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How Good or Bad is Plastic? – Portco Packaging

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How Good or Bad is Plastic? – Portco Packaging

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What's the carbon footprint of your dinner? Does your breakfast granola come in a recyclable package? Do you want paper or plastic? Consumers are looking closer than ever at what they buy today, making choices based on a growing list of cause-based options. And among all of the charity and planet-saving routes one can take at the register (and in their home), one cause we hear so much about is that of "going green."

Indeed, our planets' health is critical to our long-term survival, but just how accurate are our perceptions? What factors truly outclass others in terms of actual energy and new material consumption? And finally, just how good or bad is plastic? From consumers who are only looking at their piece of the puzzle, say the end of the life cycle for a plastic milk jug, to packaging manufacturers and retailers that use plastic in their processes, thinking needs to be much wider, taking into account both the positives and negatives of plastic along with the true costs of what might be used as an alternative.

The answers to these questions are somewhat complex and, in many cases, politically-charged. A consensus can be hard to come by. However, there are some generic and broad items of understanding from both recent and long-term studies on plastics worth repeating here as we strive to represent both sides of the plastics argument. Also included in this exploration are some good moves that manufacturers, retailers and consumers can make to firmly reduce their environmental footprint (hint: it's not just about a bag choice in the checkout line).

Beginning with a Tough Look at Plastics

There is a good bit of material out there today condemning plastic. Indeed, plastic gets a pretty bad rap, given how long it takes to decompose ( 50-1000 years, depending on the type). Further, the fact that our landfills are receiving 262 tons of new garbage each day...with 20-24% of it plastic...isn't a good thing. Here is one view from Jeff Bridges, representing the Plastic Pollution Coalition:

Video Courtesy: Plastic Pollution Coalition

Now, there are many legitimate facts put forth in the above video. Indeed, here are some back-up facts from BanTheBottle.net, talking about the burgeoning issue of plastic water bottles:

There is little doubt that a re-usable water bottle is a better choice for the planet vs. buying and discarding plastic water bottles on a daily basis. However, this is only one case and plastic is used prolifically in many other areas where swapping in another material may actually prove much more detrimental to the planet.

Weight and Virgin Materials

The next point to consider when looking at plastic is what materials would be swapped in if we were to move away from its use? Often we hear that using glass or metal is a much better choice in packaging as these materials have much higher recyclable properties. Gram for gram, this may be true...yet what is almost never explained is the factor of weight. To replace a plastic package with an alternative material such as glass (or metal) the weight and physical space of the new package will be MUCH GREATER than that of its plastic rival. The result? An enormous increase in energy and environmental cost associated with the far heavier, bigger packaging. In contrast, and because our transportation system is fossil fuel dependent, lighter weight packaging (plastic) means less trucks on the road and less fuel burned. In a recent study conducted by Trucost and featured on PlasticsNews.com, the following was noted on these points:

The article goes on to cite results from the study conducted by Trucost, titled Plastics and Sustainability:
A Valuation of Environmental Benefits, Costs
and Opportunities for Continuous Improvement. In that study I found the following graphic most-compelling:

Looking deeper into Trucost, they state the following about what they do on their website:

Further research into the remarkable transportation cost savings realized when comparing plastic to its alternatives yielded the following graphic from Dupont:

Efficiency, Efficiency, Efficiency

To further frame our point today, let's first take a small step back and look at the world of charities. One popular way these institutions are rated is on how many pennies of each donated dollar actually get to the charity recipients. Some are efficient than others. And when it comes to the environment, and the tremendous push to minimize our footprint and be "green," the choices we make in our daily activities and the buying decisions we face too can have very different (and oft misunderstood) impacts.

A shopper may feel they are doing their part by picking paper over plastic in the checkout line. They may feel extra good that they also chose some products with recyclable packaging that they diligently plan to place in the appropriate bin. Heck, they may have even brought along their own, re-usable bags. And yet, while such choices may yield a net-positive environmental effect (and are important), they are but a small element in the much bigger picture of consumption and the true energy and resources it takes to get the products we choose from onto the store shelf.

Plastics, Full-circle

So, we've taken a look at plastics from the perspective of true environmental costs up against the alternatives. We've studied the pros and cons and now have a deeper understanding of just how important plastic is to items like protecting food from contamination, extending shelf life and reducing waste volume. Yet the story doesn't end there.

With plastic being an unarguably critical item for use in all sorts of products, from medical applications to food production, processing and packaging, hard research is being done to create plastics that decompose much faster than the present carnations. Some of these plastics are already available and should bring some promising, environmental changes going forward. Read on about these advents in this article about so-called " bio-plastics."

Meanwhile, try to spread the word about the reality of plastics and the true cost of alternatives. Try also to reduce food (and other product) waste and to recycle. To this point, new research from Mintel (a global marketing research firm) notes that "80% of US food shoppers agree that reducing food waste is as important as reducing packaging waste. In an effort to limit waste, half (52%) of consumers prefer to buy foods with minimal/no packaging." Further, the report from Mintel notes, "As they look to extend the life of the food products they buy, 81% of consumers say that they would choose resealable packaging over non-resealable packaging, and more than half (54%) would pay more for packaging with added features such as being resealable or portion controlled, with three in 10 (30%) often reusing food packaging for other purposes. However, recycling food packaging is far from a universal behavior, as just two in five (42%) consumers report recycling most of the food packaging they use." Lastly (from the Mintel report), "...only 13% of consumers make an effort to avoid foods in packaging that cannot be recycled."...and..."36% of Americans are interested in packaging that allows food to be eaten on the go."

So, there are several clear opportunities out there for manufacturers to produce products that not only attract consumers, but that positively impact the environment from several different standpoints. Most agree that consumers, by and large, are feature-driven...as the report from Mintel backs up. And with plastic being not only better from a weight/environmental cost perspective, but also an ideal material for achieving many of these sought after features...well, we don't expect plastic to be going anywhere anytime soon. Indeed, there are many things we can do as manufacturers, retailers and consumers to positively impact the environment that doesn't require moving away from this quite versatile material. In fact, doing so may actually bring greater harm.

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What's the carbon footprint of your dinner? Does your breakfast granola come in a recyclable package? Do you want paper or plastic? Consumers are looking closer than ever at what they buy today, making choices based on a growing list of cause-based options.

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The future of plastics: reusing the bad and encouraging the good

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The future of plastics: reusing the bad and encouraging the good

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Plastics have got themselves a bad name, mainly for two reasons: most are made from petroleum and they end up as litter in the environment.

However, both of these are quite avoidable. An increased focus on bio-derived and degradable composites as well as recycling could lessen pollution and, in fact, plastics could make a positive contribution to the environment.

Plastics for bad

The durability of plastics makes them so useful, but at the same time, it turns them into a persistent (and increasingly big) blot on the landscape, or more importantly the seascape, once discarded.

Read more: This South Pacific island of rubbish shows why we need to quit our plastic habit

We've known for a while that bulk plastics are polluting the oceans. Converging sea currents are accumulating plastic waste in a floating island known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which now covers an area larger than Greenland. The bigger bits of plastic are life-threatening to marine life and sea birds. They can strangle marine mammals or birds and build up in their stomachs and guts.

from Shutterstock, CC BY-ND

More recently, awareness of microplastics has raised concern about their ubiquitous presence in the food chain. Commentators suggest that by 2050 there will be as much plastic in the sea as there is fish. Who wants to go catch some plastic then?

Read more: How microplastics make their way up the ocean food chain into fish

Beyond that, plastic production currently relies on petroleum and that has raised issues about health hazards, generally associated with petroleum-based products during production, use and disposal.

Plastics for good

Plastics can contribute positively to the environment in the following ways:

Between one-quarter and one-third of all food produced is wasted through spoilage. But without plastic packaging, it would be considerably worse and have a larger carbon footprint.

Many of the recycling enthusiasts I know do not think about throwing out spoiled food that required energy in terms of planting, cultivating, harvesting and transporting and therefore will have added to greenhouse gas emissions.

The use of plastics in transportation (cars, trains and planes) will reduce fuel consumption. Their application (along with reinforcing fibres) in aerospace as alternatives to traditional metallic alloys has brought huge gains of fuel efficiency over the last few decades.

