycle plastic bottles. It helps energy-poor communities convert discarded soda bottles into solar bottle bulbs to illuminate homes and streets. The organization has installed over 350,000 bottle lights in more than 15 countries.

The best solutions for our plastic problem are still to reduce our use of them, and to reuse and recycle whenever possible. More policies that ban plastic bag use, require bottle deposits and expand recycling would help. But millions of tons of plastic waste still sit in landfills around the country; technologies that are able to tap this waste as a resource can offer multiple benefits, helping to clean up the environment, lessen our dependence on foreign oil, decrease our use of non-renewable virgin resources, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and generate energy.

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Americans discard about 33.6 million tons of plastic each year, but only 9.5 percent of it is recycled and 15 percent is combusted in waste-to-energy facilities. What happens to the rest of it?

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Hannah Ritchie and Veronika Samborska and Max Roser

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How much plastic ends up in the ocean? Where does it come from?

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National Geographic Special Collection: Ocean Plastic

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National Geographic Special Collection: Ocean Plastic

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PBS

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Be Smart | How Much Plastic is in the Ocean? | Season 5 | Episode 10 | PBS

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Ocean plastic pollution is a massive environmental problem.

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A running list of action on plastic pollution

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A running list of action on plastic pollution

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By National Geographic

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This article was created in partnership with the National Geographic Society.

Canada aims to ban single-use plastics by 2021

June 10, 2019

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that in addition to banning single-use plastics, his government would take other, unspecified steps to reduce plastic pollution.

Trudeau did not specify the products to be banned, but said likely candidates include plastic bags, straws, cutlery, plates and stir sticks "where supported by scientific evidence and warranted."

"You've all heard the stories and seen the photos," he said. "To be honest, as a dad it is tough trying to explain this to my kids. How do you explain dead whales washing up on beaches across the world, their stomachs jam packed with plastic bags?

"How do I tell them that against all odds, you will find plastic at the very deepest point in the Pacific Ocean?"

Canada, which has 151,019 miles of coastline-the world's longest-and a quarter of the world's fresh water, joins a growing list of nations taking steps to reduce the use of disposable plastics. More than 60 nations have taken steps to reduce single-use plastics by imposing bans or taxes, according to a United Nations report published last year. In March the European Union's parliament voted to ban the top 10 single-use plastic items found on European beaches by 2021. The EU measure also calls for 90 percent of plastic bottles to be recycled by 2025. Member states must work out the details of bans before the 2021 deadline.

India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, who was overwhelmingly reelected last month to a second five-year term, declared in 2018 that India would eliminate all single-use plastic by 2022, an ambitious plan for the world's second most populated country.

Trudeau made his announcement at the Gault Nature Reserve outside Montreal. He noted that Canada recycles less than 10 percent of its disposable plastics, and is on track to throw away $11 billion worth of disposable plastic by 2030 unless things change.

He said the federal government will work with provinces and territories to introduce standards and targets for plastics manufacturers and retailers so they become more responsible for their plastic waste. Trudeau said he also supports efforts by Canada's minister of environment to create a nationwide strategy for zero plastic waste.

"This will be a big step but we know we can do this for 2021," Trudeau said.

Peru restricts single-use plastic

Visitors will no longer be allowed to carry in single-use plastics into Peru's 76 natural and cultural protected areas, from Machu Picchu to Manu to Huascarán, or national museums. This ban is now going into affect and was announced as a Supreme Decree by Peru's Environment Minister, Fabiola Muñoz, and signed by President Martín Vizcarra, back in November.

The decree says the goal is replacing single-use plastics with "reusable, biodegradable plastic or others whose degradation does not generate contamination by micro-plastics or dangerous substances."

At world-famous Machu Picchu, tourists produce an average of 14 tons of solid waste per day, much of it plastic bottles and other single-use packaging.

In December, Peru's Congress had also passed a law to phase out single-use plastic bags across the country over the next three years. According to Peru's Environment Ministry, the country uses 947,000 tons of plastic each year, while 75 percent is thrown out and only 0.3 percent is recycled.

San Diego Bans Styrofoam Food and Drink Containers

San Diego has joined a growing number of cities to ban containers made of polystyrene, better known as Styrofoam-the Dow Chemical trademark name for extruded polystyrene. The ban includes food and drink containers, egg cartons, ice chest coolers, aquatic toys for swimming pools, and mooring buoys and navigation markers. The ocean-side city is the largest in California to ban polystyrene.

Polystyrene's popularity as a container stems from its low cost, strength, insulation, and feather-weight buoyancy. Those properties also made it a scourge of plastic waste because it easily breaks into tiny, often airborne particles that are difficult to clean up and is generally rejected by recycling centers as too much trouble to recyclable.

The San Diego City Council voted 6-to-3 on January 8 to approve the ban, despite objections from owners of small restaurants who complained that the costs of using environmentally degradable containers, such as cardboard or compostable paper, could be double. The council first approved the ban last October for a trial period. This week's vote made the ban permanent.

D.C. Plastic Straw Ban Begins

One New Year's resolution, to use less plastic, is no longer optional for restaurants and other service businesses in Washington, D.C., as of January 1. By July, businesses in the district will begin receiving fines if they continue to offer plastic straws.

A number of local businesses have already started switching to reusable, washable straws or disposable ones made from paper or hay.

The law follows Seattle's ban earlier in 2018 and aims to reduce the impact of plastic straws as litter. More than 4,000 of the disposed items were found in a recent cleanup of the Anacostia River in D.C. Straws are known to hurt wildlife and are difficult to recycle, often ending up as litter. They make up only a tiny fraction of the total marine plastic pollution problem, leading some critics to say they are a distraction, while others say they are an easy place to start.

(Learn about the travel industry's war on straws and where plastic straws came from in the first place.)

Plastic Fact Named Stat of the Year

This week, Great Britain's Royal Statistical Society announced its statistic of the year. It's 90.5%, the estimated amount of plastic waste ever made that has never been recycled. Estimated at 6,300 million metric tonnes, scientists calculated that around 12 percent of all plastic waste has been incinerated, while roughly 79 percent has found its way into landfills or become litter.

That fact comes from a study published in Science Advances, "Production, Use, and Fate of all plastics ever made," by scientists Roland Geyer, Jenna Jambeck (a National Geographic Society fellow on plastic pollution) and Kara Lavender Law.

"We all knew there was a rapid and extreme increase in plastic production from 1950 until now, but actually quantifying the cumulative number for all plastic ever made was quite shocking," Jambeck, a University of Georgia environmental engineer who specializes in studying plastic waste in the oceans, previously told National Geographic.

"I am grateful to the Royal Statistical Society for the acknowledgement of the impact of this statistic, and while sobering, I am glad that it helps to spread awareness about the plastic waste management issues I see on the ground around the globe," Jambeck said in December.

"It's very concerning that such a large proportion of plastic waste has never been recycled," Royal Statistical Society President Sir David Spiegelhalter said in a statement announcing the winning fact. "This statistic helps to show the scale of the challenge we all face."

"Single-Use" Named Word of the Year

Collins Dictionary named "single-use" their word of the year in 2018, citing a four-fold increase in usage since 2013. The term means "made to be used once only" and refers to "items whose unchecked proliferation are blamed for damaging the environment and affecting the food chain," according to a press release from the dictionary's publisher.

Single-use is most often associated with the plastic pollution crisis. Some 40 percent of all plastic produced is used for packaging, much of it used only once and thrown away.

Many efforts to curb the plastic litter crisis are taking aim at single-use plastics, with the goal of encouraging more durable, reusable items.

Aquariums band together for "No Straw November"

November is the month of not shaving facial hair, and now thanks to a new conservation campaign, the month of not using straws.

Branded as "No Straw November," the campaign is a push to eliminate single-use plastic. The effort is led by the Aquarium Conservation Partnership (ACP), comprising 22 aquariums in 17 different states. They're pushing 500 businesses to commit to only serving plastic straws upon request. Already, the ACP has worked with large businesses like United Airlines, the Chicago White Sox, and Dignity Health hospitals.

They hope to commit the additional 500 by Earth Day, April 20, 2019.

The No Straw November campaign is also lobbying cities and regional governments to pass ordinances that encourage businesses to use fewer straws. Individuals are also being asked to sign an online pledge to limit their own personal single-use plastic. The efforts are part of what ACP is labeling a joint "#FirstStep" to plastic-free waterways.

Images of marine animals wrapped in plastic or caught with items like straws in their noses have been widely shared, raising awareness of the public. Aquariums have been leaders in phasing out plastic items at their own facilities.

In an interview discussing plastic straws with National Geographic earlier this year, David Rhodes, the global business director for paper straw manufacturer Aardvark Straws, said some of Aardvark's earliest clients were zoos, aquariums, and cruise ships looking to promote an eco-friendly image to their customers.

The ACP says their efforts to reduce dependence on plastic have already eliminated the need for five million straws over the past year.

Earlier this week, the ACP, partnering with the U.N. and European Commission, announced plans to create a global coalition of 200 aquariums that will campaign against plastic.

250 groups launch massive global plastic partnership

Two hundred and fifty organizations responsible for 20 percent of the plastic packaging produced around the world have committed to reducing waste and pollution.

The initiative is called the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, and it includes a diverse group of members including the city of Austin, clothing company H&M, Unilever, PespsiCo, L'Oreal, Nestle, and Coca-Cola.

The Global Commitment touts a number of high-profile partnerships. It's a collaboration with the United Nations and is being led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Other partners include the World Wide Fund for Nature, the World Economic Forum, the Consumer Goods Forum, and 40 academic institutions.

Ultimately, it's working to promote a circular economy for plastic, a concept that entails reusing or repurposing plastic instead of letting it sit in a landfill. The shift would require building or improving collection and processing facilities, and five venture capital firms have pledged $200 million toward the initiative.

Recycling used items into new products is one of the three targets set by the commitment. Corporations joining the commitment must also phase out single-use plastic packaging and ensure it can either be reused, recycled, or composted by 2025.

"While elements of the EMF Global Commitment are moving in the right direction, the problem is that companies are given the flexibility to continue prioritizing recycling over reduction and reuse," said Ahmad Ashov from Greenpeace Indonesia in a press release. "Corporations are not required to set actual targets to reduce the total amount of single-use plastics they are churning out."

Every 18 months, the targets will be reviewed, and participating businesses must publish data on their progress each year.

Governments that join the commitment are pledging to create policies that help support a circular economy.

EU Parliament approves single-use plastic ban

The European Parliament voted 571-53 this week to approve a measure to slash single-use plastic across the continent. The bill still needs to pass additional procedural measures before it can go into effect, but observers say its chances look good and could begin enforcement as early as 2021.

Citing a need to protect the ocean from a deluge of plastic pollution, the bill calls for a European ban on plastic cutlery and plates, cotton buds, straws, drink-stirrers, and balloon sticks, as well as reductions in other types of single-use plastics like food and beverage containers.

The bill was first proposed in May (see below). Great Britain has a similar effort underway (also see below).

The list of plastic items targeted was carefully selected to include items that already have ready alternatives, supporters say. Items with less available alternatives, such as cigarette filters, are being targeted for a more gradual reduction.

Belgian MEP Frédérique Ries, who proposed the bill, called it "a victory for our oceans, for the environment and for future generations," according to the BBC.

Consumer companies invest in waste collection

To keep plastic pollution from entering waterways, manufacturers either have to stop making it or make sure it's collected at the end of its life. But in some developing nations, that waste collection infrastructure is insufficient or nonexistent.

Circulate Capital, a New York City-based investment firm started in 2018, says they have raised $90 million to invest in this issue in Southeast Asia, a move endorsed by conservation group the Ocean Conservancy. CEO of Circulate Capital Rob Kaplan says this investment will go toward improving plastic waste collection on the ground and creating markets for collected material.

PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Procter and Gamble, Danone, Unilever, and Dow are committed to funding the $90 million investment, and Circulate Capital says a deal will be inked by early 2019. The firm says they are also working on ways for medium and small companies to invest.

"While we are working hard to ensure our packaging is designed to be circular, the reality is that it cannot be reused, recycled or composted without effective waste management systems in place," said Danone's Katharina Stenholm in a press release. She was referring to the concept of a circular economy, in which any waste materials in an industry, such as packaging, are reincorporated into new products.

The majority of the world's ocean plastic comes from 10 rivers, eight of which are in Asia, and Circulate Capital is working with scientific advisors, including National Geographic explorer Jenna Jambeck, to pinpoint where their investments can be the most effective.

Plastic bottles, for example, can be collected by small local companies and sold to manufacturers to make new products. Though discarded plastic is often of lower quality, some projects already underway have proved the model can function, and Circulate Capital hopes its investment can lead to new innovations. ( Read about an effort to recycle stranded fishing nets into carpet.)

"There's no silver bullet to stop plastic pollution," says Kaplan. "We're not going to be able to recycle our way out of the problem, and we're not going to be able to reduce our way out of the problem."

But, he hopes Circulate Capital's investments can serve as one piece of the puzzle. He estimates more than a billion dollars would be needed to really build out more efficient waste infrastructure in Southeast Asia. Circulate Capital hopes to bump their commitments to at least $100 million over the next few year as a move in that direction.

Redirecting plastic streams away from the sea

Major companies have been taking steps to eliminate the amount of plastic waste they produce, but what about plastic already in rivers or on beaches that could easily enter the ocean?

That's where NextWave, a coalition founded by companies including Dell and an environmental group called the Lonely Whale, comes in. By employing people living in coastal regions, the group collects discarded plastic within 30 miles of waterways to prevent it from making its way to the sea. So far, NextWave has focused on two types of plastic commonly found in marine environments: Nylon 6 and polypropylene.

This reclaimed plastic is then shipped to manufacturers who reuse it in lieu of producing new plastic. Plastic collection sites are chosen based on where cleanup could have the biggest impact and where the plastic could more easily be taken to an existing recycling facility. These location decisions are informed by science from chemists Jason Lochlin and Jenna Jambeck, a National Geographic explorer.

Today, computer company HP announced it would be joining the NextWave coalition. Since 2016, HP has been working with locals in Haiti to collect a total of 550,000 pounds of plastic that the company has since used to create ink cartridges. According to a press release, HP partnered with a non-profit called the First Mile Coalition, aimed at improving Haitian labor conditions, to create up to 600 jobs collecting plastic bottles.

Along with HP, Ikea has announced that it, too, will partner with NextWave. In addition, the furniture company has committed to phasing out single-use plastics from its stores by 2020, and to designing more sustainably sourced products, including more items made with recycled plastics, by 2030.

Ten companies are now members of NextWave, and they plan to source reclaimed plastics from Indonesia, Chile, the Philippines, Cameroon, and Denmark. NextWave does not yet have numbers for how much plastic they could potentially keep out of the oceans in total, but their website highlights that their partnership with Dell alone kept a total of 3 million pounds of plastic from entering the ocean over the past five years.
Correction: This story has been updated to note that HP worked with the First Mile Coalition in Haiti and to clarify the types of plastic NextWave works with.

American Airlines cuts plastic from lounges

After announcing this summer that they would ban plastic straws and stirrers on their flights (see below), American Airlines now says they will phase out single-use plastic in their lounges.

The airline has lounges in the U.S. and around the world. A representative from the company says the lounges won't serve drinks with straws, and plastic won't be used for flatware. Plastic water bottles will no longer be served, and reusable bags will be given to customers taking food to-go.

Changes to the airlines' lounges are currently going into effect, and onboard straws will be eliminated by November 1. Straws will be available for those who request one, and drink stirrers will be replaced by bamboo sticks.

Cumulatively, the company says their changes will eliminate 71,000 pounds of plastic waste annually.

Foodservice companies phase out single-use plastic

Some 13,000 schools, workplaces, and venues will be plastic bag and stirrer free by 2019, thanks to a new sustainability push by foodservice company Sodexo.

The company provides cafeteria-style meals and concessions to many such clients. Among them is National Geographic's Washington, D.C. headquarters, where compostable utensils and plant-based menus are offered.

Sodexo follows in the footsteps of other foodservice giants, Aramark and Bon Appétit Management, which announced similar sustainability measures this past summer (see below).

In addition to bags and stirrers, Sodexo plans to phase out polystyrene foam (colloquially called Styrofoam) containers by 2025. Plastic straws, a controversial item, will now only be available by request, which the company hopes will cut down on customer usage.

The move, says a representative from the company, will eliminate 245 million single use items that would have otherwise been used at its locations.

The decision is being applauded by environmental groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, who say that reducing consumption is a key step toward preventing plastic from entering landfills and marine environments. These non-profit groups are increasingly imploring food servers to cut back on the single-use plastic items they buy and sell to customers.

"As a company serving consumers in universities, workplaces, hospitals, schools, stadiums, and so many other venues, we understand both the potential impact we can make through a commitment to reduction and the real benefit that some of these products bring to people every day," Sodexo's vice president for corporate responsibility, Ted Monk, said in a press release.

President Trump Signs Bill to Clean Up Ocean Plastics

President Trump called out other nations, including China and Japan, for "making our oceans into their landfills" when he signed legislation last week to improve efforts to clean up plastic trash from the world's oceans.

"As president, I will continue to do everything I can to stop other nations from making our oceans into their landfills," Trump said at a White House signing ceremony. "That's why I'm please-very pleased, I must say-to put my signature on this important legislation."

The law, passed with bipartisan support, amends the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Debris Act and funds the program through 2022. The law fosters efforts to clean up plastic trash from the world's oceans and encourages federal trade negotiators to prod "leaders of nations responsible for the majority of marine debris" to improve management of waste that ends up in the oceans.

Trump agreed with Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the bill's co-sponsors, that trade talks with the Philippines should include plastic waste. "We're okay with that," he said. "I understand. A lot comes from there."

Trump also blamed other unnamed countries that "abuse the oceans" and whose trash floats to the West Coast of the United States," creating, he said, "a very unfair situation."

"It's incredible. It's incredible when you look at it," Trump said. "People don't realize it, but all the time we're being inundated by debris from other countries."

Comparatively, the beaches of the United States are among the world's cleanest. Kamilo Beach in Hawaii, which faces the Pacific gyre, where ocean trash collects, is the exception. But most of the world's plastic trash collects in coastal regions and on beaches in developing nations that lack adequate municipal waste collection systems.

Japan has had for years one of the world's highest recycling rates and earlier this year, China stopped buying the world's trash. The United States was one of the top sellers of recycled plastic to China.

The president's full remarks are here, and the text of the Save Our Seas Act is here.

Red Lobster Phasing Out Plastic Straws

The world's largest seafood restaurant company, Red Lobster, announced Monday that it will begin only offering plastic straws upon customer request starting this November in its 700 restaurants. By 2020, the company plans to only offer a more eco-friendly alternative to plastic straws.

The company says the shift should eliminate more than 150 million plastic straws per year, with the goal of reducing the marine plastic pollution problem.

"We are proud to be the first large casual dining restaurant company to make a commitment to eliminate plastic straws from our restaurants," Kim Lopdrup, CEO of Red Lobster, said in a statement. "This is a meaningful step in our long-standing commitment to protect and preserve the world's oceans and marine life. We hope our work helps raise awareness around the issue of plastic straws and encourages other businesses to make similar changes."

Red Lobster says it is looking into alternatives to plastic straws that will still meet the needs of customers with disabilities. (Learn more about plastic straw bans and how the travel industry is cutting back on plastic straws.)

California Approves Bill to Limit Straw Use in Restaurants

California has become the first state to implement a partial ban on plastic straws. Dine-in restaurants will no longer be allowed to automatically provide customers with straws. Instead, customers who need plastic straws will have to request them.

Restaurants that violate the ban will receive warnings first, and repeat offenders will be fined at a maximum of $300.

"Plastic has helped advance innovation in our society, but our infatuation with single-use convenience has led to disastrous consequences. Plastics, in all forms-straws, bottles, packaging, bags, etc.-are choking the planet," California's governor Jerry Brown said in a statement.

The new ban comes on the heels of previous plastic straw bans from companies and cities. Earlier this year, Seattle become the first large municipality to ban plastic straws in restaurants. Large corporations like United Airlines and Disney have also announced this year that they intend to phase plastic straws out of their offerings to customers. Many of these businesses and cities have said they will retain a stock of plastic straws available to customers upon request.

While some environmentalists applaud the move to reduce single-use plastic-plastic that's used once and then thrown away-bans on plastic straws have been met with some controversy.

Republican lawmakers in California opposed the ban, saying it would burden small business and do little to fight the larger plastic pollution crisis. Plastic straws make up less than one percent of the plastic found at sea.

Disability advocates also say straw bans place an unfair burden on people who have conditions that don't allow them to easily drink without straws. Some alternatives like paper fall apart and metal harm the inside of a person's mouth, they say.

Although California isn't the only region moving to limit single use plastic, the state has often tried to lead the nation in environmental legislation, particularly after what Gov. Brown says is a vacuum left by the Trump administration's decision to leave the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement.
Read the brief history of how plastic straws took over the world.

Giant Trash Collector Heads to Pacific Garbage Patch

The campaign to rid the world's oceans of plastic trash marks a turning point on Saturday as a giant, floating trash collector steams out of San Francisco on a mission to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Over the course of the next year, the device will undergo the ultimate tests and face some tough questions: Can technology prevail over nature? Did the engineers at The Ocean Cleanup in the Netherlands invent the first feasible method for extracting large amounts of plastic debris from the sea? Or will the wilds of the open Pacific tear it to shreds, turning the cleaner itself into plastic trash? Alternately, even if a Pacific storm does not devour the device, will it attract marine animals such as dolphins and turtles and fatally entangle them?

"I don't think it's going to work, but I hope it does," says George Leonard, the Ocean Conservancy's chief scientist. "The ocean needs all the help it can get."

United Airlines Bans Plastic Straws from Flights

United Airlines today joined others in the travel industry by banning plastic straws and cocktail picks on their flights.

The airline will instead use a biodegradable bamboo alternative, starting in November.

Alaska and American airlines moved to ban plastic straws earlier this year, and some cities, like Seattle, have outlawed their use entirely.

As one of the reasons for switching to a more sustainable form of straw, United cited this alarming fact: "Because straws don't biodegrade and are nearly impossible to recycle, it's likely that every straw ever used still exists on our planet."

"It's a small, but meaningful step to help minimize the impact plastic products have on our environment," the company said in a press release.

Carlsberg Beer Dumps Plastic Can Rings

Danish brewer Carlsberg will become the first beer producer to ditch those evil plastic multipack rings that hold beer and other cans together for holders made of recyclable glue, according to a company press release.

Carlsberg also says it will cut the amount of plastic used in its traditional can holders by 76 percent.

Here's how the glue-packs work: A drop of super-strong, temperature-tolerant glue is stuck on the side of a can, connecting it to the can next to it. If you want a beer, snap off a can. The glue will be recycled along with the can when it's recycled.

Carlsberg described the move as a "world first for the beer industry."

Disney Announces Ban on Plastic Straws

The Walt Disney Company announced a ban on single-use plastic straws and stirrers at nearly all its theme parks and resorts. The policy, which is set to be in place by mid-2019, will cut down on the upwards of 175 million straws and 13 million stirrers that are used at these locations each year.

Paper straws will be available upon request and, for guests with disabilities, the company is developing alternative options for traditional plastic straws. Disney will also eliminate polystyrene cups at its parks and cut down its reliance on single-use plastic bags. Instead of disposable bags, guests will have the option to buy reusable shopping bags.

Additionally, the company will reduce the amount of plastic in guest rooms by 80 percent. Over the next few years, Disney will transition to refillable amenities in hotels and on cruise ships. When single-use plastics cannot be reduced, Disney will continue to recycle and properly dispose of waste, the company says.

Disney has other conservation measures in place. In Orlando at Disney's Animal Kingdom, plastic straws and cup lids have been banned since the park opened in 1998.

Other theme parks, including SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, and Sesame Place, have announced initiatives to phase out straws and other single-use plastics. Earlier this month, Seattle banned plastic straws, and San Francisco is working to ban straws and other plastic items starting July 1, 2019.
In July 2018, Disney was approved to purchase 21st Century Fox, the parent company of National Geographic.

National Geographic Travel Partner Bans Single-Use Plastics

On July 25, Lindblad Expeditions, an adventure cruise company that has teamed up with National Geographic Expeditions, announced it had become 100 percent free of single-use plastics. Now, disposable plastic bottles, cups, straws, and stirrers are entirely banned from the fleet's 13 ships.

"The ocean is under major assault on so many fronts, and its protection is both a business mission and a personal passion," Lindblad Expeditions CEO Sven Lindblad says in a press release. "The health of our planet is dependent on our oceans, and it is essential that we change our behavior with regard to plastics."

Lindblad is known for its trips all over the world, particularly to places like Alaska and the Galápagos Islands. The company began working toward this plastic-free goal in 2007 when it banned single-use water bottles from its ships. Instead, it gave guests stainless steel bottles that could be refilled at filtered water stations on the ships. According to a study by the Adventure Travel Trade Association and the nonprofit Travelers Against Plastic, the average adventure travel operator uses nearly 30,000 single-use plastic bottles each year.

About 80 percent of tourism takes place near coastal areas, putting our oceans at a higher risk of plastic pollution. When packing for air travel, consider using three-ounce reusable containers for your toiletries and load them into a durable transparent washbag instead of a plastic bag. On flights, bring your own earphones and turn down "comfort bag" items wrapped in plastic. Bring your reusable water bottle with you and fill it up when you can.

For more tips, read how one of our writers attempted to explore Belize plastic-free.

Big Companies Take Aim at Plastic Straws

Retail, restaurant, and consumer-facing companies could potentially make a big impact in the fight to reduce plastic straw use. They drive much of the demand for straws from plastic manufacturers.

But these businesses are increasingly responding to consumer pressure.

Starbucks is among the most recent companies to announce they'll ditch plastic straws-in this case by the end of 2020. Instead of getting sucked up through a straw, their cold drinks will be served in containers with special plastic lids. Those lids are less likely to get stuck up a turtle's nose and should prove more recyclable than straws, but the company has still received some pushback because the lids are still made of plastic.

McDonald's is also planning to phase out plastic straws at their UK and Ireland locations, coinciding with UK and EU proposals to cut down single-use plastic.

Among the other companies that have moved to reduce how much they use plastic: Bacardi Rum plans to cut their straw usage over the next two years by a billion, food service management giants Bon Appétit Management and Aramark plan to reduce their single-use plastics by 2019 and 2022, respectively, Alaska Airlines will begin phasing out plastic straws this summer, and American Airlines will begin phasing out plastic straws this summer.

It remains to be seen if companies follow through on their goals, and it's clear that banning plastic straws is not going to solve the whole pollution problem. Supporters say reducing our use of straws is an easy first step, while detractors say it could distract from more important issues. In either case, taking aim at plastic straws has become rather fashionable this summer.

Chile's Ban on Retail Plastic Bags Stands

Chile's Constitutional Court ratified a bill that bans retail use of plastic bags across the country on July 6, ruling against an appeal that had been filed by the plastics industry. In June, Chile's Congress had unanimously approved the new ban, citing concerns of plastic pollution in the ocean and on land.

The country's Association of Industrial Plastics had sued to block the new law on constitutional grounds. But the court rejected their arguments.

Large retailers will have six months to phase out single-use plastic bags, while small businesses will have up to two years. The ban builds on a law passed under the previous president that had called for a prohibition on plastic bags along the country's 4,000-mile coastline.

In announcing the new ban, Marcela Cubillos, Chile's environment minister, told the New York Times, "We are convinced that our coast imposes an obligation to be leaders in cleaning up our oceans."

Chile's ban is the first country-wide one in the Americas. Similar bans have been passed in China, Kenya, France, and elsewhere. Many regional and local areas have bans or other restrictions, including taxes or fees aimed at discouraging the use of single-use plastic bags.

Seattle Becomes First U.S. City to Ban Plastic Straws and Utensils

In an attempt to reduce the amount of plastic waste polluting the land and water, Seattle banned the use of plastic straws and utensils in bars and restaurants starting July 1.

The roughly 5,000 eateries in the city are being encouraged to eschew providing straws or disposable utensils, or at least to switch to paper alternatives. A less green but still legal option, according to the city, is compostable plastic straws or utensils.

"Plastic pollution is surpassing crisis levels in the world's oceans, and I'm proud Seattle is leading the way and setting an example for the nation by enacting a plastic straw ban," Seattle Public Utilities General Manager Mami Hara said in a statement.

A similar ban that was proposed for Hawaii was defeated by opposition from industry. Other proposed bans are being debated in San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C., among other places.

Some advocates for the disabled have warned that straw bans need to take into account special needs. ( Learn more about the history of plastic straws and other efforts to remove them.)

<p>A whale shark swims beside a plastic bag in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen. Although <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/facts/whale-shark">whale sharks</a> are the biggest fish in the sea, they're still threatened by ingesting small bits of plastic.</p>

EU, UK, and India Propose Plastic Bans

In draft rules released May 28, the European Commission proposed a ban on 10 common items that it says make up about 70 percent of the litter in EU waters. This includes plastic straws, drink stirrers, plates, and more.

The rules would still need approval from member states and the European Parliament to move forward. They would likely not go into effect for several years.

The proposed law would also mandate that EU countries collect and recycle 90 percent of plastic bottles by 2025. Plastic producers would be on the hook for most of the expense of waste management and cleanup efforts.

In April, British Prime Minister Theresa May announced her intent to establish a ban in her country on sales of single-use plastics, including straws and cotton swab handles.

Calling plastic waste "one of the greatest environmental challenges facing the world," May said she would work with industry to develop alternatives. An estimated 8.5 billion plastic straws are tossed out in the U.K. every year.

On June 5, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his intent to eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022. With a fast-growing economy and population of 1.3 billion, India struggles to manage its vast waste stream, and is a significant contributor to global ocean plastic.

"Let us all join together to beat plastic pollution and make this planet a better place to live," Modi said.

Experts caution that Modi's goal is far from being realized, and would likely take significant changes and investment from industry and the public. Already, industry lobbyists have taken aim at the efforts. The state of Maharashtra, home to megacity Mumbai, eased a ban on single-use plastic just a week after it unveiled the plan this summer. The state is working on a number of exemptions, for plastic of a certain thickness, products of a certain size, medical equipment, and other uses.

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

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A running list of action on plastic pollution

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The world is waking up to a crisis of ocean plastic-and we're tracking the developments and solutions as they happen.

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Understanding
the problem

We believe that, to develop the most optimal cleanup technologies, it is essential that we truly understand the problem. Unfortunately, very little is known about the properties and dynamics of ocean plastic pollution - this is why we invest in scientific research. By understanding the sources, transport, and fate of plastic in the ocean, we create the foundation onto which we develop our cleanup solutions.

Sampling at sea is key to understanding the quantity, composition, and locations of ocean plastic. We embarked on a series of field expeditions, pushing the boundaries of observational science regarding ocean plastic pollution; in 2015, we conducted the Mega Expedition, crossing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) with over 30 vessels, and subsequently, in 2016, the Aerial Expedition (the first aerial mapping effort of ocean plastic in a subtropical gyre) gave us greater insight into the severity of the problem we aim to solve. In 2018, we published our comprehensive study, concluding that there is up to 16 times more plastic in the GPGP than previously estimated.

While our main objective is to quantify the problem, we also have a strong interest in characterizing ocean plastic pollution. We researched the toxicity of ocean plastic with the analysis of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) found on plastic samples collected in the North Pacific during the Mega Expedition. We also studied the distribution of buoyant plastic in the water column in different weather environments during our North Atlantic expeditions. We are now looking even deeper with sampling at depth several thousand meters below the surface, looking for the missing plastic.

To gain the most comprehensive understanding of plastic pollution, we need to improve the detection of plastic in the marine environment. Following our aerial reconnaissance mission in the North Pacific, we collected a vast amount of data combining visual observations and imagery, shortwave infrared (SWIR) multispectral signal, and Lidar measurements. We published a first proof of concept for plastic detection at sea using SWIR technology and have been working with several agencies to research remote sensing of marine litter from space. By significantly investing in remote sensing, we expect that this tool can help us to have a better understanding of the dispersion of ocean plastic and contribute to future research on the observation of ocean plastic pollution at a global scale.

Aerial view of a ghost net in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

To succeed in removing 90% of ocean plastic by 2040, source reduction is necessary. In 2017, we published a first estimate of global plastic emissions from rivers into the ocean. We developed global models for plastic waste generation and invest in research to understand how this material leaks into aquatic environments. Researchers from The Ocean Cleanup travel to various parts of the world to conduct field experiments in polluted rivers, in accordance with a consistent systematic sampling methodology. Using modelled environmental data for currents, wind, and waves, and characteristics inherent to plastics relating to weathering, degradation, or buoyancy, we then predict the dispersion of plastic pollution in the ocean. Our numerical models are calibrated against data collected at the ocean surface, in the water column, and in the sediments of the five oceans. These efforts have continued as we strive to find the missing plastic and close the plastic mass balance.

Our aim is to go full circle until we have achieved our mission. Meaning that, every time we remove plastic from the ocean, we plan to recycle it and turn it into durable products to fund the continuation of our cleanup operations. As a non-profit, 100% of the revenue from these products goes back into cleanup. That said, we do have our work cut out for us; the plastic floating in the ocean has been circulating there for years, potentially decades, degrading from the impacts of nature. Recycling this waste is a challenge, but it's a challenge we are willing to take on to bring our project full circle.

After much research and testing, we were able to give the plastic caught from the System 001/B campaign a new life: The Ocean Cleanup sunglasses. As we collect more plastic, we will continue to conduct further research to find the optimal ways to recycle the various plastics we remove from the ocean

Become a citizen scientist

Join the largest cleanup in history and become a citizen scientist. Help The Ocean Cleanup gather data on plastic in waterways around the world to help us optimize our global cleanup strategy. Such an undertaking is a great challenge, and we can only do this with your help. No degree or experience is necessary, generally, all you need is a smartphone.

Featured research

Highlighting some of the studies that our scientists and researchers have been working on here at The Ocean Cleanup.

Plastic mass balance

To efficiently plan for our global cleanup strategy, we need to understand where plastic comes from, where it travels, and where it accumulates. With the current state of knowledge, a significant amount of plastic that may have entered the ocean is still unaccounted for. We are currently developing a model framework that simulates the transport of plastic in the global ocean, eventually providing a mass balance budget for plastic in the ocean. With our continued field observation efforts, collecting data in the five oceans from surface to seabed, we are actively looking for the missing plastic.

Mapping the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

After two major expeditions in the North Pacific subtropical waters, including a multi-vessel, field exploration mission in 2015 and the first aerial reconnaissance mission of a garbage patch in 2016, we published our findings on the quantification and characterization of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 2018. We estimated that in 2015, the GPGP covered an area of 1.6 million km ² containing nearly 80,000 metric tons of buoyant plastic waste, with debris ranging from large ghost nets and ropes to a multitude of centimeter and millimeter-sized hard plastic fragments.

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Explained Illustration by: in60seconds

Global riverine emissions of plastic

Quantifying plastic pollution in the world's ocean requires a deep understanding of emissions. It is commonly accepted that most plastic found in or near the marine environment is coming from terrestrial sources. Rivers particularly may play an important role in transporting mismanaged plastic waste from land into the ocean. We are developing numerical models for the prediction of plastic emissions from rivers in combination with several field sampling expeditions. Following a systematic methodology, we are conducting research in multiple rivers of the world to create a complete picture of how plastic enters the oceans.

Our latest scientific publications

Abstract

Despite recent advances in remote sensing of large accumulations of floating plastic debris, mainly in coastal regions, the quantification of individual macroplastic objects (>50 cm) remains challenging. Here, we have trained an object-detection algorithm by selecting and labeling footage of floating plastic debris recorded offshore with GPS-enabled action cameras aboard vessels of opportunity. Macroplastic numerical concentrations are estimated by combining the object detection solution with bulk processing of the optical data. Our results are consistent with macroplastic densities predicted by global plastic dispersal models, and reveal first insights into how camera recorded offshore macroplastic densities compare to micro- and mesoplastic concentrations collected with neuston trawls.

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Abstract

Despite an increasing research conducted on ocean plastic pollution over the last decade, there are still large knowledge gaps in our current understanding of how floating plastic debris accumulating in subtropical oceanic gyres may harm the surface-associated pelagic community known as neuston. Removing floating plastic debris from the surface ocean can minimize potentially adverse effects of plastic pollution on the neuston, as well as prevent the formation of large quantities of secondary micro- and nanoplastics. However, due to the scarcity of observational data from remote and difficult to access offshore waters, neuston dynamics in subtropical oceanic gyres and thus the potential impacts of plastic pollution as well as of cleanup activities on the neuston remain uncertain. Here, we provide rare observational data of the relative distribution of floating plastic debris (0.05-5 cm in size) and members of the neuston in the eastern North Pacific Ocean. Our results reveal that the dominant neustonic species co-occurring with high concentrations of floating plastic debris in the North Pacific Garbage Patch (NPGP) such as Porpita porpita, Halobates spp., pteropods, isopods, heteropods, and crabs depict either a low atmospheric drag due to physical attributes or a potential plastic-associated fitness benefit such as increased surface area for oviposition and structure for habitat. We further observe relatively higher plastic to organism ratios inside the NPGP for most target species compared to waters outside the NPGP. The findings presented here provide a first observational baseline to develop ecological models that can help evaluate the long-term risks of plastic pollution and of offshore cleanup activities for neuston in the eastern North Pacific Ocean. We further suggest that offshore mitigation strategies aiming at removing floating plastic debris from the ocean surface need to evaluate both, the direct impact of neuston bycatch during plastic removal on neuston population dynamics, as well as the potential benefits of reducing the negative effects of plastic pollution on the neuston.

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Scientific Advisory Board

Prof. Dr. Alex Oude Elferink International Law of the Sea, Utrecht University

Professor in International Law of the Sea, and Director Netherlands Institute for the Law of the Sea (NILOS), School of Law, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

Prof. Oude Elferink has been working with NILOS since 1997. His expertise is in the field of public international law, with a focus on the law of the sea. He is both involved in academic legal research and consultancy work.

Alex Oude Elferink is also a law of the sea professor at the University of Tromsø and works at the University's K.G. Jebsen Centre for the law of the sea. He also lectures at Utrecht University and the University of Tromsø.

Prof. Dr. Gerhard J. Herndl Ecology and Biological Oceanography, University of Vienna

Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences, Chair of Aquatic Biology and Head of Division Bio-Oceanography at the Dept. Limnology and Oceanography (formerly: Dept. of Marine Biology) at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Dr. Herndl is also Adjunct Senior Scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), The Netherlands.

Dr. Herndl received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, 1982, is Elected Member of the Austrian Academy of Science and received an ERC Advanced Grant in the year 2011.

Frederik Gerner Chairman on behalf of The Ocean Cleanup

Fredrik joins the Scientific Advisory Board as a representative member of The Ocean Cleanup's Supervisory Board, where he focuses on Technology and R&D.

Join
our team

Contribute your skills and build a clean future with us

Support the project

Help us continue advancing the scientific knowledge of the plastic pollution problem

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To effectively design our cleanup technology it is essential that we understand the problem. In order to develop solid cleanup strategies, efficient collection technology and recycling processes, we must understand the amount, composition and distribution of the plastic in the oceans.

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Beach clean-up study shows global scope of plastic pollution

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Beach clean-up study shows global scope of plastic pollution

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National Geographic

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In partnership with the National Geographic Society.

Every year, tens of thousands of people worldwide volunteer for the Sisyphean chore of picking up trash from beaches. The largest effort is conducted every September by the Ocean Conservancy, which in 30 years of cleanups has collected 300 million pounds and more than 350 types of items.

New trash inevitably appears. Sometimes it takes only minutes. Nicholas Mallos, who directs the Ocean Conservancy's Trash Free Seas program, has watched that in amazement.

"I have been on beaches in Hong Kong, Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, and Indonesia where you can watch plastics and debris in the barrel of each wave crash onto the beach. Literally, the trash starts getting replaced as soon as you pick it up," he says.

So why bother?

The short answer is, it's better than the alternative. But more importantly, what volunteers find on those beaches illuminates in new ways the scale of marine plastic problems and the potential for solutions.

National Geographic has also teamed up with Wattpad to raise awareness of the global plastic issue through a creative storytelling challenge. We're asking people to share a story-real or fiction-inspired by this global issue. Learn more and share your story here: www.wattpad.com/user/NationalGeographic

"If the top item found is tires, we're talking about illegal dumping," says Kara Lavender Law, a research oceanography professor at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. "If it's bottle caps and cigarette butts, it is probably litter."

The cost to local governments to clean beaches along 90 towns in Washington, Oregon, and California was estimated at more than $500 million in a 2012 study. But clean beaches provide economic benefit to local communities in the form of tourism dollars.

In southern California, researchers calculated that in Orange County alone that potential could translate into $46 million in just one summer. A survey of Californians taken for the same study found that 66 percent ranked the absence of debris and good water quality as "very important" to deciding whether or not to visit a beach.

Beach cleanups raise public awareness to the threat of debris more effectively than in less participatory public education programs, multiple studies show. Volunteers say the cleanups make them more mindful of how they dispose of their own disposables.

Learning from litter

They also add to the growing body of knowledge about where and how plastics travel across the seas and where they end up in the greatest abundance. Documentation of what cleanup volunteers collect and its density from location to location and what items are most and least abundant helps identify hot spots. Some of what's learned can make a difference.

"It adds another layer of granularity to identify these leakage points around the world," Mallos says.

On isolated Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, mid-way between Brazil and Namibia, Ocean Conservancy volunteers discovered "an exorbitant number" of plastic bottles on one beach, Mallos says. An audit of the brand names on the bottles revealed that none of them were sold on the island, but came from Asian countries thousands of miles away. Piecing the story together, the group concluded the bottle trash had not leaked from poor waste practices on the island, but rather more likely came from traveling fishing fleets working nearby waters.

The Ocean Conservancy has long audited the trash collected by item. For the first time in 2017, all of the top ten items retrieved were plastics, displacing glass bottles, aluminum cans, and rope that had been stalwarts on the list. The list includes cigarette butts (with plastic filters), food wrappers, bottles, bottle caps, and shopping bags.

"The Ocean Conservancy's top ten list has been tremendously useful because it highlights the top trash items found globally, which for the most part do not differ from country to country," says Law. "The fact that there is such consistency over time in different geographic regions helps identify the items most commonly lost to the environment, whether in litter form or accidental."

Counting plastic

Greenpeace, in partnership with a consortium of environmental groups known as Break Free From Plastic, has begun cataloguing items gathered in cleanups by brand name. The approach was tested on a beach in Manila Bay in 2017 and expanded this year to include 236 beach cleanups in 42 countries that yielded more than 187,000 pieces of plastic trash. The most recent cleanups were conducted primarily on ocean beaches, but also included riverbanks, city parks, and streets.

An audit of the items collected found that the brands most commonly retrieved belong to three multinationals: Coca Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestle.Together the three companies accounted for 14 percent of the branded items collected worldwide for the audit. Seven other multinationals were included in the audit, with smaller amounts documented. The report did not rank brands produced by local or regional companies.

Law says the results are not surprising. Coke is the world's largest producer of bottled drinks and manufactures 128 billion bottles of soft drinks and its bottled water, Dasani, a year, according to figures supplied by Coke. Nestle, which operates in 189 countries worldwide, is the world's largest food and beverage producer. PepsiCo, with six global divisions, has a worldwide reach.

Identifying global brands doesn't necessarily advance the science, Law says. "Unless you are looking at a geographically limited company that you can trace, I think it's more a matter of trying to engage the people producing the products."

Jane Patton, who authored the Greenpeace audit report, says that's exactly the point.

"What we are doing is moving the conversation upstream and identifying responsibility not with the person who consumes the Coke, but to have a conversation about who made that bottle in the first place and who is responsible for that bottle once it is consumed," she says.

"We are calling for the corporations to urgently and immediately stop over-packaging their products, to redesign products so waste can be eliminated, and to take responsibility for the waste once it ends up in the environment."

Companies take action

All three companies have pledged to reduce plastic waste by redesigning products to make them more recyclable, reducing unnecessary plastic packaging, and increasing the amount of recycled material used to manufacture their plastic products. Each company has set targets for those goals that range from 2020 to 2030.

"Nestle is committed to achieving its vision that none of its packaging, including plastics, ends up in a landfill or as litter," says Rumjhum Gupta, a company spokeswoman. "Greenpeace's report highlights the challenges we face as a society in tackling the issue of packaging and plastic waste. As the world's largest food and beverage company, we recognize the issue and we are working hard to eliminate non-recyclable plastics."

Ben Jordan, director of Coke's environmental policy, says Coke "shares the Greenpeace goal of eliminating waste from the ocean. We believe that all of our packaging material has benefits. What we have to do is manage it properly. We need better collection, more use of recycled content, complete recycling, whether a plastic bottle or aluminum can."

Coke partners with the Ocean Conservancy to sponsor the group's annual beach cleanups, and Jordan says the information documented at them can be helpful in the effort to reduce marine debris.

"If it only tells you who sells what in what markets, it's not that surprising," he says. But if we can learn something about our waste ending up in surprising places or litter being a bigger problem in one market versus another market, then absolutely, more information is better."

PepsiCo, in a statement, says it has invested in product redesign and is working to "bring the latest sustainable packaging advances to market. We don't have all the answers yet, and we will continue to collaborate with a number of leaders in this area to learn and share the latest science and practical solutions."

As marine debris worsens, the number of beach cleanups is growing as other groups organize them. They are not a solution, but there is value in doing them, Law says.

"Beach cleanups are very personal. It's very local. It's their beach," she says. "There is satisfaction to say, 'I removed ten pounds of trash from my beach.' Even if it's only ten pounds, that's ten pounds that isn't going to go into the open ocean."

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Beach clean-up study shows global scope of plastic pollution

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What items retrieved from beaches tell us about trash.

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How your toothbrush became a part of the plastic crisis

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Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration.

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An Engineering Wunderkind’s Ocean Plastics Cleanup Device Hits a Setback

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An Engineering Wunderkind’s Ocean Plastics Cleanup Device Hits a Setback

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NPR

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The path to innovation is not always a smooth, straight line. In some cases, it's U-shaped.

In September, a 2,000-foot-long floating barrier, shaped like a U, was dispatched to the Great Pacific garbage patch between Hawaii and California, where roughly 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic have formed a floating field of debris roughly twice the size of Texas. Made of connected plastic pipes, the barrier was meant to catch and clean-up the plastic.

Invented by Boyan Slat when he was just 17, the barrier has so far done some of what it was designed to accomplish. It travels with wind and wave propulsion, like a U-shaped Pac-Man hungry for plastic. It orients itself in the wind and it catches and concentrates plastic, sort of.

But as Slat, now 24, recently discovered with the beta tester for his design, plastic occasionally drifts out of its U-shaped funnel. The other issue with the beta tester, called System 001, is that last week, a 60-feet-long end section broke off.

The first issue, Slat said, was likely due to the device's speed. In a September interview with NPR, he said the device averages about four inches per second, which his team has now concluded is too slow. The break in the barrier was due to an issue with the material used to build it.