Incorporation of fibre-reinforced plastics in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, for example, has resulted in fuel efficiencies that are similar to a family car (when measured by kilometres travelled per person). By the way, carbon fibre, the aerospace fibre of choice, is produced from plastic.

There are good things about plastics including benefits for the environment, but is it possible to make use of the good aspects and avoid the bad?

Future proofing plastics

Plastics are, chemically speaking, long chains or large cross-linked structures most commonly made up of a framework of carbon atoms.

For a long time, we have been using bio-derived plastics - naturally occurring materials such as animal skins including leather, gut and wood. These forms of plastic are complicated chemical structures that can only be made in nature at this stage.

Some of the early synthesised plastics were made from naturally occurring materials such as casein (from dairy) that was used for simple items such as buttons. The development of petroleum-based plastics has been a major distraction from such materials.

However, in the last couple of decades, bio-derived plastics have become available that provide good replacements. These include starch-based plastics such as polylactide (PLA), which is produced from corn starch, cassava roots or sugarcane and processed in the same way as petroleum-based plastics. Such plastics can be foamed or used to make drink bottles.

From Shutterstock, CC BY-ND

Recycling plastics is another essential step towards reducing the environmental load. Let's face it: it is people who are doing the littering, not the plastics themselves. More effort could go into waste collection and a carrot/stick approach should include disincentives for littering and a plastic tax which would exclude recycled plastics.

Incentives are also needed to encourage product development that takes account of the full life cycle. In Europe, for instance, legislation has made it compulsory in the automotive industry for at least 85% of a car to be recycled. This has had a dramatic influence on the materials and design used in the industry.

Even with best efforts, it is unrealistic that we would capture all plastics for recycling. Biodegradable plastics could be a useful tool for preventing environmental damage. PLA (polylactide) is biodegradable, though slow to break down, and there are other forms available.

This highlights the need for more research into controlling biodegradability, taking into account different applications and the need for infrastructure to deal with biodegradable plastics at the end of their life. Obviously, we don't want our planes biodegrading during their 20 years of service, but one-use water bottles should break down within a short time after use.

The planet doesn't have to become a toxic rubbish dump. In the short term, this will need some government action to encourage bio-derived, recyclable and biodegradable plastics to allow them to compete with petroleum-based products.

There are signs of improvement: increasing awareness of the harm plastics cause and a willingness of consumers to pay for plastic bags or to ban them. We need to stop dumping in our own backyard and remember that the environment is where we live. We ignore it at our peril.

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The future of plastics: reusing the bad and encouraging the good

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Plastics have got themselves a bad name, mainly for two reasons: most are made from petroleum and they end up as litter in the environment. However, both of these are quite avoidable. An increased focus on bio-derived and degradable composites as well as recycling could lessen pollution and, in fact, plastics could make a positive contribution to the environment.

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of using plastics? - 09SciGJasBelle

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of using plastics? - 09SciGJasBelle

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of using plastics? - 09SciGJasBelle

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The disadvantages of plastics: Plastics bags are make of a non-renewable resource, which gives us more reasons to use recyclable shopping bags. Plastic bags are also flimsy and do not sit as well as either paper or cloth. They are a hazard to wildlife animals, if they are not disposed properly.

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Plastics and Environmental Health: The Road Ahead

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Plastics and Environmental Health: The Road Ahead

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Abstract

Plastics continue to benefit society in innumerable ways, even though recent public focus on plastics has centered mostly on human health and environmental concerns, including endocrine-disrupting properties and long-term pollution. The benefits of plastics are particularly apparent in medicine and public health. Plastics are versatile, cost-effective, require less energy to produce than alternative materials - such as metal or glass - and can be manufactured to have many different properties. Due to these characteristics, polymers are used in diverse health applications, such as disposable syringes and intravenous bags, sterile packaging for medical instruments as well as in joint replacements, tissue engineering, etc. However, not all current uses of plastics are prudent and sustainable, as illustrated by widespread, unwanted human exposure to endocrine-disrupting bisphenol-A (BPA) and di-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP), problems arising from the large quantities of plastic being disposed of, and depletion of non-renewable petroleum resources as a result of ever increasing mass-production of plastic consumer articles. By example of the healthcare sector, this review concentrates on benefits and downsides of plastics and identities opportunities to change the composition and disposal practices of these invaluable polymers for a more sustainable future consumption. It highlights ongoing efforts to phase out DEHP and BPA in the healthcare and food industry, and discusses biodegradable options for plastic packaging, opportunities for reducing plastic medical waste, and recycling in medical facilities in the quest to reap a maximum of benefits from polymers without compromising human health or the environment in the process.

Keywords: plastics, health effects, pollution, sustainability, sustainable consumption

Introduction

Most advances of human society over the past century have been facilitated by the use of plastics. Plastics are composed of a network of molecular monomers bound together to form macromolecules of infinite use in human society. Today, there are more than 20 different major types of plastics in use worldwide [ 1]. Whereas plastics have been in the public eye recently for potentially dangerous human exposure to toxic components such as bisphenol A (BPA) and di-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) [ 2], their beneficial impact on society is undeniable and illustrated best by their medical uses and applications in public health. Plastics are cost-effective, require little energy to produce, and are lightweight and biocompatible. This makes them an ideal material for single-use disposable devices, which currently comprise 85% [ 3] of medical equipment. Plastics can also be soft, transparent, flexible, or biodegradable and many different types of plastics function as innovative materials for use in engineered tissues, absorbable sutures, prosthetics, and other medical applications.

Of course, the reach of plastics goes far beyond medicine and public health, and as such, an enormous quantity of plastics must be accounted for. Over 300 million metric tons of plastics are produced in the world annually [ 2] and about 50% [ 3] of this volume is for disposable applications, products that are discarded within a year of their purchase.

There are four major options for disposal of plastics: landfilling, incineration, recycling, and biodegradation. All plastics can be disposed of in landfills or incinerated [ 4]. But, landfills require space and the chemical constituents and energy contained in plastic articles typically is lost in this disposal route [ 4]. The second option, incineration, returns some of the energy from plastic production but is known to produce negative environmental and health effects [ 4]. Many plastics can be recycled, and some of the materials used to make plastics can be recovered. However, this method is not fully utilized, due to difficulties with the collection and sorting of plastic waste [ 4]. Finally, certain polymers are designed to biodegrade, thereby preventing long-term environmental damage from pollution [ 5]. However, many biodegradable plastics may not biodegrade rapidly enough under ambient environmental conditions to avoid accumulation from continuous inputs; and biodegradable plastics also can contaminate and disrupt the current recycling stream, due to their similar appearance, yet distinct makeup [ 4].

It is time to rethink the current management model of the production and disposal of plastics and to move towards a model that considers the entire life-cycle of these abundant, essential materials. Disposal of plastics in landfills ultimately is unsustainable and diminishes land resources fit for other uses of higher societal value. Incineration results in the release of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas [ 7], and of other air pollutants, including carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) [ 8] and dioxins [ 9]. In theory, recycling represents a plausible superior solution. However, numerous practical challenges of plastics recycling exist including: the technical challenge of accurately sorting plastics; the current price of oil and the quality of recycled plastic that results [ 4]; as well as the knowledge that a significant fraction of one-way articles will bypass programmed disposal and enter the environment, thereby resulting in widespread, long-term pollution. Increasing consumption of biodegradable plastics can reduce the carbon footprint, pollution risks, and greenhouse gas emissions from polymer usage; however, it can do so only if these alternatives are made from non-fossil resources using renewable energy. From a materials management perspective, the blending of biodegradable (compostable) plastics is problematic, however, because separating biodegradable from potentially recyclable polymers is a challenge to both consumers and centralized refuse-sorting operations. Solutions to these problems will be market- and volume-dependent. Plastics of low volume for medical applications may rely more on fossil fuel and be designed for durability, whereas high-volume uses for consumer products will have to be sourced from renewable material stocks and be programmed for rapid environmental decay (i.e., biodegradability). This strategy could prevent irreparable environmental damage from disposable plastic products, while maintaining and maximizing the benefits of plastics in specialized cases, like medicine and public health. The benefits and disadvantages of plastics are discussed hereafter before conclusions are drawn to inform the road ahead.