"In principle, I think we are relatively close to getting it working," Slat said in an interview Saturday with NPR's Michel Martin. "It's just that sometimes the plastic is also escaping again. Likely what we have to do is we have to speed up the system so that it constantly moves faster than the plastic."

For the material failure, Slat said his team will probably try to locally reinforce the system to combat the problem of material fatigue.

"If you have a paper clip and you move that back and forward many times, essentially the material gets weaker," he said. "That's likely what has happened with material of the cleanup system."

Slat and the team at his nonprofit, The Ocean Cleanup, are now bringing the system back to Hawaii for repairs and upgrades. Slat told NPR in 2016 that his structure is 10 times further away from land than the world's most remote oil rig, subject to battering waves and storms.

When the material failure occurred, it wasn't due to the result of a major Pacific storm. It was just normal wear and tear, Slat said.

"We've had conditions twice as worse as we had last weekend, but the system already sort of moved back and forth about 1.5 million times since it's been out there," he said.

With an estimated cost of $24.6 million reported by Forbes, and a challenging work environment, the project is high-risk and Slat hopes, high-reward.

But experts on plastic pollution have expressed concerns about the project's effectiveness.

George Leonard, chief scientist at Ocean Conservancy, told NPR in September that only 3 to 5 percent of the total amount of ocean plastic actually winds up in systems of circulating currents. He estimates that about 8 million metric tons of plastic go into the ocean each year - roughly the equivalent of one dump truck full of plastic every minute.

Critics say efforts should be aimed at preventing plastics from going into the ocean in the first place, and that Slat's barrier project could divert resources away from that goal. Others have expressed concern about the barrier's impact on marine wildlife.

Slat said that marine wildlife is be able to safely pass underneath a 10-foot deep screen under the pipe meant to catch debris. However, Wired reported that the pipes could attract and lead animals straight into plastic-polluted waters, and may also shed nano-sized particles of plastic into the water when hit with the sun's rays.

The concern is that ultraviolet light from the sun can potentially disintegrate the plastic, but The Ocean Cleanup responded by telling Wired that the high-density polyethylene plastic used in their tubes can reflect UV radiation.

Slat's confidence in his design hasn't wavered, and said he was unfazed by the current setbacks.

"Considering the things we have been able to prove in the past few months and considering the problems that we have faced, they seem quite solvable," he said. "I'm confident that the team will be able to design appropriate solutions for this and that we'll have the system back in the patch in a few months from now."

His team hopes to make the system fully operational sometime this year. If the project succeeds, Slat's vision is to deploy a fleet of 60 more devices, projected to remove half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch's plastic within five years.

In this vision, one he has held since his teens, support vessels would act like ocean garbage trucks; ships would carry the plastics back to land, where they would be processed, recycled, and reused - not dumped back into the ocean.
The audio for this story was produced by Dana Cronin and edited by Natalie Winston.

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An Engineering Wunderkind's Ocean Plastics Cleanup Device Hits A Setback

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Four months into its testing phase, the Ocean Cleanup's plastic-catching device isn't catching as much plastic as intended.

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omewhere in Hilo, on Hawaii's Big Island, a team of scientists and engineers are tending to The Ocean Cleanup's 600-metre-long rubbish-herding device, after its maiden voyage to the Great Pacific garbage patch was cut short in December 2018, because it fractured into two pieces.

The project has had its fair share of problems since it was unveiled in May 2017 and has been criticised by marine scientists and environmental groups for its potential negative environmental impact. However, some still herald The Ocean Cleanup for having a positive effect on plastic pollution.

Pete Ceglinski, the Australian co-founder and chief executive of the Seabin Project - plastic-cleaning devices deployed in harbours and marinas - is one. He credits Boyan Slat, the inventor behind The Ocean Cleanup, with increasing the global awareness of the ocean plastics issue over the past six years.

But marine biologist Dr Jennifer Lavers from the University of Tasmania says that argument is also the project's downfall. "I think that's really dangerous," Lavers says. "It gives people a false sense of hope that this team of people have got [plastic pollution] covered, and that we just need to throw some money at the problem."

Plastic pollution is a devastating problem for the world's oceans and marine life. According to the UN, about 8m tonnes of plastic waste is dumped in the seas annually. It has been discovered at the deepest point of ocean, in Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, and in Australia, CSIRO scientists found microplastics in the sediment of the Great Australian Bight. Last year Guardian Australia reported that scientists now believe "plastic is literally everywhere."

So the idea of attempting to "clean up" the ocean is a quixotic one. Can these projects really make a difference?

The answer is yes, but not as expected.

Smaller technical solutions can make an impact in a localised area. Two rubbish-sucking Seabins were recently installed in Sydney's Darling Harbour. The devices suck in water, trapping rubbish in a mesh bag, and recirculate the water back into the environment. There are 450 Seabins in 26 countries around the world, in 60 harbours throughout the US, Europe, and now the Asia-Pacific, collecting on average around 4kg of marine litter a day - or about 1.4 tonnes a year, according to Ceglinski.

Another local installation, known as Mr Trash Wheel, is making a difference in Baltimore's Inner Harbour, on the US's north-east coast. As the wheel turns, it collects litter from the harbour and stores it in a barge for later removal. "It's such a great idea," says Lavers. "If we could get something like that in major cities that have suitable harbours, it would be transformational."

Lavers, who has been studying ocean plastics for the past 15 years, says these are good examples of small-scale cleanups that can have a local impact.

However, she warns that can't be extrapolated to the open ocean or the global plastic crisis. "We can't technology our way out of this," she says. "What we really need is policy change, and behavioural change, and that's just starting to happen."

"Things have changed rapidly in the last 12 to 18 months, it's been really encouraging. We have the EU announcing enormous bans on single use plastics and microplastics - that's the bold, meaningful change we need."

Hobart city council recently announced it would ban single use plastics by 2020, while Launceston city council has pledged to do the same. The South Australian government is considering how to tackle single-use plastics and sought public comment on the issue earlier this year.

The Department of the Environment and Energy recently conducted an assessment of the voluntary phase-out of microbeads - and found it to be on track. Its Threat Abatement Plan for the impacts of marine debris on the vertebrate wildlife of Australia's coasts and oceans was also updated. And while Woolworths and Coles were banning single-use plastic bags nationwide, fast-food giants McDonald's committed to phasing out plastic straws in their Australian stores.

What those cleanup projects such as The Ocean Clean Up, Seabins and the Baltimore Water Wheel are good at is increasing awareness of the plastic problem. Says Ceglinski:"The real goal is to stop plastics from entering the water in the first place. And we can do that using the Seabin as a powerful communication tool.

He adds: "We don't want people to be okay with throwing plastic in the water because the Seabin will pick it up for them. This was one of the main reasons we set out to attack it from an educational point of view - because it all boils back down to education."

So, like Seabins quietly sucking away in harbours, community and individual cleanup action plays a role too. When you add up the numbers, at least in Australia - the potential impact of picking up rubbish on beaches is huge. "There's around 50,000 volunteers across Australia who participate regularly in beach cleanups", says Lavers.

"One single plastic bottle removed from a beach prevents it from making its way back into the ocean where it will eventually fragment into tens of thousands of micro- and nano-plastic particles. So there's value in getting bigger items off the beach while we still can, because once they become tiny fragments in the marine environment, we have little to no hope of ever retrieving them, at least not with current technology."

In Australia, Tangaroa Blue is one of the main groups that organises regular cleanups, along with Clean Up Australia, Seaside Scavenge, environmental conservation groups such as Sea Shepherd, while Ocean Conservancy organises global beach cleanups.

Heidi Taylor, co-founder and managing director of Tangaroa Blue Foundation, says cleanups must go hand in hand with reducing plastic consumption. "If all we do is clean up, then that's all we'll ever do. We have to stop debris and plastic ending up in the environment in the first place through source reduction."

The data collected from beach cleanups give groups such as Tangaroa Blue the power to hold industry and producers accountable for their role in the plastic problem. "The cleanup is how we collect evidence," says Taylor. "Volunteers don't just pick up and count rubbish, they also record brands and barcodes - data which can be used to target the sources."

Taylor noticed a difference in the beach cleanup data, after the single-use plastic bags ban came into force. "We're just seeing more thicker bags, and now we know where they're coming from because they're branded, whereas before they were all grey. "

On 4 March, the Australian Marine Debris Initiative (AMDI) ticked over 13 million data points - each representing an item of marine debris picked up from an Australian beach with its details logged by a volunteer.

Lavers is using the AMDI data to determine whether the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (Marpol) - which prevents the dumping of plastic and other waste from ships - has been effective since its ratification in 2013. "Asking this question is only possible because of Tangaroa Blue and other contributors to the AMDI. There's no way we can write off beach cleanups as some small, meaningless contribution to the global plastic pollution problem."

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Plastic pollution: can the ocean really be cleaned up?

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omewhere in Hilo, on Hawaii's Big Island, a team of scientists and engineers are tending to The Ocean Cleanup's 600-metre-long rubbish-herding device, after its maiden voyage to the Great Pacific garbage patch was cut short in December 2018, because it fractured into two pieces.

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Plastic Pollution

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How your toothbrush became a part of the plastic crisis

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Your plastic toothbrush is a bigger problem than you realize

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This article was created in partnership with the National Geographic Society. At first, years ago, it was just an occasional piece of plastic trash that Kahi Pacarro, the founder of Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii, picked up on the beach cleanups he organized around the state. A straw here, a takeout container there.

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5 steps that could end the plastic pollution crisis - and save our ocean

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5 steps that could end the plastic pollution crisis - and save our ocean

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WEforum

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Pick it up. Image: REUTERS/Jon Nazca

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5 steps that could end the plastic pollution crisis - and save our ocean

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It's time to think positively about reducing plastics and take effective action to tackle the global problem. This report outlines some tactics.

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Plastic threatens our health from before production to long after it's thrown away: Report

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Plastic pollution is a "threat to human life and human rights" and, in order to stem this problem, we have to overhaul how we produce, use and dispose of it, according to a large international report released today.

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EARTHDAY.ORG™ is changing human attitudes about and behavior toward plastics and reducing plastic pollution. The End Plastic Pollution campaign helps people understand the impacts of plastic pollution on human and ecosystem health and how everyday actions can lessen the problem.

The campaign draws attention to the harmful effects of plastic in our environment - harming marine and human health, littering beaches and landscapes, clogging waste streams and landfills - and empowers people to make a difference.

Increasing awareness is the first step toward making more informed decisions in our lives. Through toolkits, calculators and other resources, EARTHDAY.ORG provides instruction on how to cut plastic use and create a healthier world.

Unfortunately, single-use plastics are so prevalent that trying to avoid them can seem hopeless. That's why our campaign also focuses on systematic problems of plastic use, including the large-scale sources of plastic.

End Plastic Pollution informs policymakers and contributes to the international discussion on plastic pollution and its causes, including pushing for national legislation and corporate commitments. EARTHDAY.ORG also engages with and informs a global network of NGOs, grassroots organizations, campus youth, mayors and other local elected leaders, faith leaders, artists and athletes, and students and teachers.

The End Plastic Pollution campaign elevates the issue of plastic pollution in the global agenda and demands effective action to reduce and control it.

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Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display Skip to Content EARTHDAY.ORG™ is changing human attitudes about and behavior toward plastics and reducing plastic pollution. The End Plastic Pollution campaign helps people understand the impacts of plastic pollution on human and ecosystem health and how everyday actions can lessen the problem.

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Build waste infrastructure in river adjacent communities .  93% of river based plastics come from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa

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Unilever Plan to Stop Plastic Pollution in Oceans

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Unilever Plan to Stop Plastic Pollution in Oceans

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From the farthest reaches of the Arctic to the deepest depths of the ocean, plastic pollution really is everywhere. Plastic pollution in the ocean is a particularly big problem: an estimated 100 million ocean animals are killed each year because of plastic in the ocean, and we currently have no reliable way to extract those plastics. But plastic is also a huge part of our everyday lives, in often invisible ways. Now, one of the world's biggest plastic polluters is racing to reinvent its business-and the way we think about this ubiquitous material-one package at a time. The sea change is top priority for Unilever to ensure customers remain loyal to the 90-year-old global brand.

On any given day, 2.5 billion people use Unilever products that span 400 brands to feel good, look good and get more out of life. But the multinational with a market cap of over $158 billion recognizes that its growth has come at the expense of the environment. The company invests over $1 billion annually on research and development, of which new plastics innovation is a component, but declined to tell CNBC how much its plastics initiatives specifically are costing.

It is benefiting the company: In 2018, the 26 Unilever brands that are aligned with its sustainability initiatives grew 46% faster than the rest of the business and also outperformed in turnover growth, according to the company.

In November 2010 under the guidance of now-former CEO Paul Polman, the company launched its industry-leading sustainable living plan, which has guided the company's approach to product design and redesign ever since. Oversight of this global initiative starts at the top: reporting directly to the company's CEO and executive leadership, a steering team meets five times per year and is accountable to the executive for the sustainable living plan's goals. They rely on a series of internal groups devoted to everything from sustainable packaging to water use.

Unilever also runs its own Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC) that takes a science-focused look at the environmental impacts of products throughout their life cycle, including when they go down the drain.

Since 2017, one of the plan's main focuses has been plastic. That's when Unilever signed on to an Ellen MacArthur Foundation initiative called The New Plastics Economy, committed to making all of its plastic packaging either reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025. Doing so will ensure that plastic packaging stays within a "circular economy" where it can be produced and reused, rather than becoming waste. That means not only developing the technology to make plastics that can be effectively recycled, but also transforming its global supply chain. Both are major challenges.

"I'm convinced that we are going to move more as a society into some of those spaces around reduce and reuse, and [Unilever] will be at the forefront of doing that," says Richard Slater, chief research and development officer for Unilever. Slater, who took over the role in April 2019, says Unilever's commitment to sustainability was a big reason he was drawn to the company.

Inside the company, this attitude toward plastic shows up in a framework used throughout the business, referred to as "less/better/no." It's visible in their finished products: shampoo bottles that contain around 15% less plastic thanks to the introduction of bubbles into the material; replacing traditional plastics with bioplastics made of materials like cornstarch; and goods that use no plastic in their packaging, like refillable deodorants that come in a metal tube.

Addressing the issue of packaging is a great way to start changing the way plastic is used, says Shelie Miller, a University of Michigan professor who studies packaging and sustainability. "Packaging is produced to become waste," she says. "That makes it unique among manufactured goods."

It's hard to know exactly how much of the plastic problem is due to plastic packaging, says Melanie Bergmann, a marine biologist and plastic pollution expert at Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute. However, packaging on consumer products is a significant problem, she says, and unlike many other sources of plastic, "something we can tackle relatively easily."

Transforming its plastics packaging market has required ongoing change in the company's supply chain, both in working with existing suppliers to change their practices and with new partners like Terracycle's consumer goods distribution system Loop, which will be testing consumer uptake on products like refillable aluminum deodorants for some of Unilever's top brands. The Loop Initiative has buy-in from some of the world's biggest brands, including Unilever competitors Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Terracycle's partners involved with the initiative include logistics company UPS, European retailer Carrefour and resource management company Suez.

On the materials side, too, the drive to develop better plastics has seen Unilever partner with startups like Ioniqa, which bills itself as a "high tech chemical company", and broader industry initiatives like the Bioplastic Feedstock Alliance, a World Wildlife Federation-led initiatives to develop biodegradable plastics that don't compete with food security. The company is also "engaged with several bio-plastic suppliers," according to a company spokesperson.

Unilever also is pushing forward on in-house initiatives such as developing a new pigment for black plastic such as that used for the company's TRESemmé line of shampoos and conditioners. Traditional black plastic is not detectable by the infrared sorters that recyclers use and must therefore be thrown out. Unilever's solution is a new kind of pigment that can be detected by the sorters, allowing its black plastic bottles to be recycled at traditional recycling facilities. Within industry, "Unilever is really seen as a leader in sustainability," says Miller. "They have a track record of being a leader in efforts to reduce overall environmental impacts, so it's not surprising that they are ahead of the curve here."

From the investment perspective, this is one of the most lucrative markets to get into.

TMR senior market analyst

However, creating a circular plastic economy for its many products isn't a simple undertaking. "One of the challenges we face in many places around the world is availability of material," says Louis Lindenberg, Unilever's Global Packaging Sustainability Director. "We've had to work with our supply chain partners to identify what material is required where, how much is available, what the gap is, and how we fill that gap." One example is in Brazil, where Unilever recently partnered with local recycler Wise to expand local recycling capacity in order to get the recycled materials it needs to meet its commitments, Lindenberg said.

There's no guarantee that the things they try will get consumer uptake. The company's found high consumer acceptance for initiatives like moving towards things like 100 percent recycled or recyclable plastics, Slater says. But on the no-plastic side, with things like the Loop initiative and other refill and reuse systems, "we really are more in pilot mode there."

Initiatives like these are also what will keep Unilever competitive into the future, says Slater. In its 2018 annual report, the multinational named plastic packaging as a "principal risk" to its business.

"Both consumer and customer responses to the environmental impact of plastic waste and emerging regulation by governments to tax or ban the use of certain plastics requires us to find solutions," reads the message to shareholders.

By 2025, the year when Unilever and other signatories to the New Plastics Economy agreement have pledged to transform their packaging, Grand View Research predicts that the global plastic packaging market will reach a market size of $269.6 billion USD, up from a 2017 valuation of $198 billion.

Key drivers of this market are the convenience and low cost of plastic packaging, but according to numbers produced by Transparency Market Research, consumers are willing to pay nearly 10 percent more for sustainable packaging. "Consumers are looking for sustainable packaging, says TMR senior market analyst Ismail Sutaria. "At the same time, the packaging should be easy to use."

At the moment, the food and beverage sectors have the biggest market share for sustainable packaging, he says, with cosmetics and personal care not far behind, meaning that Unilever stands to benefit strongly from investment in this area. Increased focus on sustainable packaging will get the eye of investors on a company, Sutaria says. "From the investment perspective, this is one of the most lucrative markets to get into."

By working to change the plastics market, Unilever is paving the way for its own future.

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Unilever's plan to stop massive plastic pollution from destroying the oceans

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Plastic pollution is a big problem, not just for sea animals, but consumer giant Unilever. Its 400 brands including shampoo label TRESemmé have taken a big toll on the oceans. Now Unilever is remaking materials and supply chains, an effort that goes all the way up to the CEO.

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Surfrider Foundation

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We must change the current flow of plastic pollution by stopping plastic problems at the source. This includes eliminating unnecessary single-use plastics, advocating for better product alternatives and switching to reusables for our everyday needs. We encourage individuals, industry and governments to protect our ocean, waves, and beaches by supporting legislative polices that move us away from unnecessary single-use plastics.

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Editor's Note (11/27/2017): This post was updated with new statistics on plastic waste generation and recycling, as well as new information on methods of reuse.
What would modern life be like without plastic? According to The World Economic Forum, plastic production has exploded over the last half-century, growing from 16.5 million tons in 1964 to 343 million tons in 2014; it is projected to double by 2036. Where does all of it go when we're done with it?

In 2014, Americans discarded about 33.6 million tons of plastic, but only 9.5 percent of it was recycled and 15 percent was combusted to create electricity or heat.

Most of the rest ends up in landfills where it may take up to 500 years to decompose, and potentially leak pollutants into the soil and water. It's estimated that there are already 165 million tons of plastic debris floating around in the oceans threatening the health and safety of marine life. And an average of 8.8 million more tons enter the oceans each year, including microplastics, tiny particles less than five millimeters long from cosmetics, fabrics or the breakdown of larger pieces, which may be ingested by marine wildlife.

Relatively little of our plastic waste is recycled because there are various types of plastic with different chemical compositions, and recycled plastics can be contaminated by the mixing of types. Plastic waste is also contaminated by materials such as paper and ink. Separating plastics from other recyclables, and different types of plastic from each other, is labor-intensive and so far there has been no easy solution.

Although the Society of Plastic Industries developed seven codes to distinguish types of plastic for recycling, in reality, only two-polyethylene terephthalate (PET, used for synthetic fibers and water bottles) and high density polyethylene (HDPE, used for jugs, bottle caps, water pipes)-are routinely recycled. But in more and more cities like New York and Chicago, low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic bags are now being recycled too. And increasingly, the recycling industry's use of near‐infrared spectroscopy, which can identify the chemical composition of plastics, is improving the efficiency and speed of recycling.

Plastics that can be recycled are first sorted, shredded and rid of impurities like paper. The shreds are then melted and formed into pellets, which can be made into other products.

MoistureShield in Arkansas, and Virginia-based Trex recycle polyethylene into outdoor decking material, fencing, and doors and windows. Coca Cola is increasing the amount of recycled plastic in its bottles to 50 percent.

Plastic is made from petroleum or natural gas in a chemical process that combines smaller molecules into a large chainlike molecule, often with other substances added to give it particular qualities. (Some, like phthalates and bisphenol A, can have harmful health effects.) Plastic production is estimated to use four percent of global oil production-both as the raw material and for energy in the manufacturing process. Because these polymers embody energy from fossil fuels (and actually have a higher energy value than coal and wood), leaving so much of it in landfills is not only an environmental hazard, it is a huge waste of a valuable resource that could be used to produce electricity, heat, or fuel.

The Plastics Division of the American Chemical Council asked the Earth Institute's Earth Engineering Center to explore ways of recovering the energy inherent in non-recycled plastics. The 2011 report, which was updated in 2014, determined that the amount of energy contained in the millions of tons of plastic in U.S. landfills is equivalent to 48 million tons of coal, 180 million barrels of oil, or one trillion cubic feet of natural gas. If all this plastic were converted into liquid fuel, it could produce 5.7 billion gallons of gasoline, enough to power 8.9 million cars per year. And the fact is, there are now technologies that can put all this waste to good use.

The report examined three ways of utilizing non-recycled plastic for energy production: converting it directly into liquid fuel, using separated plastics as fuel in special types of power plants, and increasing the amount of garbage burned in waste-to-energy facilities.

Plastics can be converted into crude oil or other types of products through pyrolysis, a high heat process that does not use oxygen. Agilyx, an Oregon-based company, has developed a system that heats polystyrene from foam cups, packaging materials, and Styrofoam to create a styrene monomer, a building block of the plastic industry. The final liquid product can be sold to other refiners to produce oil or to make more polystyrene.

Plastic2Oil in Niagara Falls, NY, uses unwashed, unsorted waste plastic to produce ultra-low sulfur fuels that do not require further refining. The company maintains that its process is "highly green, clean and scalable."

A number of other companies in the U.S., Africa, Asia and Europe are investing in technology that produces liquid fuel from plastic wastes.

According to the updated Earth Engineering Center report, power plants specially designed to use non-recycled plastics as fuel could theoretically produce 61.9 million MWh of electricity, enough to power 5.7 million homes.

Burning more garbage inwaste-to-energy facilities would recover the energy inherent in plastics and reduce greenhouse gas emissions since landfills emit methane (a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide) as garbage decomposes. Unlike incinerators of the past, modern waste-to-energy facilities produce electricity and heat in boilers designed for complete combustion. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said they produce electricity "with less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity."

If the amount of garbage sitting in U.S. landfills in 2011 was burned in waste-to-energy facilities, it could theoretically yield enough electricity to power 13.8 million households and reduce coal use by 100 million tons a year. In 2015, 71 waste-to-energy facilities and four other power plants in the United States burned 29 million tons of garbage, generating nearly 14 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.

A 2009 United Nations Environmental Programme report on converting plastic waste into a resource described the production of gaseous fuels, using high heat to decompose plastic waste, and solid fuel derived from a mixture of waste plastic, paper, and wood. The materials are first shredded, sorted then made into pellets. A number of companies in Japan are producing both solid and gaseous fuels. The Showa Denko company, headquartered in Tokyo, uses heat gasification to recycle plastic waste into ammonia, used to manufacture many products, and CO2 for carbonization.