1. The Good: Medical and Public Health Applications of Plastics

In medicine alone, the diversity of plastics' uses is incredible. Prosthetics, engineered tissues, and microneedle patches for drug delivery are all possible with polymers [ 10, 11]. In many sectors of society, plastics have replaced glass, wood, fibers, and metal in various products, including dishware, clothing, food packaging, personal care products, and others; these uses have already been explored elsewhere [ 12]. Disposable products in particular have been a major application for plastics within the last century because plastics are both inexpensive and lightweight [ 13].

Syringes are a good example of how plastics have benefited public health through single-use applications and later, through reusable products. Healthcare workers have long cited convenience for choosing disposable products [ 14]. Disposable plastic items such as latex gloves, intravenous (IV) bags and dialysis tubes are inexpensive and allow for patient safety as well as time savings, due to eliminating the need to sterilize used equipment [ 15]. Disposable syringes in particular were in focus during the early 1980s as a way to reduce the risk of transmitting blood-borne infections such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis B through injections from used needles [ 14]. With reusable syringes, there is a risk of needle-sticks while capping and re-sterilizing the syringe, and improper sterilization techniques can cause transmission of communicable diseases [ 14]. However, against the explicit recommendations, disposable syringes can and still were being reused; therefore, efforts were made to develop a plastic auto-disable syringe that locks after single use [ 16]. Although these are more expensive than conventional disposable syringes, they prevent reuse and possible infection [ 16]. Reusable syringes are experiencing a comeback in developing countries where, single-use syringes still pose a health risk from improper disposal, and sterilizable syringes can always be at hand to administer critically important vaccinations [ 16]. However, the problems raised by opponents of sterilizable syringes - such as easy breakage and the difficulty of cleaning syringes made of metal and glass - have been solved by designing a sterilizable syringe completely made of plastic [ 14]. Today plastics are thus facilitating the manufacture of both throwaway and reusable medical syringes.

The development of plastics has led to other disposable items similarly ubiquitous to hospitals, such as intravenous (IV) bags and tubing. These are used for immediate drug-delivery, to treat dehydrated patients through fluid replacement, to transfuse blood, and to correct electrolyte imbalances as quickly as possible. The IV injection of fluids and medicines into the bloodstream is by far the fastest method of delivering remedies into the body. The importance of IV bags and tubing in caring for hospital patients is clear in the fact that they constitute 20-25% of hospital waste [ 17].

Polymers have also been utilized in the development of innovative materials and methods of healing patients. Absorbable sutures are made of polymers that can be designed to biodegrade over differing time periods depending on patient needs [ 18]. Since they do not require surgical removal following implantation, they also reduce the number of procedures a patient must undergo. Polymers have demonstrated their value in pharmaceuticals, as controlled drug delivery systems used by tens of millions of people each year, and in orthopedics: the polymer polymethylmethacrylate is used as bone cement in total hip replacements [ 19]. Tissue engineering has more recently been significantly advanced by polymers, as polymer scaffolds can be designed to biodegrade and can have a variety of different structures [ 20]. The array of different types of polymers that can be produced has had an enormous effect on the quality of human health through these innovations in medical research.

2. The Bad: Health Effects of Plastics

However, the widespread use of plastics facilitates continuous contact of these materials with the human body and with it daily exposure to ingredients in plastics. Although plastics components do not have significant bioaccumulation potential (except when accidentally ingested and becoming entrapped in the gastrointestinal system), biomonitoring studies [ 21] have demonstrated the presence of steady-state concentration of plastics' components in the human body, thereby reflecting the ongoing balance of constant exposure, metabolism and excretion of these compounds. This situation implies that in today's plastics-enabled society there are no control groups to be found to analyze the effects on human health from low-level, environmental exposures to plastic constituents. Everybody is being exposed to some degree at any given time from gestation through death. Detectable levels of bisphenol A have been found in the urine of 95% of the adult population of the United States [ 22]. In recent years there have been several epidemiological studies and controlled animal experiments performed concerning the health effects of plastic components such as BPA and DEHP. Associations were found between exposure to these compounds and destructive effects on health and reproduction, such as early sexual maturation, decreased male fertility, aggressive behavior, and others (reviewed in 2, 23, 24, 25). At present, BPA has been one of the first plastic materials to be recognized for its potential harm. Evidence of potential harm has been deemed sufficient by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue a statement that "recent studies provide reason for some concern about the potential effects of BPA" [ 26]. In response to such concerns, BPA also recently has been banned in the U.S. from use in infant bottles and spill-proof cups for toddlers in an effort to protect a particularly vulnerable population [ 27]. In Canada and the European Union, polycarbonate plastics made from BPA have also been banned from use in baby bottles [ 28].

There are similar issues with di-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP). DEHP is the plasticizer most frequent used in polyvinyl chloride (PVC). There are particular concerns with human exposure, as this additive is not chemically bound to the plastics in which it is incorporated, and thus can leach out readily [ 29]. Several rodent and human studies have found correlations between DEHP exposure and harmful health effects, including changes to the female and male reproductive systems, increased waist circumference and insulin resistance [reviewed in 29, 30, 31]. The 'cocktail effect', i.e., the fact that environmental exposures do not occur in isolation but are cumulative, also is an issue requiring further study. Furthermore, there are additional components of plastics that are being studied for potential harm, including polyhalogenated flame retardants (e.g., polybrominated diphenyl ethers), polyfluorinated compounds (e.g., polyfluoroalkyl compounds such as perfluorooctane sulfonate or PFOS and perfluorooctanoate or PFOA), and antimicrobials (e.g., triclosan and triclocarban) that have been reviewed elsewhere [See reference 2 and sources cited therein].

Although evidence due to research so far has been sufficient for governmental agencies to take action, more is still being done to demonstrate conclusively that the negative health effects listed above and others are due to the compounds such as BPA and DEHP in plastic. For example, a recent study found a significant association between urinary concentration of BPA and obesity among children and adolescents [ 32]. However, as noted by the authors, "explanations of the association cannot rule out the possibility that obese children ingest food with higher BPA content or have greater adipose stores of BPA" [ 32]. These and other possible explanations for observed associations of exposure and health outcomes should be tested, as research proceeds regarding the role of plastic components as potential obesogens.

3. The Ugly: Persistence of Plastics in the Environment

Although the spectrum and extent of health effects stemming from the pervasive and ubiquitous human exposure to plastics constituents are as of yet uncertain, the issue of plastic waste has been obvious and problematic for some time and demands action (). When mass production of plastics began in the 1940s, it quickly permeated into all facets of modern daily life [ 2]. However, there was never a cognizant consideration of the effects plastics will exert on the environment when produced at today's enormous and still expanding scale. Although healthcare facilities in the United States contribute 3.4 billion pounds of waste annually, they are not a major contributor to the overall production of plastic refuse [ 33]. Plastics represent between 15 to 25% of all hospital waste in the U.S. [ 33, 18], which amounts to a maximum annual loading of 850 million pounds of plastic waste per year. This implies that human medicine accounts for less than 0.2% of the plastic waste produced and being disposed of in the U.S. each year (). Fifty percent of the annual plastic production goes toward disposable applications such as packaging [ 3]. So, although there have been great benefits from using plastics, especially in the healthcare sector, there needs to be a second revolution of plastics in which life-cycle considerations are integrated production and consumption decisions to handle the voluminous present-day flow of plastics, most of which being destined for disposal after single use.

A look at medical waste handling illustrates current options for disposal of plastics. Today, 60% of regulated and potentially infectious waste, including sharps and pharmaceuticals, is incinerated [ 53] (). Whereas the term 'incineration' is not readily associated with sustainability, this disposal route does have a number of benefits, including the prevention of disease transmission, a significant reduction in the volume and mass of the waste, and recovery of at least some of the energy used to produce these materials. Improper incineration poses significant human health risks, however, particularly from the massive release of carcinogenic air toxins such as dioxins [ 35]. In rural America and many parts of the developing world, open burning of waste in barrels is common instead of or in addition to landfilling. Depending on the quantity and composition of household waste processed, backyard burning from 2 to 40 households can rival the emissions of polychlorinated dibenzo- p-dioxins/polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDD/PCDF) from an industrial-sized municipal waste combustor handling orders of magnitude larger volumes of waste [ 34]. And, incineration produces ashes containing toxic metals that can pose risks to groundwater resources underlying landfills employed for ash disposal [ 35].

Discarding plastics in landfills is also not the ideal solution. Whereas the disposal of plastics in landfills does sequester almost 100% of the carbon from the atmosphere [ 36], this also implies that both the material and the energy stored in plastics are lost (i.e., sequestered for the long term) in the process. Plastics manufacture comprises 4.6% of the annual petroleum consumption in the U.S., 329 million barrels as feedstock and 2 million barrels for use as fuel [ 38]. Although the use of plastics can reduce the need for fossil fuels by replacing denser materials such as glass and metal in different applications, none of the energy or material used can be recovered when plastics are disposed of in landfills [ 4]. Space constraints are also becoming an issue. Although land in the United States is abundant, smaller countries such as Denmark and Japan already are relying more heavily on incineration to conserve land resources [ 4]. As its population increases, the United States likely will experience similar land scarcity and will have to adjust its disposal practices accordingly. Finally, the protective liners separating landfills from the soil and from underlying drinking water resources may rupture or leak over time. This constitutes a long-term risk of contamination of soil and groundwater with plastics' components [ 4] as well as with other contaminants contained in landfill leachate.

If plastics must be disposed of, recycling may be perceived intuitively as the best option (although only a full life-cycle assessment can answer this question conclusively) because it allows for partial recovery of both the material and energy used to produce them. However, not all plastics can be recycled. Thus, they must be effectively sorted, which increases the cost. Contamination of different plastics streams is obviously one of the major challenges with regards to recycling and causes yet another issue: lower quality of the resultant post-consumer plastics. It is difficult if not impossible to produce recycled plastics of the same quality as virgin polymer because sorting systems are imperfect and the raw materials used to produce recycled product are expected to be impure. Thus, although recycled polymers are cheaper to produce, their quality decreases due to contamination with each recycling cycle, which hinders or prevents their use in high-value applications, such as the healthcare sector. As of yet, the prices of oil and landfill disposal are not high enough to significantly incentivize the use of recycled materials. However, as petroleum and land resources grow scarcer, and as the public becomes more aware of the environmental consequences of plastics consumption, it is likely that consumer products made from recycled plastics and other materials will become more mainstream.

Biodegradable plastics are also an option that should be considered. At this point, it is necessary to clarify the differences among many terms that are often used interchangeably, specifically 'biodegradable' and 'compostable.' From ASTM International (formerly known as the American Society for Testing and Materials), a biodegradable plastic is one in which the "degradation results from the action of naturally occurring microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, and algae," whereas a compostable plastic "undergoes degradation by biological processes during composting to yield carbon dioxide, water, inorganic compounds, and biomass at a rate consistent with other known compostable materials and leaves no visible, distinguishable, or toxic residue" [ 38]. This means that a plastic material technically could be biodegradable if it disintegrates into smaller and smaller polymer fragments, but this can lead to unwanted consequences for the environment [ 39]. Plastics labeled as being compostable must be certified under the ASTM D6400 compostability standards using the test method ASTM D 5338-11 to ensure that it can be commercially composted. The certification requires a polymer to biodegrade at a rate similar to those of other naturally occurring, compostable materials [ 40]. Whereas ASTM compostability standards are unique to the United States, national and international standards from other countries are also used, including those made by the European Standardization Committee (CEN), the International Standards Organization (ISO), and the German Institute for Standardization (DIN).

Although conventional plastics are not biodegradable, plastics are being manufactured and developed today that are, including polyhydroxylalkanoate (PHA) and polylactic acid (PLA) based plastics. However, they are not yet the perfect solution to disposable plastics. Most bioplastics today are derived from plant sources such as corn and molasses, thereby representing a competition for the food supply of humans and farm animals [ 41]. Not figuring in the various externalities from environmental pollution and human health effects, biodegradable plastics currently are more expensive than conventional plastics. However, as oil prices rise and technologies to produce biodegradable plastics advance, this may change in the near future.

There are also issues that must be resolved concerning the disposal of biodegradable plastics. Biodegradable plastics are being tested under conditions at commercial composting facilities of ~58°C and ~60% relative humidity. Typical home composting may deviate from the above conditions [ 42], thereby resulting in delayed or incompletely biodegradation. Asking consumers to be educated about this and to demand disposal in commercial composting facility appears to be unrealistic. However, pilot programs in Boulder, CO found that curbside composting program increased waste diversion from landfills up from 40% to 55-69%, thereby indicating that consumers are willing to adopt better disposal modes if presented with suitable options [ 43]. In the United States, cities other than Boulder that have implemented curbside composting services include, for example, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle [ 44]. Finally, as biodegradable plastics are fairly new and are designed to look like traditional plastics, conventional plastics may contaminate composting feedstock and biodegradable plastics may enter into recycling streams, thereby decreasing the quality of both compost and recycled plastics [ 4]. As with recycling, the product of composting must be of sufficiently high quality, so that running a composting facility becomes practical. Although some biodegradable plastics can be recycled a limited number of times, they would need to be recycled with other biodegradable plastics and have not reached a critical volumetric mass warranting a revamping of current recycling systems.

4. The Road Ahead: Research into Biodegradable Plastics and What Can Be Done Now to Restrict Plastic Usage to Sustainable Levels

Current research seeks to address some of the challenges and limitations of biodegradable plastics. For example, a method was discovered recently enabling the synthesis of biodegradable polymers from the abundant compounds carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide using metal complexes as catalysts [ 45]. This development represents a potential solution to at least one of the problems concerning bioplastics in that this new process utilizes a resource that is widely available and can bind unwanted greenhouse gases, as opposed to competing with feed stocks for animals and the human food supply. This method is now being commercialized as a potential replacement for the epoxy resins that line metal cans and contain BPA. If this coating were to be fully adopted, aside from reducing human exposure to BPA, 180 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually would be sequestered and avoided [ 46]. Recent innovations in bioplastics, such as this example, demonstrate the benefits of continuing the development of plastic alternatives.

The healthcare sector may serve as a model for illustrating how steps can be taken immediately to move toward a more sustainable consumption of plastic materials. Some hospitals have begun reprocessing medical equipment for multiple uses, switching to alternative plastics from those that have been associated with harmful health effects, and reducing their use of plastics altogether. More vulnerable patient groups, such as infants in the neonatal intensive care units, at present are exposed to high and presumably harmful amounts of DEHP from blood bags, IV tubing etc. made from PVC [ 2]. In response, organizations such as the American Medical Association have recommended that hospitals and physicians find alternatives to products made from PVC and containing the harmful additive, DEHP [ 47]. Also, although expense has been identified in the past as a reason for using disposable products, it is now becoming more cost-effective to switch to reusable alternatives. This has been estimated to potentially result in a 50% reduction of medical equipment costs [ 48]. One hospital switched from using blue polypropylene wrap for keeping surgical tools in the operating room sterile to using surgical hard cases for protection, thereby realizing $51,000 of annual savings in the process [ 49]. Twenty-four percent of U.S. hospitals have begun using reprocessing like this to decrease disposable waste [ 50]. As medical facilities take steps towards use of safer plastics and reductions in overall consumption of polymers, plastics manufacturers and stakeholders will listen, since the healthcare industry corresponds to 15.2% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States and continues to grow [ 51].

However, problematic issues extend far beyond simply avoiding plastics that have already been linked with health hazards and substituting alternatives. Instead, it will require an entire rethinking of the way in which we use plastics today. The damaging and lasting effects of plastics in the environment stem primarily from applications whose long-term harm clearly outweigh any short-term benefits realized - often merely as a matter of convenience. This can be seen most readily in the differences between using polymers in applications that are produced in limited quantities and provide significant benefits - such as prosthetic limbs, medical gloves, etc. - and in those that are simply convenience items, such as plastic bags and bottled water. Although waste can and should be reduced in the healthcare industry, the high volume of plastics disposed of in the United States is derived by uses other than those in medicine. In other words, the societal conundrum stemming from the reliance on plastics cannot be solved by focusing on the healthcare sector alone.