Liter of Light, a grassroots movement with partnerships around the world, has found another way to recycle plastic bottles. It helps energy-poor communities convert discarded soda bottles into solar bottle bulbs to illuminate homes and streets. The organization has installed over 350,000 bottle lights in more than 15 countries.

The best solutions for our plastic problem are still to reduce our use of them, and to reuse and recycle whenever possible. More policies that ban plastic bag use, require bottle deposits and expand recycling would help. But millions of tons of plastic waste still sit in landfills around the country; technologies that are able to tap this waste as a resource can offer multiple benefits, helping to clean up the environment, lessen our dependence on foreign oil, decrease our use of non-renewable virgin resources, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and generate energy.

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Americans discard about 33.6 million tons of plastic each year, but only 9.5 percent of it is recycled and 15 percent is combusted in waste-to-energy facilities. What happens to the rest of it?

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NYC Initiatives to Reduce Plastic Pollution

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NYC Initiatives to Reduce Plastic Pollution

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NYC Sierra Club

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Initiatives to Reduce Plastic Pollution
Lisa DiCaprio
Conservation Chair, NYC Group
While consumers worship at the altar of convenience created by single-use plastics, seabirds, turtles, fish, and marine mammals, such as dolphins and whales, are dying from plastic debris in various macabre ways: strangulation, entanglement, suffocation from encasement in plastic, and starvation as plastic fills their stomachs, stealing the space required for food.

The Sierra Club NYC Group is advocating for three NY City Council bills to reduce plastic pollution. If you live in NYC and your council member's name does not appear on any of these bills, please call and/or write to request their co-sponsorship. Find the list of NYC council members and their districts .

Int. 0936-2018, introduced by Council Members Rafael Espinal, Helen Rosenthal, and Barry Grodenchik, bans food service establishments from providing non-biodegradable, plastic straws and beverage stirrers. (An exemption is allowed for individuals requiring a straw because of a medical condition.)

Int. 0846-2018, introduced by Council Member Ben Kallos, prohibits the sale or distribution of single-use water bottles on NYC property.

Int. 0839-2018, introduced by Council Member Rafael Espinal, prohibits the sale or distribution of single-use bottles for commercial purposes at NYC beaches and parks.

Plastic pollution is now a global crisis as plastics represent the most common form of debris in our oceans and the Great Lakes. The National Geographic issue, Planet or Plastic ?, highlights these "10 shocking facts about plastic":

More than 5 trillion pieces of plastic are already floating in our oceans.

Worldwide, 73 percent of beach litter is plastic: filters from cigarette butts, bottles, bottle caps, food wrappers, grocery bags, and polystyrene containers.

World plastic production has increased exponentially from 2.3 million tons in 1950 to 162 million in 1993 to 448 million by 2015.

By 2050, virtually every seabird species on the planet will be eating plastic.

As of 2015, more than 6.9 billion tons of plastic waste had been generated. Around 9 percent of that was recycled, 12 percent was incinerated, and 79 percent accumulated in landfills or environment.

Around the world, nearly a million plastic beverage bottles are sold every minute.

Estimates for how long plastic endures range from 450 years to forever.

The largest market for plastics today is packaging materials. That trash now accounts for nearly half of all plastic waste generated globally - most of it never gets recycled or incinerated.

Some 700 species of marine animals have been reported so far to have eaten or become entangled in plastic.

More than 40 percent of plastic is used just once, then tossed.

500 million straws are used once and discarded every day in the US.

According to a January 2016 report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the percentage of oil production used for new plastics will increase from 5% to 20% within 35 years. The twentyfold increase in the production of plastics since 1964 is projected to double within 20 years and to quadruple by 2050. The concludes: "In a business-as-usual scenario, the ocean is expected to contain one tonne of plastic for every three tonnes of fish by 2025, and by 2050, more plastics than fish (by weight)." To reduce the proliferation of single-use plastics, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has launched the New Plastics Economy initiative to apply the principles of a circular economy to the design and use of plastics.

Contrary to the claims of the plastic industry, single-use straws, stirrers, and plastic bags are not recycled. These bags clog storm drains and cause flooding, become trapped in tree branches and, like straws and stirrers, end up either in landfills or in our waterways and oceans.

Microplastics are polluting our oceans and endangering marine life and human health. In the ocean, the sun and seawater break up plastics into microplastics (smaller than five millimeters), which are now found on remote islands and from the deepest ocean seafloor to floating ice in the Arctic that will release these microplastics when it melts. Microplastics act as sponges for chemical pollutants in the water, which concentrate on them. They are also eaten by small marine plankton and filter feeders, such as clams and oysters, and are passed up the food chain along with the adhering toxic chemicals.

Microscopic fibers, called microfibers, are one of the most common types of microplastics. Clothing made from synthetic fabrics, such as acrylic, nylon, rayon and polyester, as well as blends of synthetics with natural materials (wool, cotton, linen, and hemp), release millions of plastic fibers when they are washed. Waste treatment plants, even those with advanced technologies, are not designed to capture microfibers. According to a June 2016 by researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara, "up to 40% of them enter rivers, lakes, and oceans." Pollution from plastic fibers is increasing as synthetics now comprise more than 60% of new fabrics and polyester is the fastest growing fabric manufactured by the global textile industry.

The North Pacific Gyre, commonly known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is one of five gyres - swirling current systems collecting trash in the oceans - and has the densest accumulation of plastics. As related in a March 2018 New York Times , it comprises an estimated 87,000 tons of debris and is "a swirling oceanic graveyard where everyday objects get deposited by the currents." The article, "The 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' Is Ballooning, 87,000 Tons of Plastic and Counting" by Livia Albeck-Ripka, refers to a study published in Scientific Reports which determined that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, first observed in the late 1990s, now occupies an area about "four times the size of California and comprises an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of rubbish." By various measurements, including those based on aerial photographs, the scientists concluded that 99.7% of the debris is plastic.

In June of this year, eXXpedition North Pacific , an all-women scientific expedition, sailed from Honolulu to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to collect data for analyzing the impact on marine life and human health of plastic pollution, including the toxic chemicals that are released when plastics disintegrate.

An increasing number of companies throughout the world are voluntarily implementing policies to reduce plastic packaging and eliminate the distribution of single-use plastic straws, stirrers, utensils, and food containers. In February of this year, inspired by David Attenborough's Blue Planet 2 series on the BBC, Queen Elizabeth II banned plastic straws and bottles at all royal estates.

While important, these initiatives are insufficient, thus legislation to ban single-use plastics is gaining momentum within and outside of the US.

Several cities, such as San Francisco, Seattle, Malibu, Oakland, Berkeley, and Miami Beach, have imposed a ban on single-use plastic straws, which represent the sixth most common type of litter. Along with plastic stirrers, they comprise more than seven percent of plastic products. Seattle's ban includes single-use plastic utensils and became effective on July 1. One week later, Starbucks, a Seattle-based company, pledged to phase out disposable plastic straws in all of its 24,000 establishments by 2020. Currently, Starbucks annually provides more than a billion straws to its global customers. In August, San Francisco passed the Plastic, Toxics, and Litter Reduction Ordinance that bans the sale and distribution of single-use plastic and bioplastic (plant-based plastic) straws, utensils, and stirrers. Typically, bans on plastic straws allow the distribution of straws to customers requiring them for medical reasons.

Metal, paper, wheat and corn stalks, sugar cane, and bamboo are alternative materials for straws, which in the US were originally made of straw; specifically, cut and dried rye stalks, then paper and, most recently, plastic since World War II. Biodegradable straws will decompose in nature, but not in oxygen-deprived landfills. Straws designated as compostable must be sent to an industrial compost facility, and fossil fuel-based plastics will only break up into microplastics.

For this article, I purchased a variety of straws. Plant-based PLA (polyactic acid) corn-plastic straws are indistinguishable from conventional plastic straws because they are not marked as a PLA product. This makes single-use plastic bans that allow compostable straws difficult to enforce. Moreover, they have the same impact in the environment as plastic straws. For example, a recent 5 Gyres Institute bioplastics case study determined that straws made from PLA did not substantially degrade in the ocean within a two-year period.

When mingled with their fossil fuel-based counterparts, corn-plastic products contaminate the recycling stream. By contrast, bans allowing for biodegradable straws are enforceable because straws made out of materials such as paper and bamboo (which is biodegradable and reusable), are visually distinct from plastic straws.

According to a June 2018 UN report, 50 countries have either imposed bans or pledged to reduce single-use plastics .

On April 16, British Prime Minister Theresa May announced the formation of the Commonwealth Clean Oceans Alliance , comprising the 52 nations of the Commonwealth, to focus on eliminating single-use plastics to reduce marine pollution.

Soon afterward, on May 28, the European Commission, which proposes legislation for the European Union, announced a that, if approved by the EU's 28 member states, will ban several single-use plastic items, such as straws, plates, and utensils for which sustainable alternatives are available. In announcing this directive, Frans Timmermans, the vice president of the European Commission, , "We are at risk of choking our oceans in plastic." Previously, on January 16, the EU that all plastic packaging must be reusable or recyclable by 2030.

In New York State, the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter has endorsed the bill, introduced in February 2018 by State Senators Liz Krueger and Brad Hoylman, that will ban single-use plastic bags and place a ten-cent fee on all other carryout bags. The Senate version is and the Assembly version, introduced by Assemblyman Steve Englebright, is . To increase the number of sponsors, we can call and write our representatives in the NYS Senate and Assembly, and ask them to co-sponsor S7760/A9953. Find the list of NYS Senate legislators and Assembly legislators . Go for more information on the bill.

This 2018 NYS state bill is a response to the bill passed by the NYS Legislature in 2017 to prevent the implementation of a NYC law that mandated a five-cent fee on paper and single-use plastic bags.

In NYC, we can also promote the 0 x 30 reusable bags made of 90% recycled material that the NYC Department of Sanitation is donating as a way to achieve NYC's goal of Zero Waste to Landfills by 2030. If you take the Zero Waste Pledge , the Department of Sanitation will send you a free 0 x 30 reusable bag. I am currently working with environmental activists and Council Member Helen Rosenthal, who represents me in the City Council, to distribute these reusable bags in our City Council District 6. Please write and/or call your council member and ask him/her to request 0 x 30 reusable bags from the Department of Sanitation, which they may provide at their District Office and at public events, including street fairs.

We must all act individually and collectively to reduce plastic pollution. The livability of our planet depends on our oceans, the primary source of earth's oxygen. As Sylvia Earle, the world-renowned oceanographer, states in her 2009 , My Wish: Protect Our Oceans, "Ninety-seven percent of our Earth is oceans. No blue, no green. If you think that the ocean isn't important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life-support systems."
Resources on Plastic Pollution and How We Can Protect Our Oceans
The National Geographic special issue on plastic pollution, Planet or Plastic? You may read the articles , which are accompanied by dramatic visuals, online or purchase the issue online.

Sylvia Earle, a world-renowned oceanographer and president of the environmental organization Mission Blue, February 19, 2009, TED Talk, My Wish: Protect Our Oceans .

Albatross is a film on how plastic pollution is affecting the albatross population on Midway Island. Watch the or the entire film .

Annie Leonard, The Story of Microfibers .

American Museum of Natural History, Earth Day 1970-2018: Sea Changes .

Sierra Club Marine Team

UN Global Partnership on Marine Litter

https:// Ocean Conservancy and oceanconservancy.org/trash-free-seas

#breakfreefromplastic: https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org

Greenpeace Million Acts of Blue campaign

Judith S. Weis: Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2014)

Tryggvi Adalbjornsson, " Take Our Quiz: The Trash Most Likely to Litter a Beach ," The New York Times, June 26, 2018

Graeme Wearden, " More plastic than fish in the sea by 2050 ," says Ellen MacArthur, The Guardian, January 19, 2016

International Bird Rescue

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Lisa DiCaprio Conservation Chair, NYC Group While consumers worship at the altar of convenience created by single-use plastics, seabirds, turtles, fish, and marine mammals, such as dolphins and whales, are dying from plastic debris in various macabre ways: strangulation, entanglement, suffocation from encasement in plastic, and starvation as plastic fills their stomachs, stealing the space required for food.

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Ocean Foundation

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Table of Contents

General Information

" Now ocean plastics could be killing oxygen-making bacteria," Wired, May 17, 2019
"The core of the problem is that plastic pollution is a very new science. Researchers are still feeling their way through an environmental threat whose epicness is likely only second to climate change. Some 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the sea every year. And between 2015 and 2025, the amount of plastic pouring into the ocean could increase tenfold. That is objectively, monumentally terrible, but in exactly what ways it will be so, science isn't yet sure."

" Oxo degradable plastic packaging is not a solution to plastics pollution, and does not fit in a circular economy," New Plastics Economy, May 2019
"Oxo-degradable plastic packaging is not a solution to soil or marine pollution - on the contrary, we believe it contributes to microplastic pollution and poses an environmental risk. "

" Pope urges action against 'endless fields' of plastic in oceans," Reuters, September 1, 2018
Pope Francis addressed the issue of plastic waste in the oceans, calling for both attention and action towards the problem.

Provides an overview of the plastic pollution crisis globally, including how it began, its current environmental impact, and potential solutions. This article focuses mainly on the environmental impact, noting that in the US less than 10% of plastic gets recycled, resulting in the killing of millions of marine mammals every year. There are some great pictures and graphics - one from UC Santa Barbara effectively displays the exponential growth of plastic production since 1950.

"A Brief History of Marine Litter Research," Plastics Europe, 2015
See graph entitled "Global plastic production...and future trends"

"Marine Litter Report: 2014-2020 Vision" Surfers Against Sewage, October 2014

This booklet gives a broader overview of the plastics problem and future policy-based steps against it. The origin of such litter, its toxic chemicals, and its impact on marine life, world finances, and ecosystem services are discussed--as well as both ongoing and suggested initiatives to stop the problem.

"The Answer for Remote Islands," Waste Management World, January 2, 2013

Due to their small size, the development of on-island waste treatment centers that meet legislative code has always been a struggle, especially when it comes to strategies for environmental protection

"A Citizen's Guide to Plastics in the Ocean: More than a Litter Problem" Center for Environmental Education, 1988

This book gives an overview of the history of plastics in America, their impact on marine life, and laws relating to marine wildlife conservation and trash management. The authors divide up related laws and possible policy-based solutions into categories, such as Ocean Dumping Laws, Pollution Laws, and Wildlife Conservation Laws, as well as providing smaller-scale efforts.

"Plastics in the Ocean: More Than A Litter Problem," Center for Environmental Education, February, 1987

This book represents the formalized report prepared by the Center for Environmental Education for the EPA regarding the adverse effects of plastics in the oceans. It was rendered more reader-friendly in 1988 with "A Citizen's Guide to Plastics in the Ocean..." It details a broad scope of topics: environmental impacts, economics and safety, types and quantities of plastics debris, sources of plastics debris, regional analysis, legal authorities, and programmatic solutions.

The Ocean Foundation's summary of the 2018 Klosters Forum on plastic pollution

Human Health Risks from Plastic

Freinkel, Susan Plastic: A Toxic Love Story Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (April 18, 2011)
Plastic is not healthy. Plastics draw on dwindling fossil fuels, leach harmful chemicals, litter landscapes, and destroy marine life.

" We Know Plastic Is Harming Marine Life: What About Us?," National Geographic, June 2018
We know little about the effect of plastic on our health. Nanoplastics are smaller than microplastics--virtually invisible--and scientists lack technology to detect and thus measure these plastics. However, they could have the ability to move into cells, causing damage.

" It's not just the oceans: Microplastic pollution is all around us," CNN, April 22, 2018
Microplastics are predicted to be more commonly found on land than on water, and have been found in resources such as soil, tap water, and air. Microplastics pass through wastewater plants, and may contain harmful bacteria--in turn affecting human health. There is otherwise little research on adverse effects.

" Fact Sheet: The Plastic Threat to Human Health," Earth Day Network, 2018
Recent studies suggest the health impacts of different plastic components on human health and the extent to which these plastics have been found in human bodies. The article gives a very brief overview of such study results.

"Plastic: A Toxic Love Story" by Susan Freinkel, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011
This book is a discussion of the impact of plastic on our lives through the lens of eight objects: comb, chair, Frisbee, IV bag, disposable lighter, grocery bag, soda bottle, and credit card. The section on the IV bag (start pg. 85) speaks to the impact on human health; without exposure limits, the PVC in blood bags proved dangerous. This ubiquity of industrial plastics continues into today.

" Preemies May Be Exposed To High Levels Of Phthalates In The NICU" (NPR, 2014), " Hidden Toxicity in Neonatal Intensive Care Units: Phthalate Exposure in Very Low Birth Weight Infants" (Journal of Critical Research in Pediatric Endocrinology, 2016) )
Flexible plastic tubes used in neonatal care units break down as they are used, reportedly releasing phthalates into the bloodstream, endangering babies already undergoing critical care.

Environmental Impacts of Ocean Plastics Pollution

Field observations indicate that when plastics are ingested by marine organisms they become imbedded in their tissue. When these organisms are eaten, the hazardous chemicals from these plastics in their tissue are transferred.

Research shows that due to the increase in ocean plastics pollution, microplastics are frequently appearing in edible fish tissues.

Research by Dr. Sherri Mason shows that our freshwater environments are being heavily polluted with plastics, and this water is feeding into our oceans, driving ocean plastics pollution. In conclusion, most of the plastics pollution that occurs in our oceans starts with plastics pollution in our freshwater environments.

Research shows that nanoplastic can be ingested by marine organisms, move up the food chain, and affect their ability to hunt.

This article estimates that 275 million metric tons of plastic waste was generated in 2010. Unless waste management practices improve, this number could increase by an order of magnitude in the next decade.

Provides an overview of the main impacts plastics pollution has on marine species. Impacts include "entanglement in and ingestion of plastic litter" and the ingestion of microplastics.

Production-based Solutions (Green Chemistry)

" How to Convert Climate-Changing Carbon Dioxide Into Plastics and Other Products," Rugers, November 18, 2018
Rutgers Scientists have developed electrocatalysts that can convert carbon dioxide into plastics, fabrics, resins, and other products. Methylglyoxal, one of the catalysts, can be used as a safer alternative to toxic formaldehyde - a substance that threatens fish, shellfish, and other creatures in our rivers, lakes, and oceans.

" Nobel Prize Awarded for Evolving Green Chemistry Catalysts," Royal Society of Chemistry, November 5, 2018
Frances Arnold is one of this year's nobel laureates in chemistry for her work in Directed Evolution (DE), a green chemistry biochemical hack in which proteins/enzymes are randomly mutated many times over, then screened to find out which ones work best. It could overhaul the chemical industry.=

" Key Elements of Green Chemistry," North Carolina State University, 2018
The conclusion section of this article provides 12 critical and well-worded principles of green chemistry, including: Less Hazardous Chemical Syntheses, Designing Safer Chemicals, Safer Solvents and Auxiliaries, Design for Energy Efficiency, Reduce unnecessary steps, Design for Degradation, and Real-time analysis for Pollution Prevention

" Green chemistry, Introduction," Britannica Academic, August 25, 2015
This article provides history on green chemistry in the United States. In 1991, abiding by the 1990 Pollution Prevention Act, the EPA launched the Alternative Synthetic Pathways for Pollution Prevention research program. The program marked a EPA shift from post-release management to reduction/elimination of hazardous substances during their production. It was expanded to include the development of green solvents and chemicals, and coined "green chemistry" in 1996.

"Plastics and Sustainability," by Michael Tolinski, Scrivener Publishing, 2012
Tolinski provides an analysis of fossil-fuel based plastics versus bio-based plastics, looking at how they differ economically and in terms of product requirements, disposal, and consumer satisfaction. He ultimately discusses finding a balance between the two plastics.

Circular Economy

Franklin, Kate Radical Matter: Rethinking Materials for a Sustainable Future
Thames & Hudson (April 17, 2018)

The ten "Big Ideas" that will shape and inform the choices of materials, design methods, and manufacturing processes made by designers in the years to come

Charter, Martin (Editor) Designing for the Circular Economy
Routledge (August 6, 2018)

This book highlights and explores 'state of the art' research and industrial practice, highlighting CE as a source of: new business opportunities; radical business change; disruptive innovation; social change; and new consumer attitudes.

There has been a push to ban plastic waste imports into Malaysia. Malaysia--previously acting as a recycling center for foreign trash--has expressed concerns over public health and its environment over additional waste and related dumping problems.

A difficult aspect of the recycling process is profiting off of the end result, but a recycling plant in the Netherlands has managed to do so recycling household packaging. The recycled product of polyethylene film can be used for food packaging.

This article provides an overview of the plastics problem, specifically the uninhibited acceleration of plastics production. It then states that recycling is not enough - we must find production based solutions, such as the circular economy approach and zero-waste lifestyles.

Current recycling policies in the UK disregard the location of recycling processes or where that recycled product might end up. Recently a vast amount of UK plastic waste has been exported to south-east Asia, as China--the previous destination for such exported waste--no longer accepts it. This is an unsustainable practice.

The US usually outsources some of its recycling to foreign countries, namely China. however, a new policy enacted by the Chinese government to halt the trade of "foreign waste" is forcing many recycling centers in the US to put recyclables in landfills.

This article addresses the global growing recognition of the need to address marine litter and rethink our approach to plastic and packaging, and outlines measures for enabling a transition to a circular economy that would fight single-use plastics and their negative externalities. These measures take the form of a policy proposal for G20 countries.

This article explains why we use straws so much despite their very negative environmental impact. Although they can only be used once for a couple hours, they take millions of years to degrade and often end up in our oceans.

The MacArthur Foundation launched a Plastics Economy design challenge that gave $1 million to companies that took the plastic out of their packaging. This initiative supports the idea of a circular economy.

"The Personal Care Wipes Market," Nonwovens Industry Magazine, February 5, 2015

The personal care wipes market has seen consistent growth over the last decade and is not slowing down. The industry is attempting to prevent the negative environmental impacts of these wipes by providing information about appropriate disposal, using plant-based materials for wipes, and using solar energy to produce wipes.

"Moby Duck" by Donovan Hohn, Viking, 2011

In the section "The Fourth Chase" (pg. 226-227) Hohn provides a journalistic account of plastic's cultural history, and gets at the root of what made plastics so disposable in the first place. He notes that after the austerities of WWII, consumers were more eager to gorge themselves on products, so in the 1950s when the patent on polyethylene expired, the material became cheaper than ever. The only way the plastic molders could make a profit was by convincing consumers to throw out, buy more, throw out, buy more. In other sections, he explores topics such as shipping conglomerates and Chinese toy factories.

In Bali, Avani Eco converts cassava into a form of plastic bags and straws. This is a natural root and makes plastic pollution more easily biodegradable.

Political and/or Individual Action Against Plastics

"Jamaica takes aim at the trash crisis that is ruining paradise," Washington Post, October 13, 2018

Jamaica is amongst 20 Caribbean and Latin American countries banning the importation and manufacturing of single-use plastics (e.g. straws, bottles, bags).

"China's waste ban has rocked the recycling world and revealed Hong Kong's dire record. What next for the city's rising mountains of trash?," South China Morning Post, September 19, 2018

This article details the international exchange of waste; since the 1980s, about half of the world's plastics, paper, and scrap metals have been absorbed by China. China cut off this lifeline to the global recycling industry, causing countries to overhaul their own recycling processes and shift into circular economies as a result. China's actions majorly exposed Hong Kong - a city known for its waste problem. Will Hong Kong learn to effectively manage its own waste?

"Stop recycling takeout containers, Philadelphia - but go ahead and leave caps on water bottles," Philly Voice, September 18, 2018

In this interview with the Philadelphia Street Department's Scott Graph, reporter Emily Rolen discovers that 1) yes, you can recycle plastic bottle caps, 2) yes, you should wash plastic containers that once contained food before disposing of it, 3) yes, you can rip the top off the pizza box to recycle (no grease), 3) papers and cardboard are better recycled if they are DRY, 4) plastic cups, cutlery, and styrofoam cannot be recycled because there is no market for it, and 5) don't recycle plastic bags, clothing tags, or cassette tapes.

"In India's Largest City, A Ban on Plastics Faces Big Obstacles," Yale Environment 360, August 28, 2018

A strict ban on the sale, manufacturing, and use of disposable plastics was put in place in Mumbai. Those in violation faced fees of up to $350 and/or jail time. In the first week, over 300 plastic bag manufacturers were forced to close, resulting in significant unemployment. Still, the government held strong on the ban and haven't showed any sign of backing down.

"Indonesia combines Islam with environmental activism," DW, June 14, 2018

Indonesia's top Muslim clerical body, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), together with Greenpeace and the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry and Environment are cooperating on an awareness campaign during Ramadan to solve the problem of plastic waste in Indonesia.

The participation of millions of U.S citizens in beach cleanup has generated vast data on pollution and marine plastic debris. The government faces problems assessing the accuracy and usage of that data, as these efforts have increased awareness of such problems, but may not lead to policy change.

"Life Without Plastic" by Chantal Plamondon and Jay Sinha, Page Street Publishing Company, 2017.

This book provides an overview of the toxicity of plastics and their threat to human health. Action-oriented, it gives readers a guide on alternatives to plastic-containing items and steps in reducing their dependance on plastic.

"Plastic-Free," by Beth Terry, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012

Beth Terry details her tips and advice on avoiding the use of plastic in day-to-day life, and why more people should do so.

"Marine Litter: A Global Challenge,"United Nations Environment Programme, 2009.

This report looks at the issue of marine debris with respect to affected regions. For each region, it provides an assessment of the litter's origin as well as its environmental and human impacts, programs in place to reduce such impacts, and recommendations for improvement.

"Tackling Marine Debris in the 21st Century," The National Academies, 2001

This report assesses the effectiveness of national and international efforts to reduce the presence and impact of marine debris. It identifies overall areas that need to be addressed in solving the debris problem and provides recommendations to do so.

The plastic bag ban has been controversial in Kenya. Some citizens don't see any problems with it and actually enjoy seeing less plastic trash, while others see it as a big inconvenience. The main problem seems to be that there aren't many good alternatives to plastic bags. The leader of the plastic bag ban movement in Kenya suggests Kenyans embrace upcycling as a way to combat the loss.

Plastic Waste to Energy Solutions

"Waste-to-energy plant under construction in Haiti," Renewable Energy Caribbean, February 20, 2018
The lack of a public waste program in Haiti means that its urban and natural environments tend to be littered with waste. This makes it a good candidate for a waste-to-energy plant, which will convert municipal waste to electrical power and cooking fuel.

"Caribbean Regional Waste-to-Energy (WtE) Technology Expo and Conference frames main pillars for a regional waste to energy programme," Global Network Regional Sustainable Energy Centres, February 9 2016
A conference was held in Grenada to talk about the feasibility of different waste to energy solutions for small island nations.

" Caribbean Island of Barbados To Get Waste-To-Energy Plant," by Gina-Marie Cheeseman, Triple Pundit, March 26, 2014
Barbados made plans to build a waste-to-energy plant, supplying some if its electricity needs through the transformation of solid waste to energy.

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" Now ocean plastics could be killing oxygen-making bacteria," Wired, May 17, 2019 "The core of the problem is that plastic pollution is a very new science. Researchers are still feeling their way through an environmental threat whose epicness is likely only second to climate change.

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Plastic Oceans
There are increasing high levels of man-made pollution in many of the world's seas and little actually disappears. By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the world's oceans.
We live on a blue planet; the world's oceans cover three quarters of the Earth. They contain 97% of the Earth's water and are currently absorbing around a third of the CO2 being produced by our activities and so helping in part by acting a buffer for some of the impacts of climate change. (30 to 40% of the carbon dioxide from human activity released into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, resulting in the creation of carbonic acid.) Ocean acidification is therefore a rising concern. The average pH balance is dropping and as a result the growth of calcifying organisms such as corals and shellfish is being reduced. Acidification alone, though, is not the only pollution problem faced by the world's seas, and others are escalating at an even faster rate. The impacts and implications are huge and growing.

Around 80% of marine pollution comes from land-based activities. Waste runs or is dumped into drains and rivers and hence the seas. Oil, fertilisers, sewage, plastics and toxic chemicals are all part of the mix. Oil spills are less frequent but in many countries without an established recycling system, used oil is thrown down the drain or poured directly into rivers. Nutrients in fertiliser runoff from farms and lawns produce algae, depleting dissolved oxygen and suffocating marine life, causing dead zones in places such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Baltic. In many regions, untreated sewage still flows into the seas - 80% of urban sewage discharged into the Mediterranean is untreated. A recent addition to the challenge is the role of desalination plants, cropping up in areas of water stress from the Middle East to Australia and California. As a core by-product of their water purification process, they add salt into the seas, so increasing salinity and hence acute toxicity.

While all of the pollutants are having severe negative impact, perhaps the most visible - hence one that will drive the biggest change in the next decade - is plastic. Around 275 million tons of plastic waste is generated each year around the world; between 4.8 million and 12.7 million tons is either washed or dumped deliberately into the sea. The World Bank expects the planet's municipal solid waste to double within 15 years, much of this in the form of single-use plastic items. Bottles, bags, balloons, packaging, shoes - all take decades to break down. This waste is ingested by pretty much every marine animal including fish, dolphins, seals and turtles. So far, plastic has been found to be blocking the digestive tracts of at least 267 different species.

Although this is a global problem, the epicentre of plastic pollution is clear. Today 60% of the plastic waste in the ocean comes from just 5 countries - China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The media already talks about the Great Pacific Garbage patch. By 2025, plastic consumption in Asia will increase by 80%, surpassing 200 million tons; some are calling for specific interventions in these 5 countries. Regionally, the EU is aiming to halve plastic bag use by 2018 but this is not an international standard. Industry experts expect that by 2050 we will be producing three times as much plastic as we do today; on a volume basis, the WEF sees that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the world's oceans.

Plastic pollution is however not alone as an increasing danger to the world's seas. One politically sensitive issue now is associated with dredging and land reclamation. Whether in the South China seas, where China is creating islands built on coral reefs, or in Indonesia, where sand mining has been providing Singapore with the resource to add 130 square kilometres of artificial 'reclaimed' land in the past 40 years, mining has evidently moved from land to sea.

With all the consequences of our actions now becoming apparent, the question is what will change going forward? Has ocean pollution become such a significant issue that there will be tangible change within the next decade? Some think so. Foremost, and largely because of plastic waste, the visibility of the impact is clear in the media and policy bodies. The UN has included as its 14 th Sustainable Development Goal the ambition to "conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources." A core 2025 objective is to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, especially land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.

Unfortunately, much of the world's oceans are not part of any one country's territorial waters. More than 40 per cent of the planet's surface (80 million square miles - seven times the area of the whole African continent) is ocean that belongs to everyone and no one - and hence is largely unregulated. While fishing, environmental, tourist and defence policies all unite to seek to protect and manage the sea close to a nation's shoreline, beyond a notional 12 to 200-mile limits it is largely a free-for-all. This is where the fish, dolphins and plankton are taking the hit. No one is setting the global rules and few are agreeing on a better way.

When will the balance tip? When will the negative impacts on our environment, the ecology and, most significantly from a financial perspective, a good share of our food resources start to change attitudes? Some are putting their faith in China to set new standards, but these may only apply locally. At a global level some see that a rethinking of the value of the 'blue-economy' is required. The Global Ocean Commission, for one, has called for adoption of an ambitious, long-term goal of zero plastic waste into the marine environment. This will require partnerships and behaviour changes that simply do not exist today, and the end of Europe and the US shipping its waste to Asia. If we start to see waste as a resource in the next decade, will perceptions - and maybe behaviours - shift?

Whether seeking to protect food supplies or looking to fulfil UN development goals, bringing order to the high seas is seen as critical for the future. We have already overshot the planetary limits on biodiversity and nitrogen; as the consequences become more apparent, can we avoid the same for ocean pollution?

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There are increasing high levels of man-made pollution in many of the world's seas and little actually disappears. By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the world's oceans. We live on a blue planet; the world's oceans cover three quarters of the Earth.

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Plastic pollution is one of the greatest threats to ocean health worldwide. But, there are many solutions to plastic pollution that you can participate in today. This article covers some of the basic facts about ocean plastic pollution and provides several specific plastic pollution solutions that everyone can take part in.

The Ocean Plastic Pollution Problem

With skyrocketing plastic production, low levels of recycling, and poor waste management, between 4 and 12 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year-enough to cover every foot of coastline on the planet! And that amount is projected to triple in the next 20 years. Let that sink in for a moment.

In the ocean, plastic pollution impacts sea turtles, whales, seabirds, fish, coral reefs, and countless other marine species and habitats. In fact, scientists estimate that more than half of the world's sea turtles and nearly every seabird on Earth have eaten plastic in their lifetimes. Plastic pollution also mars otherwise beautiful beaches, coastlines, and snorkel and dive sites worldwide, even in remote areas such as Midway Atoll.

One of the reasons that plastic pollution is such a problem is that it doesn't go away: "plastics are forever." Instead, plastic debris simply breaks down into ever-smaller particles, known as microplastics, whose environmental impacts are still being determined.

Plastic Pollution Solutions: 7 Things You Can Do Today

Everyone can do something to help solve the plastic pollution problem, and millions of people worldwide are already taking action to reduce their plastic use. Here are seven ways you can make a difference, starting today.

1. Reduce Your Use of Single-Use Plastics

Wherever you live, the easiest and most direct way that you can get started is by reducing your own use of single-use plastics. Single-use plastics include plastic bags, water bottles, straws, cups, utensils, dry cleaning bags, take-out containers, and any other plastic items that are used once and then discarded.

The best way to do this is by a) refusing any single-use plastics that you do not need (e.g. straws, plastic bags, takeout utensils, takeout containers), and b) purchasing, and carrying with you, reusable versions of those products, including reusable grocery bags, produce bags, bottles, utensils, coffee cups, and dry cleaning garment bags. And when you refuse single-use plastic items, help businesses by letting them know that you would like them to offer alternatives.

2. Support Legislation to Curb Plastic Production and Waste

As important as it is to change our individual behaviors, such changes alone are insufficient to stop ocean plastic pollution. We also need legislation that reduces plastic production, improves waste management, and makes plastic producers responsible for the waste they generate. There are a variety of ways that you can support local, national, and international legislation that provide critical solutions to reduce plastic pollution. One such effort in the United States is the 2021 Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, a comprehensive federal bill that aims to address the plastic pollution crisis, and there are a number of state level initiatives to introduce extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation that makes plastic producers and distributors responsible for their products and packaging at the end of life.

At the international level, hundreds of organizations and businesses successfully worked together with United Nations member states to enact a global plastics treaty, signed by 175 member states, that will set global rules and regulations to reduce plastic pollution. And legislation that limits, taxes, or bans unnecessary single use plastic items, such as plastic bags, takeout containers, and bottles, has been successfully enacted in many places globally, and you can support the adoption of such policies in your community too. Here is a comprehensive resource and toolkit on legislative approaches to limiting plastic bags, foodware, microplastics, and more.

3. Recycle Properly

This should go without saying, but when you use single-use (and other) plastics that can be recycled, always be sure to recycle them. At present, just 9% of plastic is recycled worldwide. Recycling helps keep plastics out of the ocean and reduces the amount of "new" plastic in circulation. If you need help finding a place to recycle plastic waste near you, check Earth911's recycling directory. It's also important to check with your local recycling center about the types of plastic they accept.

4. Participate In (or Organize) a Beach or River Cleanup

Help remove plastics from the ocean and prevent them from getting there in the first place by participating in, or organizing a cleanup of your local beach or waterway. This is one of the most direct and rewarding ways to fight ocean plastic pollution. You can simply go to the beach or waterway and collect plastic waste on your own or with friends or family, or you can join a local organization's cleanup or an international event like our Global Ocean Cleanup or the International Coastal Cleanup.

Take Our 7-Day Fight Plastic Waste Challenge

Join the global movement to fight plastic waste with our 7-day challenge. With just a few minutes a day, you'll be on your way to reducing ocean plastic pollution from home.
Take the Challenge

5. Avoid Products Containing Microbeads

Tiny plastic particles, called " microbeads," have become a growing source of ocean plastic pollution in recent years. Microbeads are found in some face scrubs, toothpastes, and bodywashes, and they readily enter our oceans and waterways through our sewer systems, and affect hundreds of marine species. Avoid products containing plastic microbeads by looking for "polythelene" and "polypropylene" on the ingredient labels of your cosmetic products (find a list of products containing microbeads here).

6. Spread the Word

Stay informed on issues related to plastic pollution and help make others aware of the problem. Tell your friends and family about how they can be part of the solution, or host a viewing party for one of the many plastic pollution focused documentaries, like A Plastic Ocean, Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of Plastic, Bag It, Addicted to Plastic, Plasticized, or Garbage Island.

7. Support Organizations Addressing Plastic Pollution

There are many non-profit organizations working to reduce and eliminate ocean plastic pollution in a variety of different ways, including Oceanic Society, Plastic Pollution Coalition, 5 Gyres, Algalita, Plastic Soup Foundation, and others. These organizations rely on donations from people like you to continue their important work. Even small donations can make a big difference!

These seven ideas only scratch the surface for ways you can help address the growing problem of plastic pollution in the oceans. The important thing is that we all do something, no matter how small. For more ideas and resources, sign up to join our Blue Habits community of people worldwide committed to joyful daily actions that improve ocean health.

Reduce Plastic Pollution From Home with Our 7-Day Challenge

Join the global movement to fight plastic waste by participating in our 7-day challenge.
Take the Challenge

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7 Ways to Reduce Ocean Plastic Pollution Today

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Plastic pollution is one of the greatest threats to ocean health worldwide. But, there are many solutions to plastic pollution that you can participate in

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Together we can stop plastic pollution

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Plastic Pollution Coalition's expansive global alliance includes more than 1,300 organizations and businesses, and more than 14,000 individuals who have the shared goal of helping to create a more just, equitable, regenerative world free of plastic pollution and its toxic impacts.

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How Ocean Pollution Affects Humans - Planet Aid, Inc.

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By Andrew Dilevics The environment pays a heavy price for our "fast fashion" habits. The textile industry regularly contaminates waterways with dyes and waste, and washing our synthetic clothing releases plastic microfibers into the ocean. Growing enough cotton to produce just one t-shirt requires up to 700 gallon of water!

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Two Ocean Aquarium

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The plastic problem: how does plastic pollution affect wildlife?

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Plastic pollution causes great harm to the organisms big and small that encounter it. From tiny corals to majestic whales, more than 700 marine species…

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By Claire Le Guern
Last updated in November 2019.

Introduction

The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced.

Washed out on our coasts in obvious and clearly visible form, the plastic pollution spectacle blatantly unveiling on our beaches is only the prelude of the greater story that unfolded further away in the world's oceans, yet mostly originating from where we stand: the land.

For more than 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics have continued to rise. An estimated 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012, and confirming and upward trend over the past years.(See: Worldwatch Institute - January 2015). In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tons, and, according to a 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 297.5 million tons by the end of 2015.

Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature.

Although inhabited and remote, South Sentinel island is covered with plastic! Plastic pollution and marine debris, South Sentinel Island, Bay of Bengal. Photo source: © SAF - Coastal Care

A simple walk on any beach, anywhere, and the plastic waste spectacle is present. All over the world the statistics are ever growing, staggeringly. Tons of plastic debris (which by definition are waste that can vary in size from large containers, fishing nets to microscopic plastic pellets or even particles) is discarded every year, everywhere, polluting lands, rivers, coasts, beaches, and oceans.

Published in the journal Science in February 2015, a study conducted by a scientific working group at UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), quantified the input of plastic waste from land into the ocean. The results: every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in our oceans. It's equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world. In 2025, the annual input is estimated to be about twice greater, or 10 bags full of plastic per foot of coastline. So the cumulative input for 2025 would be nearly 20 times the 8 million metric tons estimate - 100 bags of plastic per foot of coastline in the world!

Lying halfway between Asia and North America, north of the Hawaiian archipelago, and surrounded by water for thousands of miles on all sides, the Midway Atoll is about as remote as a place can get. Although some delivery services in Europe will use paper packaging. However, Midways' isolation has not spared it from the great plastic tide either, receiving massive quantities of plastic debris, shot out from the North Pacific circular motion of currents (gyre). Midways' beaches, covered with large debris and millions of plastic particles in place of the sand, are suffocating, envenomed by the slow plastic poison continuously washing ashore.

Then, on shore, the spectacle becomes even more poignant, as thousands of bird corpses rest on these beaches, piles of colorful plastic remaining where there stomachs had been. In some cases, the skeleton had entirely biodegraded; yet the stomach-size plastic piles are still present, intact. Witnesses have watched in horror seabirds choosing plastic pieces, red, pink, brown and blue, because of their similarity to their own food. It is estimated that of the 1.5 million Laysan Albatrosses which inhabit Midway, all of them have plastic in their digestive system; for one third of the chicks, the plastic blockage is deadly, coining Midway Atoll as "albatross graveyards" by five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, who recently filmed and photographed the catastrophic effects of the plastic pollution there.

Albatross, victim of plastic ingestion. Photo: Unknown.

From the whale, sea lions, and birds to the microscopic organisms called zooplankton, plastic has been, and is, greatly affecting marine life on shore and off shore. In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different animal species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, as well as millions of birds and fishes.

The United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution (GESAMP), estimated that land-based sources account for up to 80 percent of the world's marine pollution, 60 to 95 percent of the waste being plastics debris.

However, most of the littered plastic waste worldwide ultimately ends up at sea. Swirled by currents, plastic litter accumulates over time at the center of major ocean vortices forming "garbage patches", i.e. larges masses of ever-accumulating floating debris fields across the seas. The most well known of these "garbage patches" is the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch, discovered and brought to media and public attention in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore. Yet some others large garbage patches are highly expected to be discovered elsewhere, as we'll see further.

The plastic waste tide we are faced with is not only obvious for us to clearly see washed up on shore or bobbing at sea. Most disconcertingly, the overwhelming amount and mass of marine plastic debris is beyond visual, made of microscopic range fragmented plastic debris that cannot be just scooped out of the ocean.

Slow, silent, omnipresent, ever increasing, more toxic than previously thought, the plastic pollution's reality bears sobering consequences, as recently unveiled by the report of Japanese chemist Katsuhiko Saido at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in August 2009 and the findings from the Project Kaisei and Scripps (Seaplex) scientific cruise-expeditions collecting seawater samples from the Great Garbage Patch. Both, the reports and expeditions uncovered new evidence of how vast and "surprisingly" (as it was termed at the ACS meeting) toxic the plastic presence in the marine environment is.

Extremely littered beach in northern Norway. Photo source: ©© Bo Eide

Environmentalists have long denounced plastic as a long-lasting pollutant that does not fully break down, in other terms, not biodegradable. In 2004, a study lead by Dr Richard Thompson at the University of Plymouth, UK, reported finding great amount of plastic particles on beaches and waters in Europe, the Americas, Australia, Africa and Antarctica. They reported that small plastic pellets called "mermaids tears", which are the result of industry and domestic plastic waste, have indeed spread across the world's seas. Some plastic pellets had fragmented to particles thinner than the diameter of a human hair. But while some cannot be seen, those pieces are still there and are still plastic. They are not absorbed into the natural system, they just float around within it, and ultimately are ingested by marine animals and zooplankton (Plankton that consists of tiny animals, such as rotifers, copepods, and krill, larger animals eggs and larvae's and of microorganisms once classified as animals, such as dinoflagellates and other protozoans.). This plastic micro-pollution, with its inherent toxicity and consequences on the food chain, had yet to be studied...

Dr Saido's study was the first one to look at what actually happens over the years to these tons of plastic waste floating in the world's oceans. The study presents an alarming fact: these tons of plastic waste reputed to be virtually indestructible, do decompose with surprising speed, at much lower temperature than previously thought possible, and release toxic substances into the seawater, namely bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomer. These chemicals are considered toxic and can be metabolized subsequent to ingestion, leading Dr Saido to state "...plastics in the ocean will certainly give rise to new sources of global contaminations that will persist long into the future".

This past August a different study, from a group of oceanography students from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), UCSD, accompanied by the international organization Project Kaisei's team, embarked on two vessels, New Horizon and Kaisei, through the North Pacific Ocean to sample plastic debris and garbage. SIO director Tony Haymet described the trip as " ...a forage into the great plastic garbage patch in the north." To summarize the scientific data collected on the ship, Miriam Goldstein, chief scientist on New Horizon, stated: "We did find debris... coming up in our nets in over 100 consecutive net tows over a distance of 1,700 miles... It is pretty shocking." She said, "[There is] not a big island, not a garbage dump [that we] can really see easily." She described it more as a place where large debris floats by a ship only occasionally, but a lot of tiny pieces of plastic exist below the surface of the water. "Ocean pretty much looks like ocean," she said. "The plastic fragments are mostly less than a quarter inch long and are below the surface. It took at first a magnifying-glass to see the true extent of plastic damage in the North Pacific."

The overwhelmingly largest unquantifiable plastic mass is just made of confetti-like fragmented pieces of plastic.

In a press conference in September 2009, the director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), Maziar Movassaghi, referring to Project Kaisei's findings, held a small glass bottle filled with seawater sampled at the Great North Garbage Patch. Inside was murky seawater with hundreds of fragmented plastics pieces: "That is what we have to stop".

All sea creatures, from the largest to the microscopic organisms, are, at one point or another, swallowing the seawater soup instilled with toxic chemicals from plastic decomposition. The world population "... (is) eating fish that have eaten other fish, which have eaten toxin-saturated plastics. In essence, humans are eating their own waste." (Dixit Renee Brown, WiredPress).

Photo: Manan Vastsyayana

The scientists from Project Kaisei and Scripps hope their data gives clues as to the density and extent of these debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch might have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger." We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet.

The "Silent World" is shedding mermaid tears. A plastic-poison has undeniably been instilled by us, prompting an unwilling and illegitimate confrontation of two titans: one synthetic (plastic), the other oceanic. The crisis is of massive proportion. An unprecedented plastic tide has occurred, pervasively affecting the world's oceans, beaches, coasts, seafloor, animals and ultimately, us.

I: The Great Plastic Tide: Magnitude, Scope, Extent

A full understanding of the magnitude and scope of this plastic pollution starts with clear definitions as to what and why it is happening. Thus, we will define the notions of marine debris, gyres, and oceanic garbage patches, or giant floating marine debris field, as first discovered in the North Pacific by Captain Charles Moore's, since referred to as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GGP).

Marine Debris and Plastic

Krichim, Boat in plastic, April 25, 2009. Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff

Marine Debris

The term marine debris has been used for at least 25 years to refer to man-made materials that have been discarded or lost into the ocean. The earliest references come from the 1984 Workshop on the Impacts and Fate of Marine Debris (Shomura and Yoshida 1985). This workshop came out of a 1982 request from the Marine Mammal Commission to the National Marine Fisheries Service to examine the impacts of marine debris. At that time, the focus of research was primarily on derelict fishing gear. Keep in mind that this was prior to the implementation of both the high-seas driftnet ban and MARPOL Annex V.