The environmental and health issues human society faces today in the 'age of plastics' mostly stem from the fact that the impact of the scales of plastic consumption and disposal were not considered until after mass-production was well on its way. As alternatives to conventional, petroleum-based plastics are developed, it will be important to perform life-cycle assessments on each. This will be necessary to ensure that these new choices and alternatives truly serve to reduce the sum of adverse effects, ranging from unwanted human exposure in plastics manufacturing and clinical uses, to environment pollution from inappropriate disposal. Again, using large volumes of otherwise noxious greenhouse gases to drive the sustainable production and consumption of biodegradable plastics may represent an important initial step in the right direction; it also would avoid unwanted competition of the plastics industry with the world's food supply.

After taking steps to eliminate the uses of plastics that have been associated with harmful health effects and to move towards reusable products, the long-term solution may lie in determining which applications are truly necessary, which ones offer short-term benefits only, and in developing biodegradable plastics for production of disposable items with a programmed, short lifespan. This could help to realize the full potential of plastics in medicine, public health and human society without compromising the quality of life of current and future generations.

Acknowledgements

This project was supported in part by Award Number R01ES015445 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIEHS or the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

References

1. Assoc. Plast. Manuf. Eur. (APME) An Analysis of Plastics Production, Demand and Recovery in Europe. 2006

6. Ren X. Biodegradable plastics: a solution or a challenge? Journal of Cleaner Production. 2003 Feb;11(1):27-40.

7. Tyndall J. On the absorption and radiation of heat by gases and vapours, and on the physical connexion of radiation, absorption, conduction. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 1861 Feb 7;22:273-285.

34. Lemieux PM, Lutes CC, Abbot JA, Aldous KM. Emissions of polychlorinated dibenzo- p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans from the open burning of household waste in barrels. Environ Sci Technol. 2000 Feb 1;34(3):377-384.

38. ASTM Standard D 6400-99. Standard Specification for Compostable Plastics. 1999

39. Narayan R. Biobased & biodegradable polymer materials: rationale, drivers, and technology exemplars. American Chemical Society Symposium Ser. :939-282. Ch. 18.

40. Briassoulis D, Dejean C, Picuno P. Critical review of norms and standards for biodegradable agricultural plastics part II: composting. J Polym Environ. 2010 Sep 1;18(3):364-383.

42. Kale G, Auras R, Singh SP, Narayan R. Biodegradability of polylactide bottles in real and simulated composting conditions. Polym Test. 2007 Dec;26(8):1049-1061.

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Plastics and Environmental Health: The Road Ahead

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Plastics continue to benefit society in innumerable ways, even though recent public focus on plastics has centered mostly on human health and environmental concerns, including endocrine-disrupting properties and long-term pollution. The benefits of plastics are particularly apparent in medicine and public health.

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One good reason to recycle plastic is that there is just so much of it.

Plastics are used to manufacture an incredible number of products we use every day, such as beverage and food containers, trash bags and grocery bags, cups and utensils, children's toys and diapers, and bottles for everything from mouthwash and shampoo to glass cleaner and dishwashing liquid. And that's not even counting all the plastic that goes into furniture, appliances, computers, and automobiles.

The Need Is Growing

As the use of plastics has increased over the years, they have become a larger part of our nation's municipal solid waste (MSW)-growing from less than 1 percent in 1960 to more than 13 percent in 2013, according to a report by the Environmental Protection Agency.

As an example of how and why plastic waste is increasing, the International Bottled Water Association reports that the U.S. consumed 9.67 billion gallons of bottled water in 2012, compared to 9.1 billion gallons the year before. The United States is the world's leading consumer of bottled water. A good first step in reducing waste is switching to a reusable water bottle.

Natural Resources and Energy Conservation

Recycling plastics reduces the amount of energy and resources (such as water, petroleum, natural gas, and coal) needed to create plastic. According to a 2009 study by researchers Peter Gleick and Heather Cooley from the Pacific Institute of California, a pint-sized bottle of water requires about 2,000 times as much energy to produce as the same amount of tap water.

Recycling Plastics Saves Landfill Space

Recycling plastic products also keeps them out of landfills and allows the plastics to be reused in manufacturing new products. Recycling 1 ton of plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space. And let's face it, a lot of plastic ends up directly in the environment, breaking down into tiny pieces, polluting our soil and water, and contributing to the ocean's Great Garbage Patches.

It's Relatively Easy

Recycling plastics has never been easier. Today, 80 percent of Americans have easy access to a plastics recycling program, whether they participate in a municipal curbside program or live near a drop-off site. A universal numbering system for plastic types makes it even easier.

According to the American Plastics Council, more than 1,800 U.S. businesses handle or reclaim postconsumer plastics. In addition, many grocery stores now serve as recycling collection sites for plastic bags and plastic wrap.

Room for Improvement

Overall, the level of plastics recycling is still relatively low. In 2012, only 6.7 percent of plastics in the municipal solid waste stream were recycled, according to the EPA.

Alternatives to Plastic

While recycling is important, one of the best ways to reduce the amount of plastic in our nation's MSW is to find alternatives. For example, reusable grocery bags have seen a growth in popularity in recent years, and they are a great way to limit the amount of plastic that needs to be generated in the first place.

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One good reason to recycle plastic is that there is just so much of it. Plastics are used to manufacture an incredible number of products we use every day, such as beverage and food containers, trash bags and grocery bags, cups and utensils, children's toys and diapers, and bottles for everything from mouthwash and shampoo to glass cleaner and dishwashing liquid.

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Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris found most often in coastal cleanups, according to the Center for Marine Conservation

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What's sterile, strong, and everywhere around us? Plastic. Used in everything from food containers to shoe soles, this popular polymer is quickly revealing itself to have adverse health effects. Find out how you can protect yourself from endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and learn proper recycling protocol to minimize impact on the environment.

Plastic Fantastic

The benefits of plastics are unmatched by any other material, says the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI). It is light, easily shaped, strong, and inexpensive. Its ability to guard against contamination makes it useful in sterile medical environments such as hospitals.

Plastic kitchenware offers a practical alternative to glass and ceramic dishes. Plastic preserves flavour and freshness when used to store food and beverages. Leak-proof and child-resistant plastic containers are useful for holding dangerous household products such as bleach, ammonia,and other caustic cleaners.

Plastic packaging withstands the rigors of shipping, and plastic containers provide good storage solutions at home and in the office. It seems that the benefits of using plastic are boundless-but are they really?

Problems With Plastic

"Our obsession with plastic is loading up the planet with toxic chemicals, and we're only beginning to understand the serious consequences these substances have on health," says Lisa Gue, environmental health policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation.

Gue says that chemicals contained in plastic migrate into the environment when the plastic products containing them are discarded. These chemicals are building up in our bodies and in our environment.

But according to the SPI, only 9 percent of waste in landfills is plastic. They say plastic can be an environmentally friendly, low-cost alternative to other products. Think for a moment of plastic grocery bags. They take up one-seventh of the space paper bags do in landfills and don't produce toxic fumes when incinerated, says the SPI, who also note that incinerated plastic helps the waste mix burn more efficiently.

Is It Safe?

When it comes to the impact on public health, the widespread use of plastics is a contentious issue.

"There are some places that plastics just don't belong," says Jill Thompson, Citizens for Change coordinator with the BC Chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada. "Our food and water shouldn't touch plastic, at least not in the way it is currently manufactured."

The concern is that plastic food-storage containers are leaching chemicals such as bisphenol A into our food. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical used during the manufacturing of certain hard, clear plastics (the kind reusable water bottles, baby bottles, and sippy cups are made from). It mimics the hormone estrogen and disrupts reproductive functions, Gue explains.

Studies have linked bisphenol A to prostate cancer, miscarriages, and birth defects. However, Health Canada says that the level of BPA in these products is low and normal use doesn't pose a risk to your health.

Also of concern are phthalates (pronounced thay-lates), which give plastic its pliable, flexible properties, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, used as a fire retardant. Studies link both to hormone- and reproductive-system damage.

What Should You Do?