Other terms used prior to 1984 include the following: man-made debris (Feder et all 1978), synthetic debris (Balazs 1979), plastic litter (Merrell 1980), floating plastic debris (Morris 1980), man-made objects (Shaughnessy 1980, Venrick et al 1973), and debris (Scordino and Fisher 1983).

It would appear that the term debris was being used in these articles by academics as something discarded: litter.

The term marine debris encompasses more than plastic, including metals (derelict vessels, dumped vehicles, beverage containers), glass (light bulbs, beverage containers, older fishing floats), and other materials (rubber, textiles, lumber). Plastic certainly makes up the majority of floating litter, but in some areas the debris on the ocean floor may contain sizeable amounts of those other denser types.

Scientists have similarly and more simply defined marine debris as, any manufactured or processed solid waste material that enters the ocean environment from any source (Coe & Rogers, 1997). Marine debris is definitely characterized as human-created waste that has deliberately or accidentally become afloat. They tend to accumulate at the centre of gyres and on coastlines, frequently washing aground where it is known as beach litter.

The US Congress passed a bill in 2006, The Marine Debris Research, Prevention, and Reduction Act, to create a program to address the marine debris pollution. One of the requirements in the bill was for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the U.S. Coast Guard, to promulgate a definition of marine debris for the purposes of the Act. Thus, USCG and NOAA drafted and published a definition of marine debris in September 2009. The definition is this: "Any persistent solid material that is manufactured or processed and directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, disposed of or abandoned into the marine environment or the Great Lakes." Marine debris can come in many forms, from a plastic soda bottle to a derelict vessel. Types and components of marine debris include plastics, glass, metal, Styrofoam, rubber, derelict fishing gear, and derelict vessels.

UNEP has defined marine debris, or marine litter, as "any persistent, manufactured, processed, or solid material discarded, disposed of, or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment." This is an even more global and comprehensive definition, as it does include the marine and correlated coastal impact of the aforementioned litter.

Plastic pollution covering the shore, Morocco.Photo: © SAF - Coastal Care

As we mentioned supra, land-based sources of debris account for up to 80 percent of the world's marine pollution. Such debris is unquestionably one of the world's most pervasive pollution problems affecting our beaches, coasts, oceans, seafloors, inland waterways and lands. It affects the economies and inhabitants of coastal and waterside communities worldwide. The effect of coastal littering is obviously compounded by vectors, such as rivers and storm drains, discharging litter from inland urban areas. Obviously, ocean current patterns, climate and tides, and proximity to urban centers, industrial and recreational areas, shipping lanes, and commercial fishing grounds influence the types and amount of debris that is found in the open ocean or collected along beaches, coasts and waterways, above and below the water's edge.

The other 20 percent of this debris is from dumping activities on the water, including vessels (from small power and sailboats to large transport ships carrying people and goods), offshore drilling rigs and platforms, and fishing piers.

Over the past 60 years, organic materials, once the most common form of debris, have yielded to synthetic elements as the most abundant material in solid waste. Marine litter is now 60 to 80 percent plastic, reaching 95 percent in some areas, according to a report by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (created by Charles Moore), published in October 2008 in Environmental Research.

Citarum River, flowing to the Sea, is the main source of houselhold water for Jakarta.(14million people). Photo source: photobucket

Around and around, worldwide, at distant seas, or merely bobbing among the waves before washing up ultimately on shore, a daily and ever too common plastic spectacle is unveiled: bottles, plastic bags, fishnets, clothing, lighters, tires, polystyrene, containers, plastics shoes, just a myriad of man-made items, all sharing a common origin: us.

Yearly data adds to the despondent reality of how extensively the plastic tide is increasingly affecting world's beaches and coasts. Launched in 1986 by the Ocean Conservancy, the Center for Marine Conservation's annual International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) has grown into the world's largest volunteer effort to collect data on the marine environment. Held the third Saturday of each September, the International Coastal Cleanup engages the public to remove trash and debris from the coasts, beaches, waterways, underwater, and on lands to identify the sources of debris. It is a compelling global snapshot of marine debris collected on one day at thousands of sites all over the world. The 2008, 23rd ICC reported that 104 countries and locations, from Bahrain to Bangladesh, and in 42 US States, from southern California to the rocky coast of Maine, had participated. The overwhelming percentage of debris collected was plastics and smoking paraphernalia. The 2008 report states that plastic litter has increased by 126 percent since ICC first survey in 1994. The top 3 items found in 2008 were cigarettes butts, plastic bags, and food wrappers/containers.

Durable and slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products, from containers for beverage bottles, packing straps and tarps, and synthetic nylon materials used in fishing line, all become debris with staying power. Plastics debris accumulates because it does not biodegrade as many other substances do; although it will photo degrade on exposure to sunlight and does decompose, more rapidly than previously thought. (We will explain these processes as we study the nature and properties of plastic itself infra.).

In addition, most of these plastic waste items are highly buoyant, allowing them to travel in currents for thousands of miles, endangering marine ecosystems and wildlife along the way. Marine debris is a global transboundary pollution problem.

Icelandic shore. The marine area around Iceland is considered as one of the cleanest of the world. Photo Source: Clean up the Coastline, Veraldarvinir

The instillation of plastic in an oceanic world vests a terrible reality. Because of the properties of plastic as a synthetic material and because of the absence of boundary, vastness, currents and winds at seas, this resilient polluting material is being spread worldwide by an even more powerful vehicle, the seas. It appears then daunting, impossible, a priori, to control, efficiently clean-up, remedy effectively, even sufficiently study the plastic pollution. This unwilling confrontation of titans, one plastic the other oceanic, has become ineluctably a crisis of massive proportion.

Plastic

The paucity of concerted and definitive scientific data/research in this matter is staggering compared to the extent of the problem.
Only in 1997, with Captain Charles Moore's discovery, was the plastic waste pollution in the ocean widely brought to media light and finally began to receive more serious attention from the public and the scientific world, stepping the way to more exhaustive research about plastic and its consequences and effects when entering marine life.

Of the 260 million tons of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the Ocean, according to a Greenpeace report (Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, 2006). Seventy percent of the mass eventually sinks, damaging life on the seabed. The rest floats in open seas, often ending up in gyres, circular motion of currents, forming conglomerations of swirling plastic trash called garbage patches, or ultimately ending up washed ashore on someone's beach.

But the washed up or floating plastic pollution is a lot more than an eyesore or a choking/entanglement hazard for marine animals or birds. Once plastic debris enters the water, it becomes one of the most pervasive problems because of plastic's inherent properties: buoyancy, durability (slow photo degradation), propensity to absorb waterborne pollutants, its ability to get fragmented in microscopic pieces, and more importantly, its proven possibility to decompose, leaching toxic Bisphenol A (BPA) and other toxins in the seawater.

"Plastics are a contaminant that goes beyond the visual", says Bill Henry of the Long Marine Laboratory, UCSC.

Seal trapped in plastic pollution. Photo: ©© Tedxgp2

But before we develop further the realities and consequences of the plastic-covered beaches, seafloor and plastic-instilled seawater, it is necessary to present simple facts about plastic itself.

Facts About Plastic

What is plastic?

A simple definition could be: any of a group of synthetic or natural organic materials that may be shaped when soft and then hardened, including many types of resins, resinoids, polymers, cellulose derivatives, casein materials, and proteins: used in place of other materials, as glass, wood, and metals, in construction and decoration, for making many articles, as coatings, and, drawn into filaments, for weaving. They are often known by trademark names, as Bakelite, Vinylite, or Lucite.

In chemistry, plastics are large molecules, called polymers, composed of repeated segments, called monomers, with carbon backbones. A polymer is simply a very large molecule made up of many smaller units joined together, generally end to end, to create a long chain. The smallest building block of a polymer is called a monomer. Polymers are divided into two distinct groups: thermoplastics (moldable) and thermosets (not). The word "plastics" generally applies to the synthetic products of chemistry.

Alexander Parkes created the first man-made plastic and publicly demonstrated it at the 1862 Great International Exhibition in London. The material, called parkesine, was an organic material derived from cellulose that, once heated, could be molded and retained its shape when cooled.
Many, but not all, plastic products have a number - the resin identification code - molded, formed or imprinted in or on the container, often on the bottom. This system of coding was developed in 1988 by the U.S.-based Society of the Plastics Industry to facilitate the recycling of post-consumer plastics. It is indeed, quite interesting to go through the fine lines.

1. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE) - Used in soft drink, juice, water, beer, mouthwash, peanut butter, salad dressing, detergent, and cleaner containers. Leaches antimony trioxide and (2ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP).

2. DEHP is an endocrine disruptor that mimics the female hormone estrogen. It has been strongly linked to asthma and allergies in children. It may cause certain types of cancer and it has been linked to negative effects on the liver, kidney, spleen, bone formation, and body weight. In Europe, DEHP has been banned since 1999 from use in plastic toys for children under the age of three.

3. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) - Used in opaque milk, water, and juice containers, bleach, detergent and shampoo bottles, garbage bags, yogurt and margarine tubs, and cereal box liners. Considered a safer plastic. Research on risks associated with this type of plastic is ongoing.

4. Polyvinyl chloride (V or Vinyl or PVC) - Used in toys, clear food and non-food packaging (e.g., cling wrap), some squeeze bottles, shampoo bottles, cooking oil and peanut butter jars, detergent and window cleaner bottles, shower curtains, medical tubing, and numerous construction products (e.g., pipes, siding). PVC has been described as one of the most hazardous consumer products ever created. Leaches di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) or butyl benzyl phthalate (BBzP), depending on which is used as the plasticizer or softener (usually DEHP). DEHP and BBzP are endocrine disruptors mimicking the female hormone estrogen; have been strongly linked to asthma and allergic symptoms in children; may cause certain types of cancer; and linked to negative effects on the liver, kidney, spleen, bone formation, and body weight. In Europe, DEHP, BBzP, and other dangerous phthalates have been banned from use in plastic toys for children under three since 1999. Not so elsewhere, including Canada and the United States.
Dioxins are unintentionally, but unavoidably, produced during the manufacture of materials containing chlorine, including PVC and other chlorinated plastic feedstocks. Dioxin is a known human carcinogen and the most potent synthetic carcinogen ever tested in laboratory animals. A characterization by the National Institute of Standards and Technology of cancer causing potential evaluated dioxin as over 10,000 times more potent than the next highest chemical (diethanol amine), half a million times more than arsenic, and a million or more times greater than all others.

5. Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) - Used in grocery store, dry cleaning, bread and frozen food bags, most plastic wraps, and squeezable bottles (honey, mustard). Considered a safer plastic. Research on risks associated with this type of plastic is ongoing.

6. Polypropylene (PP) - Used in ketchup bottles, yogurt and margarine tubs, medicine and syrup bottles, straws, and Rubbermaid and other opaque plastic containers, including baby bottles. Considered a safer plastic. Research on risks associated with this type of plastic is ongoing.

7. Polystyrene (PS) - Used in Styrofoam containers, egg cartons, disposable cups and bowls, take-out food containers, plastic cutlery, and compact disc cases. Leaches styrene, an endocrine disruptor mimicking the female hormone estrogen, and thus has the potential to cause reproductive and developmental problems. Long-term exposure by workers has shown brain and nervous system effects and adverse effects on red blood cells, liver, kidneys, and stomach in animal studies. Also present in secondhand cigarette smoke, off gassing of building materials, car exhaust, and possibly drinking water. Styrene migrates significantly from polystyrene containers into the container's contents when oily foods are heated in such containers.

8. Other - This is a catchall category that includes anything that does not come within the other six categories. As such, one must be careful in interpreting this category because it includes polycarbonate - a dangerous plastic - but it also includes the new, safer, biodegradable bio-based plastics made from renewable resources such as corn and potato starch and sugar cane. Polycarbonate is used in many plastic baby bottles, clear plastic sippy cups, sports water bottles, three and five gallon large water storage containers, metal food can liners, some juice and ketchup containers, compact discs, cell phones, computers. Polycarbonate leaches Bisphenol A (some effects described above) and numerous studies have indicated a wide array of possible adverse effects from low-level exposure to Bisphenol A: chromosome damage in female ovaries, decreased sperm production in males, early onset of puberty, various behavioral changes, altered immune function, and sex reversal in frogs.

Rob Krebs of the American Plastics Council notes that people value plastics for exactly what creates the most problems at sea and on lands: their durability.

Plastic debris, of all sizes and shapes, is a transboundary pollution problem with a powerful vehicle, the ocean.

Vacha Dam near town of Krichim, April 25, 2009. Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff

Buoyancy

Plastics travel long distances. Their distribution in the oceans isn't uniform, yet they are omnipresent from the Polar Regions to the Equator. Scientists are still refining methods to detect and analyze the materials. A good example of plastic debris' buoyancy is as follows. In 1992, twenty containers full of rubber ducks were lost overboard from a ship traveling from China to Seattle. By 1994, some had been tracked to Alaska, while others reached Iceland in 2000. The ducks (with a distinctive logo on their base) have been sighted in the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (Ebbesmeyer, 2003).

Photodegradation Vs. Biodegradation

Plastic is generally a durable material. Its durability has made the culprit of the problem since it is considered resistant to natural biodegradation processes, i.e. the microbes that break down other substances do not recognize plastic as food. Yet plastic can be fragmented with the effects of UV, being broken down by light in smaller and smaller debris over time.

Biodegradation, the breaking down of organic substances by natural means, happens all the time in nature. All plant-based, animal-based, or natural mineral-based substances will over time biodegrade. In its natural state raw crude oil will biodegrade, but man-made petrochemical compounds made from oil, such as plastic, will not. Why not? Because plastic is a combination of elements extracted from crude oil then re-mixed up by men in white coats. Because these combinations are man made they are unknown to nature. Consequently, it has been thought that there is no natural system to break them down. The enzymes and the micro organisms responsible for breaking down organic materials that occur naturally such as plants, dead animals, rocks and minerals, don't recognize them. This means that plastic products are said indestructible, in a biodegradable sense at least.

In sum, as time passes, we know that plastic will eventually photo-degrade, i.e. break down into smaller and smaller fragments by exposure to the sun. The photo-degradation process continues down to the molecular level, yet photo-degraded plastic remains a polymer. No matter how small the pieces, they are still and always will be plastic, i.e. they are not absorbed into or changed by natural processes. At sea, the plastic fragmentation process occurs as well, due to wave, sand action, and oxidation. Estimates for plastic degradation at sea has been ranged from 450 to 1,000 years.

Of particular concern are the floating small plastic fragments often referred in the media to as mermaids' tears, which are tiny nurdles of raw plastic resin that form the building material of every manufactured plastic product, or are granules of domestic waste that have fragmented over the years. Dr Richard Thompson of the University of Plymouth, UK has identified plastic particles thinner than the diameter of a human hair. But while they cannot be seen, those pieces are still there and are still plastic. Not absorbed into the natural system, they just float around within it. He estimates that there are 100,000 particles of plastic per sq km of seabed and 300,000 items of plastic per sq km of sea surface.

Either way, mermaid tears, or fragmented plastic debris, reaching microscopic size over time, remain everywhere and are almost impossible to clean up. They are light enough to float in the wind, landing in the earth's oceans. Mermaid's tears are often found in filter feeders like mussels, barnacle, lugworm and amphipods.

Thus, the photo degradation of plastic debris makes the matter worse. Plastic becomes microscopic, invisible, yet ever polluting waters, beaches, coasts, seafloor, being eaten by even tinier marine organisms, therefore entering the food chain insidiously and ineluctably.

Toxic Sponge

Corroborating reports and findings worldwide demonstrated that fragmented plastics debris' increase and massive presence on and off shores does constitute reason for raised worries and awareness.

Studies on small plastic pellet by Dr Richard Thompson and by Hideshige Takada, Yukie Mato professor of organic geochemistry at Tokyo University, have shown that plastic debris meeting other pollutants in the oceans absorbs harmful chemicals from the sea water they float in, acting like a pollution sponges.

These studies have been conducted on plastic nurdles not just because of their uniform size and shape, thus easier to study and compare by scientifics, but also because of their wide spread presence on the world's beaches.

In UK, mermaid tears are the second common plastic litter found on the beaches according to the Marine Conservation Society's 2007 data and a Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) report.

According to Charles Moore, these resin pellets account for around 8 percent of annual oil production and are the raw material for the 260 million tons of plastic consumed yearly worldwide. Lightweight and small, they escape in untold volumes during transport and manufacture and wash in the ocean.

Even though these researches have been conducted on nurdles, it is crucial to keep in mind, as Dr. Takada team confirmed, that other types of plastic debris (from fishing gear, shopping bags, to small fragments) displays the exact same propensity as the nurdles of raw plastic resin to absorb toxins.

Nurdles covered beach. Photo Source: Algalita Foundation

Plastic resin pellets are round, shiny and tiny, mostly less than 5mm in diameter. The very structure of the plastic material is oily and greasy (basically plastics are solid oil) therefore promoting the accumulation of hydrophobic contaminants (ones that tend to repel and not absorb water) from the surrounding seawater. Chemicals like PCB's and DDE are very hydrophobic. It was shown that plastic pellets suck up these dangerous persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and toxins with a concentration factor that's almost 1 million times greater compared to the overall concentration of the chemicals in seawater. In other words, waterborne hydrophobic pollutants do collect and magnify on the surface of plastic debris, thus making plastic far more deadly in the ocean than it would be on land.

These findings, published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, were based on samples gathered from 30 beaches in 17 countries. PCB (Polychlorinated biphenyls) pollutant concentrations on plastic pellet were highest on US coasts, followed by Western Europe and Japan. The highest concentrations of DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), the most toxic of all pesticides, were found on the US west coast and Vietnam.

Plastic marine debris, thought to be "indestructible", "lasting forever", has been shown to decompose faster than previously thought, under unexpected conditions (in the water and at sea temperature) and, most importantly, releasing toxic substances not found in the natural element: seawater.

Decompose

Since plastics belong to a chemical family of high polymers, they are essentially made up of a long chain of molecules containing repeated units of carbon atoms. Because of this inherent molecular stability (high molecular weight), plastics do not easily breakdown into simpler components.

North America, touched landscape. Photo Source: photobucket

Plastics do decompose, though not fully, over a very long period of time (in average 100 to 500 years). Commercially available plastics (polyolefins like polyethylene, polypropylene, etc.) have been further made resistant to decomposition by means of additional stabilizers like antioxidants. Thus, unless the plastic is specially designed to decompose in the soil, such materials can last a very long time because the chemical bonds that hold the molecules together are often stronger than nature's power to take them apart. This means that soil microorganisms that can easily attack and decompose things like wood and other formerly living materials cannot break the various kinds of strong bonds that are common to most plastics. This depends upon the plastic (polymer) and the environment to which it is exposed.

The Marine Conservancy has published that the estimated decomposition rates of most plastic debris found on coasts are:

Foamed plastic cups: 50 years

Plastic beverage holder: 400 years

Disposable diapers: 450 year

Plastic bottle: 450

Fishing line: 600 years.

Until Dr. Saido's report, no studies had been conducted on plastic decomposition at low temperature in the marine environment, owing to the mistaken conception that plastic does practically not decompose in such condition. In the first study to look at what happens over the years to the billions of pounds of plastic waste drifting in the world's oceans, researchers, lead by Katsuhiko Saido, PhD, reported that plastic does "decompose with surprising speed (as little as a year) and release potentially toxic substances into the water."

These findings were reported on August 19, 2009, at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The scientists there termed the discovery "surprising."

Dr. Saido described a new method to simulate the breakdown of plastic products at low temperatures (30º Celsius, 86º F), such as those found in some oceans. David Barnes, marine ecologist from the British Antarctic Survey, expressed that the Japanese's team lab results cannot be applied uniformly across the ocean. However, even though the decomposition process would not occur in much cooler seawater as Barnes mentioned, the oceans are vast, currents are constant and permanent, nothing stays static and furthermore, it seems that garbage patches where plastics accumulate, are to be found in even greater dimension in the South Gyres, in the tropical and sub tropical zones with very warm waters. One of the researchers stated: "Even at 30 degrees Celsius, the plastic decomposes. In natural conditions, the tide comes in and sunlight heats the plastics [which increases decomposition]."

The type of plastic studied by Saido's team was polystyrene, a white foamed plastic, commonly known by the trademark Styrofoam.

The process involved modeling plastic decomposition at room temperature, removing heat from the plastic and then using a liquid to extract the BPA and PS Oligomer that are not found naturally, thus must have been created through the decomposition of the plastic. Once degraded, the plastic was shown to release three new compounds not found in nature: styrene monomer (SM), styrene dimer (SD) and styrene trimer (ST). While SM is already a known carcinogen, SD and ST are suspected to be as well.

Plastics are not metabolized subsequent to ingestion since they are polymers. On the other hand, low molecular compounds such as PS oligomer or BPA from plastic decomposition are toxic and can be metabolized!

Samples of sea sand and seawater collected from Europe, India, Japan and the Pacific Ocean were found to be contaminated, with up to 150 parts per million of some of these components of plastic decomposition.
"Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable," said study lead researcher Katsuhiko Saido, Ph.D. "We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future."

This latest study clearly shows new micro-pollution by compounds generated by plastic decomposition to be taking place out of sight in the ocean, leaching toxic chemicals such as Bisphenol A (BPA) and derivatives of polystyrene.

Even though present in seawater and sands, the pollutants are found in highest concentration in areas heavily littered with plastic debris, such as ocean vortices, which bring us to define more specifically the notion of gyres and "garbage patches".

Gyres and Garbage Patches

The plastic litter defacing the beaches of the World, alarming in Hawaiian archipelagos for instance, led, only two decades ago, a couple of private and public teams of environmentalists and scientists to start conducting research regarding marine debris in the oceans.

Between 1985 and 1988, an Alaska- based team of researchers found high concentrations of marine debris accumulating in regions governed by vortices like pattern of ocean currents, which lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States to publish a paper, in 1988, mentioning the high probability of the existence of "a large area highly concentrating plastic waste debris in the North Pacific". Flyovers of the area have been conducted as well, but not in a conclusive way. The trash was not that obvious from the sky. Indeed, despite its size and density, the GGP is not visible from satellite photography because of its consistency, as Kaisei project and Scripps teams confirmed last August. The largest mass of the plastic pollution contains fragmented pieces of plastic, permeating the ocean, almost invisible to the naked eye, suspended at, or beneath the surface of the ocean.

Plastic soup. Photo: Charles Moore

As evoked above, Charles Moore, a Californian sailor, surfer, volunteer environmentalist, and researcher, was crossing the Pacific Ocean while returning from a trans Pacific sailing race in 1997. He veered from the usual sea route taking a shortcut across the edge of the North Pacific Ocean. He came upon an area, the Doldrums, a windless part of the ocean that mariners usually avoid. The area is filled with tiny phytoplankton, but few big fish or mammals, thus fishermen and sailors rarely travel through it. There, Charles Moore saw an ocean he had never known. Every time he stepped out on deck, "there were shampoo caps and soap bottles and plastic bags and fishing floats as far as I could see. Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic."

This area that Charles Moore came upon, the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, is a slowly moving, clockwise spiral or vortex of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. He reported his find to Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer, who named it the Eastern Garbage Patch.
Shocked by the extent of the plastic litter, Charles Moore went on alerting the world to the existence of this phenomenon.

Moore's discovery was finally corroborating previous scientists's, suspicions and extrapolations in regard to the existence of a high debris concentration in stable bodies of oceanic waters created over time by the rotating ring-like ocean currents system called gyres.

"We were out in the middle of the Pacific, where you would think the ocean would be pristine," recalls the Alguita's captain, Charles Moore. "...And instead, we get the Exxon Valdez of plastic-bag spills."