"Plastics can and do make sense in some contexts," says Thompson, noting that plastic automobile parts have made lighter cars that consume less fossil fuel. "But we aren't yet doing enough when it comes to plastic recycling," she says.

Still, like 'em or not, plastics are here to stay. So do your part and become plastic savvy. Familiarize yourself with what plastics can be recycled, and keep reusable plastics out of landfills.

For more detailed info on plastics recycling in Canada, visit cpia.ca/epic. Check out myplasticbags.ca for lists of municipalities and retailers in your area that recycle their own plastic bags.

Plastic Recycled-What Your Common Household Plastics Can Be Recycled Into:

household product: disposable utensils, meat packing type of plastic: polystyrene recycled into: CD cases, office accessories

household product: bottles, peanut butter jars type of plastic: polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE) recycled into: stuffing for pillows, carpet backing, and even certain types of sweatshirts

household product: shampoo bottles type of plastic: high-density polyethylene recycled into: other bottles, plastic lumber

household product: most bottle tops type of plastic: polypropylene recycled into: ice scrapers, industrial packing cases

household product: bottles, film for wrapping meat type of plastic: polyvinyl chloride recycled into: insulation for cables and drain pipes

household product: bags, grocery bags type of plastic: low-density polyethylene recycled into: plastic lumber and compost bins

Tips for Consuming Less Plastic:

Make an effort to purchase products with minimal plastic packaging.

Use cloth bags for grocery shopping.

Reuse plastic containers within your home. For example, plastic grocery bags can be reused for additional trips to the grocery store, as lunch bags, gym bags, and garbage can liners. Yesterday's yogourt container can become tomorrow's lunch pail. Old margarine containers can become storage vessels for an assortment of household items.

Familiarize yourself with plastic recycling in your community.

BPA and You

BPA is a chemical used during the manufacturing of polycarbonate plastic.

What products is it in?

It's found in baby bottles, sippy cups, and reusable water bottles.

Should you be concerned?

Studies link it to prostate cancer, miscarriages, and certain birth defects, but Health Canada says it does not pose a health risk.

If you're concerned about the health and environmental risks, avoid reusable plastic water bottles, other hard plastic bottles, and sippy cups.

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Your complete source for natural health and wellness

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Pink: Bad about plastic
Blue: Good about plastic
Yellow: Shows both sides

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Rethink Plastic. Save Our Seas • Plastic Oceans Foundation

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Rethink Plastic. Save Our Seas • Plastic Oceans Foundation

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Plastic Oceans International is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization, founded and existing under the laws of California (Federal Tax ID #81-3778043). We are dedicated to ending plastic pollution and fostering sustainable communities worldwide.

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Plastic Oceans International is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization, founded and existing under the laws of California (Federal Tax ID #81-3778043). We are dedicated to ending plastic pollution and fostering sustainable communities worldwide.

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Seven charts that explain the plastic pollution problem - BBC News

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Seven charts that explain the plastic pollution problem - BBC News

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Marine life is facing "irreparable damage" from the millions of tonnes of plastic waste which ends up in the oceans each year, the United Nations has warned.

"This is a planetary crisis... we are ruining the ecosystem of the ocean," UN oceans chief Lisa Svensson told the BBC.

But how does this happen, where is most at risk and what damage does this plastic actually do?

Why is plastic problematic?

Plastic as we know it has only really existed for the last 60-70 years, but in that time it has transformed everything from clothing, cooking and catering, to product design, engineering and retailing.

One of the great advantages of many types of plastic is that they're designed to last - for a very long time.

And nearly all the plastic ever created still exists in some form today.

In July a paper published in the journal Science Advances by industrial ecologist Dr Roland Geyer, from the University of California in Santa Barbara, and colleagues, calculated the total volume of all plastic ever produced at 8.3bn tonnes.

Of this, some 6.3bn tonnes is now waste - and 79% of that is in landfill or the natural environment.

This vast amount of waste has been driven by modern life, where plastic is used for many throwaway or "single use" items, from drinks bottles and nappies to cutlery and cotton buds.

Four billion plastic bottles...

Drinks bottles are one the most common types of plastic waste. Some 480bn plastic bottles were sold globally in 2016 - that's a million bottles per minute.

Of these, 110bn were made by drinks giant Coca Cola.

Some countries are considering moves to reduce consumption.

Proposals in the UK include deposit-return schemes, and the improvement of free-drinking water supplies in major cities, including London.

So how much plastic waste ends up in the sea?

It's likely that about 10m tonnes of plastic currently ends up in the oceans each year.

In 2010 scientists from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and the University of Georgia in Athens estimated the figure as 8m tonnes, and forecast that to rise to 9.1m tonnes by 2015.

The same study, published in the journal Science in 2015, surveyed 192 coastal countries contributing to ocean plastic waste, and found that Asian nations were 13 of the 20 biggest contributors.

China was top of the list of countries mismanaging plastic waste, but the US also featured in the top 20 and contributed a higher rate of waste per person.

Plastic waste accumulates in areas of the ocean where winds create swirling circular currents, known as gyres, which suck in any floating debris.

There are five gyres around the globe, but the best known is probably the North Pacific gyre.
More on this topic:

Blue Planet II advisers feel 'shame and anger' at extent of plastic

Images of a global problem

All the BBC's news on plastic pollution

It is estimated debris takes about six years to reach the centre of the North Pacific gyre from the coast of the US, and about a year from Japan.

All five gyres have higher concentrations of plastic rubbish than other parts of the oceans.

They are made up of tiny fragments of plastic, which appear to hang suspended below the surface - a phenomenon that has led it to being described as plastic soup.

And the hard-wearing qualities of most plastics means that some items can take hundreds of years to biodegrade.

However, there are moves to clean up the North Pacific gyre. An operation led by a non-profit organisation Ocean Cleanup is due to begin in 2018.

How bad are things in the UK?

The Marine Conservation Society found 718 pieces of litter for every 100m stretch of beach surveyed during their recent Great British Beach Clean Up. That was a 10% increase on last year.

Rubbish from food and drink constituted at least 20% of all litter collected, the MCS reported.

The origin of a lot of the litter is difficult to trace, but the public contributes about 30%. "Sewage-related debris", or items flushed down toilets that should have been put in the bin, amounted to some 8.5%.

Why is plastic so harmful to marine life?

For sea birds and larger marine creatures like turtles, dolphins and seals, the danger comes from being entangled in plastic bags and other debris, or mistaking plastic for food.

Turtles cannot distinguish between plastic bags and jellyfish, which can be part of their diet. Plastic bags, once consumed, cause internal blockages and usually result in death.

Larger pieces of plastic can also damage the digestive systems of sea birds and whales, and can be potentially fatal.

Over time, plastic waste slowly degrades and breaks down into tiny micro-fragments which are also causing scientists concern.

A recent survey by Plymouth University found that plastic was found in a third of UK-caught fish, including cod, haddock, mackerel and shellfish.

This can result in malnutrition or starvation for the fish, and lead to plastic ingestion in humans too.

The effect on humans of eating fish containing plastic is still largely unknown.

But in 2016 the European Food Safety Authority warned of an increased risk to human health and food safety "given the potential for micro-plastic pollution in edible tissues of commercial fish".
Produced by Alison Trowsdale, Tom Housden and Becca Meier. Design by Sue Bridge and Joy Roxas.

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Seven charts that explain the plastic pollution problem

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Marine life is facing "irreparable damage" from the millions of tonnes of plastic waste which ends up in the oceans each year, the United Nations has warned. "This is a planetary crisis... we are ruining the ecosystem of the ocean," UN oceans chief Lisa Svensson told the BBC.

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Causes, Effects and Solutions of Plastic Pollution - Conserve Energy Future

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Causes, Effects and Solutions of Plastic Pollution - Conserve Energy Future

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Plastic Pollution Coalition is a growing global alliance of individuals, organizations, businesses, and policymakers working toward a world free of plastic pollution and its toxic impacts on humans, animals, waterways, oceans, and the environment.

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How Plastics Affect the Environment, plastic and environment, plastic environmental impact, plastic environmental problems, ill-effects of plastic on environment, side effects of plastic on life and environment

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How Plastics Affect the Environment, plastic and environment, plastic environmental impact, plastic environmental problems, ill-effects of plastic on environment, side effects of plastic on life and environment

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How Plastics Affect the Environment, plastic and environment, plastic environmental impact, plastic environmental problems, ill-effects of plastic on environment, side effects of plastic on life and environment

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The one-stop shop for safe, high quality, ethically-sourced, Earth-friendly alternatives to plastic products for everyday life.

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Where Do Plastic Bags Go? | The EPA Blog

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Where Do Plastic Bags Go? | The EPA Blog

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Each season has its unique traits. Some are good, some are not so good. This depends upon who you talk to of course. One of the benefits of winter is the view, which brings a barren type of beauty. There is no doubt that leaves and green landscapes are appealing, but as an outdoor enthusiast and trail junky (both on foot and on wheels), I can appreciate the outdoors in every variation. There is a lot to be said for increased visibility too. When the trees are bare, you can see the contour of the land and the flow of the trail.

Sadly, I can also see litter; particularly, plastic bags. When you are hiking down a trail it's easy to reach down and pick that trash or stray bag up. The easy cleanup opportunity is lost when you are barreling down the highway on the way to work though. It is especially discouraging to see hordes of plastic bags clinging to the tops of trees. These bags have obviously been ejected from passing vehicles to be carried by the wind to their final resting place. I'm sure they are present all year, but the winter draws back the veil of leaves to reveal just how much wasted plastic we generate.

What happens to the rest of the plastic bags that don't get stuck in our suburban forests? And, what can we do to mitigate our waste? For years I was under the impression that we could not recycle these plastic grocery haulers. I've reused them as trash bags, lunch bags and anything else I could think of, but ultimately that just prolongs their life before they end up in the landfill. Luckily, just like a lot of our modern day materials, these can be recycled. So plastic bags really end up in three places (like everything else really).

The landfill

In 2011, Americans produced around 250 million tons of waste, 32 million tons of that solid waste was plastic. That's 4.4 pounds of waste per person per day! It's up to you to help keep plastic bags and other waste out of landfills. ( http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/MSWcharacterization_508_053113_fs.pdf)

Recycled into other goods

There is hope because recycling and composting helped prevent 87 million tons of material from reaching the landfills that year. That gives us an average of about 1.53 pounds of recycled and composted waste out of our 4.4 pounds per person per day. About 11 percent of the recycled waste from the overall count was the category of plastics that include plastic bags. Unfortunately, only 8 percent of the total plastic waste generated was recycled in 2011. We can change this. There are more than 1,800 businesses in the U.S. that handle or reclaim post-consumer plastics. Put simply, bring your used plastic bags to the grocery store when you shop and drop them at the bag recycle bin. If your store doesn't have a recycle service for plastic bags, ask the store manager why not or what the alternatives are. You can also find a curbside drop off. http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/plastics.htm.

Where does recycled plastic go? You handle it all the time and probably don't realize it. Products include bottles, carpet, textiles, paper coating and even clothes.

In the trees (or anywhere else as litter)

Don't let your bags end up here. It's an eyesore for your community, dangerous for the animals in your environment and doesn't contribute to the reduction of source materials needed for plastic manufacturing.

What's the bottom line? Recycle your plastic bags, it's easy. Why? It helps keep trash off the streets. It helps reduce the need for raw resources in manufacturing and it reduces the amount of waste that goes to the landfill; it even helps generate power. Did you know that you can save enough energy to power your laptop for 3.4 hours by recycling 10 plastic bags? You can find these fun facts and other great information here: http://www2.epa.gov/recycle.

Shannon Bond is a multimedia production specialist with EPA Region 7's Office of Public Affairs. He has served in a host of roles including military policeman, corrections officer, network operations specialist, photojournalist, broadcast specialist and public affairs superintendant.

Editor's Note: The views expressed here are intended to explain EPA policy. They do not change anyone's rights or obligations. You may share this post. However, please do not change the title or the content, or remove EPA's identity as the author. If you do make substantive changes, please do not attribute the edited title or content to EPA or the author.

EPA's official web site is www.epa.gov. Some links on this page may redirect users from the EPA website to specific content on a non-EPA, third-party site. In doing so, EPA is directing you only to the specific content referenced at the time of publication, not to any other content that may appear on the same webpage or elsewhere on the third-party site, or be added at a later date.

EPA is providing this link for informational purposes only. EPA cannot attest to the accuracy of non-EPA information provided by any third-party sites or any other linked site. EPA does not endorse any non-government websites, companies, internet applications or any policies or information expressed therein.

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Each season has its unique traits. Some are good, some are not so good. This depends upon who you talk to of course. One of the benefits of winter is the view, which brings a barren type of beauty.

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Why Can't I Put Plastic Bags in the Bin? | Fulton County Conservation District

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Why Can't I Put Plastic Bags in the Bin? | Fulton County Conservation District

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Why Can't I Put Plastic Bags in the Bin? | Fulton County Conservation District

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Any plastic bags left in the recycling bin will cause problems at the Material Recycling Facility. Either the bags or plastic film will wrap around the sorting equipment and shut them down or they pass through the sorting process and often wind up in the paper bales.

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3 reasons why you shouldn't use plastic bags

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3 reasons why you shouldn't use plastic bags

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Plastic bags are a huge problem. According to the Just Say No campaign, a Sustainability Victoria initiative against plastic bag usage in Australia, approximately 80 million plastic bags litter the environment every year.

On average, plastic bags take 1,000 years to break down, meaning this is a problem that won't go away anytime soon. Therefore, people the world over are being encouraged to adopt new methods of carrying products, such as reusable bags, to cut down on plastic consumption. While many people understand that plastic carrier bags are bad for the environment, what exactly makes them so harmful?
They create litter
The Northern Territory Environmental Protection Authority states that litter collection - of which plastic bags are a major contributor - costs Australian governments $200 million each year. This is a colossal amount of money, and if plastic bag usage was decreased, it's also likely that the amount spent on cleaning up litter would go down too.

This would free the environment of toxic materials and other related issues caused by excessive plastic use, as well as making our planet are prettier place to live.
They harm animals
As plastic bags are lightweight and float easily, this means they can travel long distances when picked up by the wind. Often, the bags will fall along the coast and other areas of animal habitats, which creatures then attempt to eat, only to choke and eventually starve to death. After the animal carcass has rotted away, the bag is normally released - only for the whole process to be repeated again.

Removing plastic bags from our society will not only rid us of waste and unnecessary expense, it will also help to protect our wildlife and landscape for which Australia is renowned for. According to Animals Australia, a national animal welfare charity, 100,000 animals are killed by plastic bags every year.
They are expensive
The idea that plastic bags are a freebie when doing your weekly shop or other activities is a fallacy. The production price is often incorporated into taxes and other fees, meaning that the price of your groceries, clothes and other items increase to factor in these associated costs. This suggests that although eco-friendly bags may seem initially more expensive, in the long run they work out cheaper - so the more you use them the less you pay!

Tasmanian residents are in effect paying less for their goods compared to some of the rest of the country, due to the state-wide ban on plastic bags in retail. Tasmanian Plastic Shopping Bags Ban Act 2013 intends to legally reduce plastic bag usage and increase awareness of other green alternative options.

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3 reasons why you shouldn't use plastic bags

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Plastic bags are a huge problem. According to the Just Say No campaign, a Sustainability Victoria initiative against plastic bag usage in Australia, approximately 80 million plastic bags litter the environment every year. On average, plastic bags take 1,000 years to break down, meaning this is a problem that won't go away anytime soon.

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Malacca to ban plastic bags at supermarkets and shopping malls, SE Asia News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

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Malacca to ban plastic bags at supermarkets and shopping malls, SE Asia News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

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MALACCA (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Consumers in Malacca will have to bring along their own shopping bags after the state government declares a total ban on plastic bags made from petroleum by-products at all supermarkets and shopping malls from Friday (Jan 1).

Previously, all shopping premises in Malacca had a "No Plastic Bag Day" on Fridays and Saturdays.

State Education, Higher Education, Science and Technology, Green Technology and Innovation chairman Md Yunos Husin said the ruling would be imposed in all shopping malls and supermarkets.

"From Jan 1, consumers will have to bring along their own shopping bags or the cash counters will supply them with biodegradable bags made of plant-based materials," he said on Tuesday (Dec 29).