Captain Moore's giant floating debris field's discovery has since been subject to other expeditions, and another "patch" was found further west.

Media light was finally brought in force at that point. Human kind has walked on the moon since 1969...yet the ocean was still quite an unknown frontier in our collective conscience.

Gyres

The North Pacific gyre has given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating plastic debris, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GGP). It is a gyre of marine litter in the Central North Pacific Ocean stretching for hundreds of miles across the ocean 1,000 miles from California coast on the East, to Japan and Hawaii on the West.

More specifically, a gyre is a large-scale circular feature made up of ocean currents that spiral around a central point, clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. Gyres make up to 40 percent of the ocean. That is 25 percent of the globe. All of them are accumulators of debris, Moore says.

Worldwide, there are five major subtropical oceanic gyres: the North and South Pacific Subtropical Gyres, the North and South Atlantic Subtropical Gyres, and the Indian Ocean Subtropical Gyre. Since each behaves in the same vortex style, scientists are certain that massive conglomerates of marine litter like the North Pacific Garbage Patch exist in each of the world's oceans. That is soberingly self-explanatory: such huge garbage patch, or even larger ones, are more than likely to be discovered in the near future.

North Pacific Gyre. Illustration: NOAA

It is very difficult to measure the exact size of a gyre because it is a fluid system, but the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is roughly estimated to be approximately 7 to 9 million square miles, approximately three times the area of the continental United States (3 million square miles). Gyres do potentially aggregate debris on that large a scale. That is titanic.

Upon returning from their 22 days venture on the GGP, Project Kaisei and Scripps scientists' stated in a press conference held in September 2009: "(we) hope our data gives clues as to the density and extent of marine plastic debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger. "We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution.

Garbage Patches

The Great Garbage patch is two separate accumulations connected by a 6,000-mile marine litter "corridor" known as the North Pacific Convergence Zone (STCZ). As will be explained infra, the convergence zone is in itself another serious accumulator of traveling plastic debris.

The Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch floats between Japan and Hawaii; the Western Patch floats between Hawaii and California. The rotational pattern created by the North Pacific Gyre draws in waste material from as far as Asia to the USA. As material is captured in the currents, wind-driven surface currents gradually move floating debris inward, trapping debris in higher concentrations in the calm center. Ocean currents carry debris from the East coast of Asia to the center, in less than a year, and from the Western US in about 5 years.

North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Illustration: Greenpeace

NOAA has tracked the Great Pacific Garbage Patch movements to some degree. It is not a stationary area, but one that moves and changes as much as a thousand miles north and south, and during warmer ocean periods, known as El Nino, it drifts even further south. The movements occur because the North Pacific Gyre is made up of four different currents: the North Pacific Current to the north; the California Current to the west; the North Equatorial Current to the south; and the Kuroshio Current to the east. This movement sometimes brings the Western Garbage Patch within 500 nautical miles of the California coast and causes extraordinary massive debris pile-ups on beaches, such as in the Hawaiian Islands and Japan.

Great Garbage patch, floating debris. Photo Source: flyaddicts

The name garbage patch has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items, such as bottles and other litter, akin to a literal blanket of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. This is simply not true. While larger litter items can be found in this area, along with other debris such as derelict fishing nets, the largest mass of the debris is small bits of floatable plastic.

We cannot emphasize enough that the GGP is now characterized by extremely high concentrations of suspended plastic debris for 90 percent, basically a soupy mix of plastic-filled seawater, made of tiny plastic debris that have been trapped by the currents and stretching for maybe thousands of miles, and that is the great problem.

Indeed, the researchers from Project Kaisei and the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX), after their journey through the area, collecting samples the whole way, reported: "All we could see, not at first glance but with magnifying glass and magnifying worries, for miles and miles, was an incredibly huge mass of confetti-like tiny mermaid tears, plastic fragments, floating just beneath the surface. " As one of the scientist from the Project Kaisei witnessed: "There's no island, there's no eighth continent " Miriam Goldstein said, "It doesn't look like a garbage dump. It looks like beautiful ocean. But then when you put the nets in the water, you see all the little pieces." And while the expedition covered 1,700 miles, members of the Kaisei team say the patch could be much, much larger...

As for its depth and assumed density, the scientists reported that the GGP's waters were just clogged with plastic particles to a depth of 10 meters below the surface. The Scripps/ Kaisei survey mission of the gyre found that plastic debris was present in 100 consecutive samples taken at varying depths and net sizes.

In sum, they estimated the patch area ranged in size from 700,00 km2 to more than 15 million km2; the area may contain over 100 million tons of plastic debris.

Already in 1999, a study by Charles Moore, sampling waters from the GGP, found that the concentrations of plastic there reached one million particles per square mile, topping the concentration of zooplankton (plankton consisting of small animals and the immature stages of larger animals) by a factor of six. In 2008, the published new research from the Algalita foundation team of scientists estimated that the number had doubled.

After the return of the two vessels from Project Kasei and Scripps (Seaplex), Kaisei and New Horizon, the only certainty was that the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch remains uncertain. "It's not a hard and fast number." There has been extensive media coverage about the garbage patch over the past couple years; however, its reported size and mass have differed from news article to article. "It's a little bit like a whirlpool on the surface of a river or a lake. You'd be hard-pressed to tell me where the edge is. All you know is that it's stronger in the middle than it is in the outer reaches. But it's an area of many hundreds of miles, perhaps thousands, in which the ocean currents tend to bring it together," according to Robert Knox, deputy director for research at the Scripps Institution.

In the summer of 2010, Project Kaisei will launch its second expedition to the North Pacific Gyre where it will send multiple vessels to continue marine debris research and, in particular, to test an array of larger marine debris collection systems.

Marine debris collection at the GGP. Photo: Lindsey Hoshaw

The Eastern Garbage Patch has been studied the most so far, yet it is not and obviously cannot be the only vast oceanic "rubbish dump out there" says Charles Moore. The GGP is definitely not the only type of area where marine debris concentrates. Several other features within the ocean, including oceanic eddies and convergence zones, can lead to debris accumulation as well. A great and well known example is the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ). It is located along the southern edge of an area known as the North Pacific Transition Zone. NOAA has focused on the STCZ because it is an area triggering massive debris accumulation in Hawaii. This area does not have distinct boundaries and varies in location and intensity of convergence throughout the year. This zone moves seasonally between 30º and 42º N latitude (approximately 800 miles), extending farther south (28ºN) during periods of El Niño (Donohue and Foley, 2007).

The August 2009 expedition was so dauntingly successful and the findings were so"shocking", that "...Scripps' officials are now working to raise funds for a trip to the South Pacific gyre, sometime within the next two years", Haymet announced at a press conference last August. "That project's scope is far greater. While the North Pacific patch appeared as large as the Continental US, its South Pacific cousin is suspected to be about four times as large", roughly the size of all of Western and part Eastern Europe.

II: The Path To Successful Resolution

This unprecedented plastic waste tide appears as vast as the ocean, as ungraspable as the unfathomable mass of microscopic plastic fragments present at sea, transported by winds and currents, yet, ultimately, the plastic tide can become as limited as our chosen relationship with plastics, which involves a dramatic behavioral change on our part. The path to successful resolution of the crisis clearly appears...as we are the problem and the solution.

The Victims and The Aggressors

The despondent effects and too numerous casualties of the great plastic tide are visible, but more alarmingly, beyond visual, which ought to prompt the perpetrators to choose no other path than the advocacy and culture of consistent and sustained behavioral changes.

Creek in Manilla, Philippines, March 01 2009. Photo: Francis R. Malasig

The Victims

Animals

From the whale, sea lions, and birds to the microscopic organisms called zooplankton, plastic has been, and is, greatly affecting marine life, i.e animals on shore and off shore, whether by ingestion or entanglement.

In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, millions of birds and fishes.

The largest pieces of marine plastic debris, miles long discarded fishing nets and lines mostly, take an obvious toll on animals. These derelicts nets, called ghost nets, snare and drown thousands of larger sea creatures per year, such as seals, sea lions, dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, dugons, crocodiles, seabirds, crabs, and other creatures. Acting as designed, these nets restrict movement causing starvation, laceration, infection, and, in animals that need to return to the surface to breathe, suffocation.

Entangled seal by derelict net, Hawaii. Photo Source: NOAA

On shores, researchers have also watched in horror as hungry turtles wolf down jellyfish-like plastic bags and seabirds mistake old lighters and toothbrushes for fish, choking when they try to regurgitate the plastic trash for their starving chicks.

Turtle eats plastic. Photo Source: Greenhouse Carbon Neutral Fdn

In the waters, plastic bags specifically, can be mistaken as food and consumed by a wide range of marine species, especially those that consume jellyfish or squid, which look similar when floating in the water column.

Albatross and others birds are choosing plastic pieces because of their similarity to their own food as well. Captain Moore and his Alguita team did see, above the GGP, albatrosses and tropicbirds circling above the line of trash. With little else to choose, they were obviously eating plastic. The birds seemed to be picking and choosing "the reds and pinks and browns. Anything that looks like shrimp," Moore says. Earlier in the trip, the Alguita had visited the French Frigate Shoals, off Hawaii, home to endangered monk seals and seabird rookeries. In the birds' gullets researchers found red plastic particles. Greenpeace reported that a staggering 80 percent of seabird populations observed worldwide have ingested plastics. Research into the stomach contents of dead Fulmars from the Netherlands, between 1982 and 2001, found that 96 percent of the birds had plastic fragments in their stomachs with an average of 23 plastic pieces per bird (Van Franeker and Meijboom, 2003).

Midway atoll, bird corpse. Photo: © Chris Jordan

When plastic ingestion occurs, it blocks the digestive tract, gets lodged in animals windpipes cutting airflow causing suffocation, or fills the stomach, resulting in malnutrition, starvation and potentially death. Indeed, it is found that debris often accumulates in the animals' gut and give a false sense of fullness, causing the animal to stop eating and slowly starve to death.

Midway atoll, bird corpse. Photo: © Chris Jordan

In April 2002 a dead Minke whale washed up on the Normandy coast in France. An investigation found that its stomach contained 800 kg of plastic bags (GECC, Groupe d'Etude des Cétacés du Cotentin, 2002).

In February 2004, a Cuviers Beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris) was found washed ashore on the west coast of the Isle of Mull, Scotland. Cuviers beaked whales are rarely seen in coastal waters, as they are predominantly a deep-water species. The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust took various skin and blubber samples and removed the stomach for further study by the Scottish Agricultural College. On initial removal it was found that the entrance to the stomach was completely blocked with a cylinder of tightly packed shredded black plastic bin liner bags and fishing twine. It is believed that this made it difficult for the animal to forage and feed effectively.

50 to 80 percent of sea turtles found dead are known to have ingested plastic marine debris.

The smaller the pieces of plastic get, the more dangerous they are to marine organisms. Fragmented plastic, specifically nurdles and small size mermaid tears, are found in the stomach of smaller sea creatures as well: fish, birds, marine mammal, reptile, jelly fish, select plastic pellets as they resemble fish eggs.

Whether the chemicals contained in the plastics are then desorbed to digestive fluids and transferred to tissues in quantities significant enough to harm the animals is subject to ongoing, yet still incomplete, research. However, as more and more studies on the matter are undergone, unpleasant findings are definitly uncovered.

What is proven, as we've seen supra, is that plastic does soak up pollutants, acting as toxic-sponge for man-made toxins present in the ocean, thus accumulating pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and heavy metals at concentrations up to 1 million times higher than in ocean water (Moore et al, 2001). PCBs can lead to reproductive disorders, death, an increased risk of disease, and an alteration of hormone levels (Ryan et al., 1988;Lee et al, 2001). They have been linked to the masculinisation of female polar bears and spontaneous abortions and declines in seal populations. In 1988, Ryan et al obtained evidence that PCBs in the tissues of Great Shearwaters were derived from ingested plastic particles (from Derraik, 2002). Furthermore, DDT, a pesticide that was banned in the US in the 1960's and labeled by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1987 as a "probable human carcinogen," has been found on these plastics fragments. The most recent review of all evidence concludes that exposure to DDT before puberty increases the risk of breast cancer.

Food Chain

In a September press conference, Doug Woodring from Project Kaisei, said that assessments of the impact of plastic debris on phytoplankton, zooplankton, and mesopelagic (midwater) fishes are undergoing. The samples collected from the seawater will be subject to more scientific studies for the toxicity of the plastics and how this is really affecting our food chain (in ways that are only just becoming known... and not good ways).

Plastic found in Rainbow Runner fish guts. Photo Source: Algalita Marine Research Foundation

Katsuhiko Saido, Ph.D said, "We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes (...) giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future." Furthermore, as Saido added: "We are concerned that plastic pollution is also caused by these invisible materials and that it will harm marine life." While the potential toxicity of these tiny plastic constituents is still understudied for much of marine life, plastics are abundant in many forms. Plastics, including polystyrene, are common in the wads of accumulated, undigested matter that young black-footed albatrosses cough up before they fledge.

Whether plastics present a unanimously accepted and proven toxic challenge to marine life, and subsequently to humans, is one of the biggest challenges facing scientists right now.

Health

Saido's latest science report last summer about the decomposition of polystyrene plastics vests a simple reality: Bisphenol A (BPA) has been shown and proven to interfere with the reproductive systems of animals. PS oligomer and BPA from plastic decomposition are toxic and can be metabolized, while styrene monomer is a suspected carcinogen. Low levels of BPA and PS oligomer have been proven to cause hormone disruption in animals.

More scientific reports are being published on the effects of Bisphenol A on animal and human health, and the news is not good.

In 2009, a professional, international medical organization in the field of endocrinology and metabolism, The Endocrine Society, reported data from new research on animals experimentally treated with BPA. Studies presented at the group's annual meeting show BPA can affect the hearts of women, can permanently damage the DNA of mice, and appear to be entering the human body from a variety of unknown sources. A 2005 study, which analyzed BPA serum concentrations, concluded that "exposure to BPA is associated with recurrent miscarriage".

The first major study of health effects on humans associated with bisphenol A exposure was published in September 2008 by Iain Lang and colleagues in the Journal of American Association. The cross-sectional study of almost 1,500 people assessed exposure to bisphenol A by looking at levels of the chemical in urine. The authors found that higher bisphenol A levels were significantly associated with heart diseases, diabetes, and abnormally high levels of certain liver enzymes.

A 2008 scientific review concluded that "prenatal exposure to (...) low doses of BPA alters breast development and increases breast cancer risk". A 2009 scientific review, funded by the "Breast Cancer Fund", has recommended "a federal ban on the manufacture, distribution and sale of consumer products containing bisphenol A".

A 2009 study on urinary concentrations concluded that prenatal BPA exposure might be associated with externalizing behaviors in two-year old children, especially among female children.

A 2009 study on Chinese workers in BPA factories found that workers were four times more likely to report erectile dysfunction, reduced sexual desire, and overall dissatisfaction with their sex life than workers in factories that made products ranging from textiles to machinery, in which there was no heightened BPA exposure. They were also more likely to report reduced sexual function within one year of beginning employment at the factory, and the higher the exposure, the more likely they were to have sexual difficulties.

A 2009 review of available studies has concluded, "Prenatal BPA exposure acts to exert persistent effects on body weight and adiposity."

A 2009 scientific review about environmental chemicals and thyroid function concluded, "Available evidence suggests that governing agencies need to regulate the use of thyroid-disrupting chemicals, particularly as such uses relate exposures of pregnant women, neonates and small children to the agents". A 2009 review summarized BPA adverse effects on thyroid hormone action.

Kuta beach, Bali. Photo Source: Claude Graves

All sea creatures, from the largest to the microscopic organisms are, at one point or another, swallowing the seawater soup instilled with toxic chemicals from plastic decomposition. Much of ocean's life is in the microscopic size range and zooplankton is the base of the food chain. As environmentalists remind the world's population, "...We are eating fish that have eaten other fish, which have eaten toxin-saturated plastics. In essence, humans are eating their own waste..." (Dixit Renee Brown, WiredPress)."

Beaches, Coast, Sea Floor, Shorelines

Blatantly visible is the plastic spill washing up on the shores and beaches. Just a walk on any beach, anywhere in the world, and plastic debris are found in one form or another. All over the world the statistics are ever growing, just staggeringly. Last year, an estimated 150,000 tons of marine plastic debris washed up onto the shores of Japan and 300 tons a day on India's shores.

Layson Island, Hawaiian islands. Photo Source: NOAA

The Hawaiian Archipelago, extending from the southernmost island of Hawaii 1,500 miles northwest to Kure Atoll, is among the longest and most remote island chains in the world. The 19 islands of the archipelago, including Midway atolls, receive massive quantities of plastic debris, shot out from the Pacific gyres. Some of the plastic litter is decades old. Some beaches are buried under 5 to 10 feet of plastic trash, while other beaches are riddled with "plastic sand," millions of grain-like pieces of plastic that are practically impossible to clean up. One of the reasons marine debris accumulates in these islands is the movement of debris within the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ), as we have explained supra.

Two studies on several islands off Jakarta Bay and islands further to the northwest in the Java Sea, reported that debris pollution on shorelines had substantially increased between 1985 and 1995 (Uneputty and Evans 1997b, Willoughby et al. 1997). Both studies noted that results implicated Jakarta as a major source of the debris. On 23 of the islands, it was reported that the total litter at the strandline ranged from not detectable to 29.1 items/m (Willoughby et al. 1997). Plastic bags, polystyrene blocks, and discarded footwear accounted for 80 percent of the items found.

Researchers Barnes and Milner (2005) list five studies which have shown increases in accumulation rates of debris on mid to high latitude coasts of the southern hemisphere.

Surveys of shorelines around the world, reported by Greenpeace, have recorded the quantity of marine debris either as the number of items per km of shoreline or the number of items per square meter of shoreline. The highest values reported were for Indonesia (up to 29.1 items per m) and Sicily (up to 231 items per m).

Seabed Pollution. Photo Source: Bouteilles à la mer org.

It's been reported by Greenpeace that an estimated 70 percent of the mass of fragmented plastic present in the open oceans of the world does sink to the deep-sea bed. A limited body of literature exists, though, concerning these small to microscopic particles (micro debris) mirroring the little research addressed to marine litter on the sea floor.

Ecosystem Changes

Another effect of the plastic tide that goes beyond visual is its potentiality to change entire ecosystems.

"Plastic is not just an aesthetic problem," says marine biologist David Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey. "It can actually change entire ecosystems." He has documented that plastic debris which floats on the oceans, acts as rafts for small sea creatures to grow and travel on. This represents a potential threat for the marine environment should an alien species become established. It is postulated that the slow speed at which plastic debris crosses oceans makes it an ideal vehicle for this. The organisms have plenty of time to adapt to different water and climatic conditions.

Coral Reefs

Derelict fishing gear can be destructive to coral reefs. Corals are in fact animals, even though they may exhibit some of the characteristics of plants and are often mistaken for rocks. In scientific classification, corals fall under the phylum Cnidaria and the class Anthozoa. They are relatives of jellyfish and anemones. (NOAA)

Nets and lines become snagged on coral and subsequent wave action causes coral heads to break off at points where the debris was attached. Once freed, debris can again snag on more coral and the whole process is repeated. This cycle continues until the debris is removed or becomes weighted down with enough broken coral to sink (NOAA 2005a). Eventually, derelict fishing gear may become incorporated into the reef structure.

Plastic on Coral. Photo Source: EPA

Plastic bags can kill coral by covering and suffocating them, or by blocking sunlight needed by the coral to survive. During 2001, so many plastic bags were regularly seen in the Gulf of Aqaba, off the coast of Jordan, that the Board of Aqaba Special Economic Zone issued a law banning the production, distribution, and trade of plastic bags within the areas under their jurisdiction.

Economics

Marine litter cause serious economic losses to various sectors and authorities. Among the most seriously affected are coastal communities (increased expenditures for beach cleaning, public health and waste disposal), tourism (loss of income, bad publicity), shipping (costs associated with fouled propellers, damaged engines, litter removal and waste management in harbors), fishing (reduced and lost catch, damaged nets and other fishing gear, fouled propellers, contamination), fish farming and coastal agriculture.

Haina, Dominican Republic. Photo Source: Eduardo Munoz

In a 2007 Fortune Magazine article about India, it was written that the costs of river pollution to the economy are enormous. Waterborne diseases are India's leading cause of childhood mortality. Shreekant Gupta, a professor at the Delhi School of Economics who specializes in the environment, estimates that lost productivity from death and disease resulting from river pollution and other environmental damage is equivalent to about 4 percent of gross domestic product.

The bill for cleaning the beaches in Bohuslän, on the west coast of Sweden, in just one year was reportedly at least 10 million SEK or $1,550,200. In Britain, Shetland fishermen reported that 92 per cent of them had recurring problems with debris in nets, with each boat losing between $10,500 and $53,300 per year as a result of marine litter. The cost to the local industry could be as high as $4,300,000. The municipality of Ventanillas in Peru has calculated that it would have to invest around $400,000 a year in order to clean its coastline, while its annual budget for cleaning all public areas is only half that amount. (Unep)

Our Oceans and coastlines are under unprecedented plastics waste attack. It's coming back at us in many ways. It's a dire problem that only received serious scientific and public attention in the early 90's, as we know, but all along the perpetrators have simply and clearly been identified.

The Aggressors

The obvious and simple answer is: us...

Behind each and every piece of littered plastic debris there is a human face. At a critical decision point, someone, somewhere, mishandled it, either thoughtlessly or deliberately. Cigarette filters and cigar tips, fishing line, rope and gear, baby diapers and nappies, six-pack rings, beverage bottles and cans, disposable syringes, tires, the litany of plastic litter is as varied as the products available in the global marketplace, but it all shares a common origin.

Sources

260 million tons per year is our estimated plastic consumption, 6 789 billion, is the estimated world population (United States Census Bureau, as of October 2009). Our voracious appetite for plastics, coupled with a culture of discarding products that we have chosen for their inherent longevity, is a combination of lethal nature for our environment.

Plastic Sea. Photo Source: Coastal wiki

The ultimate symbol of our throwaway lifestyle is the plastic bag: 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags is the number consumed annually, which is about a million a minute. The production of plastic bags creates enough solid waste per year to fill the Empire State Building two and a half times. The petroleum used to make only 14 plastic bags could drive a car 1 mile.

Plastic bags are commonly found in waterways, on beaches, and in other unofficial dumping sites across China, for instance. Litter caused by the notorious bags has been referred to as "white pollution."

In the United States, however, measures to ban or curtail the use of plastic bags have met with official resistance. With its powerful lobby, the plastics industry argues that jobs will disappear. The industry employs some two million workers. Americans alone throw out at least 100 billion bags a year, the equivalent of throwing away 12 million gallons of oil, which seems an intolerable waste. Until the U.S. follows the lead of San Francisco, China, Ireland, Uganda, South Africa, Russia, and Hong Kong and targets the reduction of plastic bags using legislature, we each need to make a conscious choice and refuse to use it.

The core of the plastic waste instillation in world's oceans is primarily rooted in poor practices of solid waste management, a lack of infrastructure, various human activities, an inadequate understanding on the part of the public of the potential consequences of their actions, the lack of adequate legal and enforcement systems nationally and internationally, and a lack of financial resources affected to the cause. Mainly a consensus needs to happen, as a culture of behavioral changes needs to be promoted.

The four main land-sources of plastics debris have been identified as:

Shoreline and recreational activities related litter

This includes: bags, balloons, beverages bottles, cans, caps, lids, shoes, cups, plates, forks, knives, spoons, food wrappers/containers, six-pack holders, pull tabs, shotgun shells/wadding, straws, stirrers, toys, medical hygiene (condom, syringe), drug and smoking paraphernalia (The filters are made of cellulose acetate, a synthetic polymer (fiber) that can last for many years in the environment), and 55 gallons drums. All this land-based debris blows, washes, or is discharged into the water from land areas after people engaged in beach-going activities have discarded it.

Branscombe, United Kingdom, Photo: Matt Cardy

About 80 percent of all tourist flock to coastal areas. Massive influxes of tourists, often to a relatively small area, have a huge impact, adding to the pollution of the local population, putting local infrastructure and habitats under enormous pressure. For example, 85 percent of the 1.8 million people who visit Australia's Great Barrier Reef are concentrated in two small areas, Cairns and the Whitsunday Islands, which together have a human population of just 130,000 or so, WWF reported.

Shoreline activities account for 58 percent of the marine litter in the Baltic Sea region and almost half in Japan and the Republic of Korea. In Jordan, recreational activities contribute up to 67 percent of the total discharge of marine litter. This is a particularly big problem in the East Asian Seas region - home to 1.8 billion people, 60 percent of whom live in coastal areas - with its fast growing shipping and industrial development. Other emerging hotspots include the oil-boom coasts of the Caspian and the littoral states of Iran and Azerbaijan.

In South Asia, the growing ship-breaking industry has become a major source of marine debris. In Gujarat, India - one of the largest and busiest ship-breaking yards in the world - operations are carried out on a 10-kilometer stretch on the beaches of Alang, generating peeled-off paint chips and other types of non-degradable solid waste making its way into the sea.

Sewage (waste waters containing plastic type products, rivers, waterways)

Under normal, dry weather conditions, most wastes are screened out of sewage in countries that do apply strict sewage treatment. However, materials can bypass treatment systems and enter waterways when rain levels exceed sewage treatment facilities' handling capacity. During these times, sewage overflows occur.

The Yamuna River, which flows 855 miles from the Himalayas into the Ganges, is one of India's most, but not only, polluted river. The Centre for Science and Environment says that nearly 80 percent of the river's pollution is the result of sewage. Combined with industrial runoff, that comes to more than three billion liters of waste per day, a quantity well beyond the river's assimilative capacity. Many Indian rivers are so polluted they exceed permissible levels for safe bathing.

Yamuna River in New Delhi. Photo: Manan Vastsyayana

It has been reported that the lack of adequate solid waste management facilities results in hazardous wastes entering the waters of the Western Indian Ocean, South Asian Seas, and southern Black Sea, among others.

Fishing related debris

Dumping, wastes from ships, boats platforms (20%). Derraik (2002) stated that ships are estimated to dump 6.5 million tons of plastic a year. An estimated fourth fifths of the oceanic debris is litter blown seaward from landfills and urban runoff washed down storm drains. (Unep). Clean up on land where 80 percent of the plastic debris originates is thus the primarily obvious answer.

Manual Clean Up

The simplest, yet highly effective, action is the manual clean up of the beaches, coasts, rivers, lands and estuaries.

National and international manual clean-up operations of shorelines and sea floor are in existence.

For instance, the past 20 years, the Japan Environmental Action Network (JEAN) has been organizing a yearly beach cleanup and survey.

On an international level, the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) was installed. The International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) engages the public to remove trash and debris from the world's beaches and waterways, to identify the sources of debris, and to change the behaviors that cause pollution. The origins of the ICC began in 1985 with research conducted by The Ocean Conservancy (then known as the Center for Marine Conservation - CMC) on plastics in the marine environment. Contracted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Toxic Substances, the CMC produced the report Plastics in the Ocean: More Than a Litter Problem, which was the first study to identify plastics as a significant marine debris hazard. The data collected and analyzed from the annual ICC Cleanup is used locally, nationally and internationally to influence policy decisions, spawn campaigns for recycling programs, support public education programs, launch adopt-a-beach programs, and even storm water system overhaul and legislative reform.

The Clean Up the World program is run in conjunction with UNEP. It engages more than 40 million people from 120 different countries in clean up operations.

Hawaiin shores. Photo Source: epa.gov

As part of its Rise Above Plastics campaign, Surfrider foundation is hosting frequent beach clean-ups; it is an example of an encouraging trend towards collective awareness and action to solve the problem at its source.

Worldwide private groups and associations are more and more aware that clean-up does need to happen, one day at a time, one person at a time.

Cleaning Up Of The Oceans Debris In The Open Seas

NOAA has also been contacted regarding cleanup of the debris directly in the garbage patch and other areas of the North Pacific; however, cleanup is likely to be more difficult than it may seem. "If only things were that simple. We could just go out there and scoop up an island," says Holly Bamford, director of NOAA's marine debris program. "If it was one big mass, it would make our jobs a whole lot easier." It's like a galaxy of garbage, populated by billions of smaller trash islands that may be hidden underwater or spread out over many miles.

Furthermore, in some areas where marine debris concentrates so does marine life, such as in the STCZ. This makes simple scooping up of the material risky, more harm than good may be caused. Straining ocean waters for plastics would capture the plankton that is the base of the marine food web and responsible for 50 percent of the photosynthesis on Earth. (NOAA).

As Captain Charles Moore once said: the cleaning up effort of the oceanic garbage patches "would bankrupt any country and kill wildlife in the nets as it went."

However, confident in the future and investigating new horizons, Doug Woodring, from Project Kaisei, will be producing a documentary for National Geographic testing catch techniques for the plastic waste ("we know not all can be caught, but some can for sure"), at least for the largest debris that we know do decompose over time and actually more rapidly than previously thought.

Marine debris accumulation, on seafloor. Photo Source: NOAA

The clean up operation is the most immediate, highly effective, and simplest, action/plan that we, the problem, can undertake right now to contribute to the solution. It is a great starting point for a fundamental cultural change that need to occur, which is part of a major consensus.

The Consensus

Undeniably a culture of behavioural changes, now in its infancy, need to further blossom and be implemented/prompted at all levels: individual, associative, governmental, legislative, industrial, technological, educational, philosophical, national, and international.

It simply starts with individual choices. That is the enormous task, yet the enormous power as well because it resides within each and every one of us. Indeed, thanks to an increased awareness of the plastic pollution spread, local, national, individual, and associative actions have taken place worldwide to stop the plastic hemorrhage at the source.

Education, Legislation, and Awareness

Education

The starting point of all greater good does remain education and information.

More and more awareness and preventive programs are promoted.

For instance, in 2004, the Australian government launched a campaign called Keep the Sea Plastic Free, in which it attempted to educate the public to dispose of plastic waste properly.

Surfrider foundation is aiming to raise awareness of plastic marine debris and reduce the proliferation of single-use plastic bags and water bottles, as well as the number one littered item worldwide, cigarette butts. The Rise Above Plastics program also seeks to promote a more sustainable lifestyle and educate people about the prevalence of plastic marine debris on our beaches and oceans and how deadly it can be to marine life.

South East Asia - Philippines, 2008. Photo: Tamara Thoreson Pierce

The Indonesian government, for instance "(is) seriously concerned about improving its waste management and informing the public," quoted the Jakarta Post, 2008. The head of the Maritime and Coastal Resources Studies, Tridoyo Kusumastanto, said that both individual and industrial dumpers should learn from scavengers who take solid waste out instead of dumping it into rivers, canals and the sea. Tridoyo estimated that some 40 tons of waste have been dumped into rivers and other waterways daily in surrounding areas and thus polluting the Java Sea. A campaign against river and sea pollution has been called, and people are urged to change their culture of throwing garbage into waterways and other common places.

Being educated on the situation and aware of the consequences ultimately leads us toward better choices in term of consumption and waste management of plastic at an individual level. It can be as simple as refraining from discarding plastic after first use...plastic inherently chosen for its durability.

Mumbai Impressions... when the water retreats... Plastic Pollution. Captions and Photo source: ©© Don Domingo

As H. Takada mentioned: "We can't avoid using plastic, but we use too much. "In fact, he's added a fourth "R" to the ecologist's classic mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle: refuse. The current bring-your-own-bag movement at retail stores and supermarkets is a good start in terms of refusing, he notes.

Instantaneous, prompt eradication of plastics in its current form, rate of production, and consumption is not realistically feasible, yet constant pressure is impacting industry and politicians to "think green," to have environmentally responsible approach, production, prevention plans, and legislations.

Extend Producer Responsibility

Relentless associative campaigns have proven that change can happen, such as the recent victory from the Uk's Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) campaign against mermaid tears.

"SAS launched a campaign to rid British coastlines of mermaid tears, and will continue to build up until factory practice changes." On June 5th 2009, the release of the British Plastic Federation's (BPF) Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) guidance manual was a victory on the preventive field. OCS is aimed at improving British plastic factories efficient use of plastic pellets, commonly referred to as mermaid's tears. SAS initially highlighted the problem of mermaid's tears on UK beaches to the BPF in 2007, delivering a bottle of 10,000 mermaid's tears, collected from one Cornish beach, to a BPF biopolymer seminar. SAS also released a covert film documenting mermaid's tears in the storm drains of plastic factories in the southwest, highlighting the route from factory to beach. SAS and the BPF have worked together on the OCS solution. SAS has already signed up Contico, one of the southwest's largest plastic factories, to pilot some of the improvements within OCS.

Shoichiro Kobayashi, from The Japan Plastics Industry Federation, says that its members have taken measures to reduce spillage of plastics nurdles.

"Awareness of the problem is high," says Kobayashi, and has been since JEAN and other NPOs started publicizing the issue about 15 years ago. The federation has about 1,000 members. Together with the 2,200-member All Japan Plastic Products Industrial Foundation, the two groups represent the largest plastic producing companies in Japan. Kobayashi says his organization encourages members and associated transport companies to avoid spillage and to cover all drainage pipe openings with wire mesh. That's helped reduce the problem at larger companies, but there are more than 20,000 producers of plastic goods in Japan.

On September 22nd 2009 in California, a press conference was held by DTC director Maziar Movassaghi and Project Kaisei founder Mary Crowley, along with representatives from the State of California and various nonprofit groups. They pushed for Extended Producer Responsibility, the philosophy that companies that create products must take responsibility for the full life cycle of those products, products that are "benign by design." Mary Crowley added, "Let's reduce the source of this pollution by not only choosing healthy, plastic-free products ourselves, but also urging our legislators to pass Extended Producer Responsibility legislation. In fact, such a bill is currently on the table in the state of California. AB283, the California Product Stewardship Act, is an important step in this process."

Changzhi, Shanxi Province. Photo: Stringer Shanghai

Local legislations, with clear frames and enforcements measures, are increasingly being presented and passed in concert with international programs and legislations, which need ratification by as many countries as possible as the pollution is without frontiers.

Legislation And International Concerted Programs

Internationally

In 1972, the London Convention, a United Nations agreement to control ocean dumping, was entered into. It was followed by the most well known piece of International legislation, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from ships (MARPOL). Annex V of MARPOL was introduced in 1988 with the intention of banning the dumping of most garbage and all plastic materials from ships at sea. A total of 122 countries have ratified the treaty. There is some evidence that the implementation of MARPOL has helped to reduce the marine debris problem.

UK Beach. Photo Source: SWNS

In 1972 and 1974, conventions were held in Oslo and Paris, respectively, which resulted in the passing of the OSPAR Convention, an international treaty controlling marine pollution in the north-east Atlantic Ocean around Europe. A similar Barcelona Convention exists to protect the Mediterranean Sea. The Water Framework Directive of 2000 is a European Union directive committing EU member states to make their inland and coastal waters free from human influence. In the United Kingdom, the proposed Marine Bill is designed to "ensure clean healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas, by putting in place better systems for delivering sustainable development of marine and coastal environment".

Under the umbrella of UNEP, numerous cooperative efforts have been held to reach protocols and conventions. For instance, a Protocol on Integrated Coastal Zone Management was approved in January 2008, involving 21 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the European Union. Within the framework of Land Based Sources Protocol for pollution reduction from land-based sources, Mediterranean countries and parties to the Barcelona Convention have agreed this year on an initial set of actions covering the reduction of municipal pollution and the elimination of a number of Persistent Organic Pollutants.

The Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP) continues to encourage member states in meeting the Caribbean Challenge target of protecting 20 percent of marine and coastal habitats by 2020. The Caribbean Large Marine Ecosystem Project and development of a Regional Fund for Wastewater Management will support regional collaboration to reduce the vulnerability of sensitive coastal and marine ecosystems by improving national and regional governance structures and developing new and innovative mechanisms for financing new pollution reduction activities.

Even though the greatest problem with international legislation is its actual enforcement, the efforts toward concerted actions can only be promoted.

Nationally

A strict Chinese limit on ultra-thin plastic bags significantly reduced bag-related pollution nationwide during the past year. "Our country consumes a huge amount of plastic shopping bags each year" a spokesperson for China's State Council said, when announcing the ban last May. "While plastic shopping bags provide convenience to consumers, this has caused a serious waste of energy and resources and environmental pollution because of excessive usage, inadequate recycling and other reasons." In January 2008, The State Council, China's parliament, passed legislation to prohibit shops and supermarkets from providing free plastic bags that are less than 0.025 millimeters thick. The State Administration of Industry and Commerce also threatened to fine shopkeepers and vendors as much as 10,000 Yuan ($1,465) if they were caught distributing free bags. The country avoided the use of 40 billion bags, according to government estimates. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) estimated that the limit in bag production saved China 1.6 million tons of petroleum.

The first country to ban plastic bags was Bangladesh, which did so in 2002. Following a particularly damaging typhoon, authorities discovered that millions of bags were clogging the country's system of flood drains, contributing to the destruction.

In the same year, Ireland took another approach and instituted a steep tax on plastics. According to the country's Ministry of Environment, use fell by 90 percent as a result and the tax money that was generated funded a greatly expanded recycling program throughout the country. In 2003, the government of Taiwan put in place a system by which bags were no longer made available in markets without charge. Carryout restaurants were even required to charge for plastic utensils.

Larger economies have joined the cause and passed legislations on a national level. In 2005, French legislators imposed a ban on all non-biodegradable plastic bags, which will go into effect in 2010. Italy will also ban them that year.

During its 2008 session, the New York State Legislature passed legislation requiring the reduction, reuse, and recycling of checkout bags. The previous year, the city of San Francisco banned plastic bags altogether, at least the flimsy ones of yore. National Public Radio reported a few months later that the ban had been a boom for local plastics manufacturers, who have been introducing heavy-duty, recyclable, and even compostable bags into the marketplace.

An impactful vehicle for information and awareness is indubitably found in the media and creative ventures.

A good example of such ventures is the team of two South African surfers, Ryan and Bryson Robertson, and one Canadian, Hugh Patterson, who created the OceanGybe mission. Their plan is to circumnavigate the globe in a small 40ft sailboat and surf remote reef breaks on far flung islands while interacting with the local cultures. They intend to spread awareness of the vast tracts of plastic and trash afloat on the world's oceans that inevitably ends up on some unsuspecting shore.

Fishing debris on beach. Photo Source: unknown

More publicized and funded is the environmentalist and Adventure Ecology founder David de Rothschild's expedition: the Plastiki mission.

The Plastiki, a one-of-a-kind 60-foot catamaran, was created out of 10,000 reclaimed plastic soda bottles, self-reinforced PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and recycled materials. The vessel's name is a nod to famed explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who led a 1947 voyage on the Kon-Tiki to test theories of Polynesian settlement by South Americans. The Plastiki is about to make its momentous voyage across the Pacific Ocean, a 10,000-mile expedition from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia by the end of this year, to inspire people to rethink current uses and waste of plastic as a resource and bring attention to the GGP.

De Rothschild explained that Plastiki's construction has already jump-started research into a future "smart plastics" industry before ever leaving port. For instance, studies are underway on glues that could someday replace common marine epoxies and plastics that could replace non-recyclable fiberglass.
"The Plastiki voyage will be a great adventure, but I think more exciting is the ability to create a conversation on the issue of plastics."

Philosophy

Adventures of philosophical nature have been taking place as well.

Indeed, French thinkers such as Michel Serre or Luc Ferry, The new ecological order, have developed a train of thought aiming towards a legal recognition, therefore legal protection of Nature. This type of philosophy has been called, deep ecology. The principle is quite simple: democracies have installed their legislative framework, their "social contract," omitting Nature as a protagonist/subject of law. Therefore, to protect Nature, i.e. our environment, should we confer legal right to it, thus making nature a legal subject/person?

Obviously, all subject of law have rights, but they also have obligations. If we can easily forsee what the right and protection would be for this legal subject, what would be its obligations?

This leads many thinkers towards a notion of "droit ou devoir d'ingerence ecologique" (right or duty of intervention/assistance), trying to mirror the situation on the humanitarian field. The notions of "self defense" and "non assistance a personne en danger" have also been explored as possible legal frames to better enforcement of laws and conventions aimed to protect the environment, and curb ocean plastic pollution for that matter.

Sustainable And Future Technologies - Opportunities and Innovations

Biodegradable plastics

Biodegradable plastics have been considered as a future, sustainable option to curb our voracious demand and consumption of plastic material as known in its current form. According to the Biodegradable Plastics Society (2005), when such plastics are composted they break down to carbon dioxide and water.

Controversy does exist though, because it is possible that biodegradable plastics do not break down fully, especially under environmental conditions which are not ideal for composting, and leave non-degradable constituents, some of which may be equally, if not more, hazardous. Also, there is a danger that biodegradable plastics will be seen as "litter friendly" materials, conveying the wrong message to the public and potentially leading to less responsible and more wasteful practices.

A change in behavioral propensities to over-consume plastics, discard and thus pollute, need to be promoted to the fullest.

Ongoing discoveries and solutions to the traditional plastic waste problem

Scientists have been searching for solutions to the traditional plastic waste problem.

In 2008 and 2009, two high school students who discovered plastic-consuming microorganisms, might have found groundbreaking solutions.

African coast, plastic pollution and marine debris. Photo: Candace Feit

The first was Daniel Burd (2008). The second was Tseng I-Ching(l May 2009), a high school student in Taiwan.

Daniel's simple and clever process was to immerse ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth, then isolating the most productive organisms. After several weeks of tweaking and optimizing temperatures, Burd was achieved a 43 percent degradation of plastic in six weeks, an almost inconceivable accomplishment. It appeared as an environmentalist's dream: a non-chemical, i.e. fully organic, low cost and nontoxic method for degrading plastic.

There have been several successful bacteria based solutions developed at the Dept. of Biotechnology in Tottori, Japan, as well as at the Dept. of Microbiology at the National University of Ireland, but both apply only to styrene compounds.

Similarly, a 2004 study at the University of Wisconsin isolated a fungus capable of biodegrading phenol-formaldehyde polymers previously thought to be non-biodegradable.

Green chemistry and "begnign by design" concept

A growing interest amongst chemists, and ultimately industries, is Green chemistry- policy, also called "benign by design".

According to scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), a new type of environmentally friendly plastic that degrades in seawater may be developed. Robson F. Storey, Ph.D., a professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at USM, said, "We're moving toward making plastics more sustainable, especially those that are used at sea." Their study is funded by the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), which is supporting a number of ongoing research projects aimed at reducing the environmental impact of marine waste. The new plastics are made of polyurethane that has been modified by the incorporation of PLGA [poly (lactide-co-glycolide)], a known degradable polymer used in surgical sutures and controlled drug-delivery applications. When exposed to seawater, the plastics degrade via hydrolysis into nontoxic products, according to the scientists. The plastics are not quite ready for commercialization. "More studies are needed to optimize the plastics for various environmental conditions they might encounter, including changes in temperature, humidity and seawater composition", Storey says.

A new kind of material, called oxo-biodegradable plastic, does not just fragment, but is consumed by microorganisms after the additive has reduced the molecular weight. It is thus biodegradable. This process continues until the material has biodegraded to nothing more than CO2, water, humus, and trace elements. There is little or no additional cost, as it can be made with the same machinery and workforce as conventional plastic. The time taken to degrade can be programmed to a few months or a few years and, until the plastic degrades, it has the same strength and other characteristics as conventional plastic. Oxo-biodegradable plastic will be engineered to degrade in a short time leaving no harmful residues.

Recycling and Zero Waste concept

A promising way toward a future of better plastic waste management is recycling the material. The recycling industry might eventually be a path leading to considerable opportunities and solutions.

The BIR (Bureau of International Recycling), whose headquarters is in Belgium, is a trade federation representing the world's recycling industry. About 800 companies and national federations from over 70 countries are affiliated with the BIR. Together they provide their expertise to other industrial sectors and political groups in order to promote recycling. It is estimated that the recycling industry employs more than 1.5 million people, annually processes over 500 million tons of commodities, and has a turnover exceeding $160 billion.

However, this industry is faced with many challenges, as the recycling material itself is very diverse in a chemical sense and can release, when processed, extremely dangerous chemicals. For instance, a recycling factory in China was recently exposed to tragic consequences due to the recycling of very hazardous plastic materials. It was reported that a team of workers in China's Zhejiang province collapsed after handling two metric tons of plastic scrap on September 13, 2009. At least 21 have since been hospitalized and three of them have died. According to the initial investigative conclusions, the victims were in contact with highly toxic chemical, dinitrophenol, which was found on the two tons of plastic scrap. Workers at the recycling factory were unaware of the hazard of the material and had no protection during the unloading. This particular tragedy is only the tip of the iceberg. China's plastics recycling industry is poorly regulated, with scandals such as biohazard plastic waste being melted and reprocessed into consumer goods.

Recycling is definitely a potentially great path to solving the plastic waste problem but definitely not the most unchallenging one.

Along the same lines, a responsible waste strategy, namely the concept of Zero Waste, has been widespread. Such a strategy encompasses waste reduction, reuse and recycling as well as producer responsibility and ecodesign. According to a Greenpeace report, strategies to achieve Zero Waste are adopted throughout the world, in industrialized countries and in less developed countries.

Ultimately, this would mean reduction of the use of plastics. "Our understanding of disposal and reuse (of plastic, is what) is to blame." as many environmentalist such as de Rothschild, said.

This zero waste philosophy encourages the redesign of resource's life cycles, so that all products are reused. Any trash sent to landfills is minimal. The process recommended is one similar to the way that resources are reused in nature. Zero waste can represent an economical alternative to waste systems, where new resources are continually required to replenish wasted raw materials.

DTSC's Environmental Chemistry Laboratory is currently analyzing some of the plastic marine debris collected at the Great Garbage Patch by Project Kaisei scientists, and explores the potential of converting the plastic collected into new material.

Indeed, Doug Woodring from Project Kaisei stated last September that they intend to use some of the newest plastic technologies to detoxify and turn the plastic waste caught in the oceans either into fuel or another useable material. Thus, Project Kaisei hopes to assign value to that plastic collected, particularly the overwhelming majority that is never recycled. It becomes obvious that technologies that convert plastic to fuel, clothing, or simply more profitable plastic could give people a good reason to pick up all that plastic and make a profit from it. Numerous industries, such as fashion, are already increasingly focusing on new green materials as a base for their offered products, encouraging a way of life and cultural change toward better choices and awareness of the environment.

"It's controllable," DougWoodring said. "We have to let people know that enough is enough, but it's not just a negative story about toxicity and wrecking our oceans. There is a huge amount of opportunity for innovation."

Conclusion

"The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed."
-Commandant Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

The abysmal depth and extent of the task before us ought to be never as inexhaustible and boundless as our dedication and compelling strive to greater changes.

Plastic pollution. Photograph: © SAF - Coastal Care
Note: This article was first written and published in November 2009, and last updated in September 2019.

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By Claire Le Guern Last updated in November 2019. The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced.

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These 5 Marine Animals Are Dying Because of Our Plastic Trash… Here’s How We Can Help

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Plastic pollution affects at least 700 marine species and some estimates suggest that at least 100 million marine mammals are killed each year by it.