He said the move was an initiative by the state government to reduce wastage and in line with Malacca's status as a green technology state.

"Our landfills and drains are filled with paper bags and this doesn't serve our ambitious plan to be a fully green state," he said.

Datuk Md Yunos said discussions were held two years ago with representatives from all malls and supermarkets before the implementation.

"At the same time, factories and manufacturers in the state will also be encouraged to reduce packaging materials made of plastic," he said.

He said the ruling also would affect hawkers and eateries in the state as they would not be allowed to use polystyrene packaging.

Meanwhile, Malacca Bio-Technology Corporation's CEO Badrul Hisham Badrudin said biodegradable plastic bags and food containers would be supplied to shopping premises and eateries.

He said the corporation had conducted research and development for years to ensure that their plastic bags and food packages available for consumers were environmentally friendly.

"We have also suggested to the state government to look into a mechanism where the fee for yearly business licences could be reduced for hawkers adopting green packaging," he said.

Mr Badrul said the supplies for plastic bags and food packaging were sufficient as the plan to shift to environmentally-friendly materials was done a few years ago.

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Malacca to ban plastic bags at supermarkets and shopping malls

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MALACCA (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Consumers in Malacca will have to bring along their own shopping bags after the state government declares a total ban on plastic bags made from petroleum by-products at all supermarkets and shopping malls from Friday (Jan 1).. Read more at straitstimes.com.

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Thailand's 'no-plastic bag' policy should be more than 'temporary packaging': The Nation, SE Asia News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

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Thailand's 'no-plastic bag' policy should be more than 'temporary packaging': The Nation, SE Asia News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

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Thailand is bidding to become a plastic-bag-free nation. As part of an agreement between traders and the government, on the 15th of each month, shoppers will not be given any plastic bags at supermarkets, convenience stores or large malls. The aim to encourage them to bring their own reusable bags.

The one-day moratorium represents a baby step on the road to the long-term sustainable management of waste in the country, but even so, the question is whether it can achieve its goal, or will the idea simply fall by the wayside, like so many previous efforts in this direction.

The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry convinced 15 major retailers to sign up for the no-plastic campaign the day after Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha declared improved waste management a national priority.

In a trial run on August 15, the retail outlets stopped packing customers' shopping in plastic bags. Many shoppers were annoyed by the inconvenience, but plenty of others expressed their support by bringing their own bags.

Some retailers had undertaken their own "war on plastic" even before the government stepped in. Since 2008 the Central Group has been curbing its use of paper and plastic shopping bags, and managed to do so by 26.4 per cent in the first year. Last year Central shoppers took home 1.8 million fewer bags than the year before, a drop of about 11 per cent. Tesco Lotus has just celebrated the first anniversary of a pilot project at its Nawamin branch, where no plastic bags are available.

It seems that retail giants are happy to engage in this battle to cleanse the environment, considering it a win-win concept for all concerned. In doing so, they reduce operating costs and at the same time earn a reputation for eco-friendliness.

But, until the majority of stores join the movement, the impact will remain limited. As long as the no-bag policy remains patchy, customers who prefer the convenience of having their good wrapped in plastic will patronise outlets where the service is offered.

Most of the early-bird retailers have incentives to gain customers' cooperation, thus helping to popularise the campaign. Too many shoppers, however, still feel "entitled" to their plastic bags at checkout, in contrast to European nations where consumers refuse to accept plastic bags when offered. The willingness and cooperation of shoppers are obviously the keys to this policy's success.

If every Thai shopper used just one less bag each day, it would add up to 24.46 million bags per year. At present, Thailand has to cope with 2.7 million tonnes of Styrofoam and plastic waste every year. Citizens must be made aware that this mountain is costing them more and more in taxes to manage. Most significantly, the burgeoning plastic detritus is threatening critical ecological problems.

One way of addressing the problem would be to embrace a longer-term ethos of sustainable living. The "no-plastic" policy should be more than "temporary packaging", so to speak.

We need concrete actions, strong political will and collective awareness if we're to safeguard the environment for the future. Only then can this baby step grow into a mature responsibility.

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Thailand's 'no-plastic bag' policy should be more than 'temporary packaging': The Nation

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Thailand is bidding to become a plastic-bag-free nation. As part of an agreement between traders and the government, on the 15th of each month, shoppers will not be given any plastic bags at supermarkets, convenience stores or large malls. The aim to encourage them to bring their own reusable bags..

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Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Not So Fast | WIRED

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Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Not So Fast | WIRED

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Like cigarettes, plastic bags have recently gone from a tolerated nuisance to a widely despised and discouraged vice.

Last month, the New York City Council passed a 5-cent-per-bag fee on single-use bags handed out by most retailers. Two weeks ago, the Massachusetts State Senate passed a measure that would ban plastic bags from being dispensed by many retail businesses and require a charge of 10 cents or more for a recycled paper or reusable bag. The Massachusetts proposal may not become law this year, but it's the latest sign that the plastic bag industry is losing this war. Already in Massachusetts, 32 towns and cities have passed bag bans or fees. So have at least 88 localities in California, including the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, plus cities and towns in more than a dozen other states and more than a dozen other countries.

The adverse impacts of plastic bags are undeniable: When they're not piling up in landfills, they're blocking storm drains, littering streets, getting stuck in trees, and contaminating oceans, where fish, seabirds, and other marine animals eat them or get tangled up in them. As longtime plastic bag adversary Ian Frazier recently reported in The New Yorker, "In 2014, plastic grocery bags were the seventh most common item collected during the Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup, behind smaller debris such as cigarette butts, plastic straws, and bottle caps." The New York City Sanitation Department collects more than 1,700 tons of single-use carry-out bags every week, and has to spend $12.5 million a year to dispose of them.

Bag bans cut this litter off at the source: In San Jose, California, a plastic bag ban led to an 89 percent reduction in the number of plastic bags winding up in the city's storm drains. Fees have a smaller, but still significant, effect. Washington, DC's government estimates that its 5-cent bag tax has led to a 60 percent reduction in the number of these bags being used, although that figure is contested by other sources.

Is plastic really worse than paper?

But advocates of these laws and journalists who cover the issue often neglect to ask what will replace plastic bags and what the environmental impact of that replacement will be. People still need bags to bring home their groceries. And the most common substitute, paper bags, may be just as bad or worse, depending on the environmental problem you're most concerned about.

That's leading to a split in the anti-bag movement. Some bills, like in Massachusetts, try to reduce the use of paper bags as well as plastic, but still favor paper. Others, like in New York City, treat all single-use bags equally. Even then, the question remains as to whether single-use bags are necessarily always worse than reusable ones.

Studies of bags' environmental impacts over their life cycle have reached widely varying conclusions. Some are funded by plastic industry groups, like the ironically named American Progressive Bag Alliance. Even studies conducted with the purest of intentions depend on any number of assumptions. How many plastic bags are replaced by one cotton tote bag? If a plastic bag is reused in the home as the garbage bag in a bathroom waste bin, does that reduce its footprint by eliminating the need for another small plastic garbage bag?

If your chief concern is climate change, things get even muddier. One of the most comprehensive research papers on the environmental impact of bags, published in 2007 by an Australian state government agency, found that paper bags have a higher carbon footprint than plastic. That's primarily because more energy is required to produce and transport paper bags.

"People look at [paper] and say it's degradable, therefore it's much better for the environment, but it's not in terms of climate change impact," says David Tyler, a professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon who has examined the research on the environmental impact of bag use. The reasons for paper's higher carbon footprint are complex, but can mostly be understood as stemming from the fact that paper bags are much thicker than plastic bags. "Very broadly, carbon footprints are proportional to mass of an object," says Tyler. For example, because paper bags take up so much more space, more trucks are needed to ship paper bags to a store than to ship plastic bags.

Looking beyond climate change

Still, many environmentalists argue that plastic is worse than paper. Climate change, they say, isn't the only form of environmental degradation to worry about. "Paper does have its own environmental consequences in terms of how much energy it takes to generate," acknowledges Emily Norton, director of the Massachusetts Sierra Club. "The big difference is that paper does biodegrade eventually. Plastic is a toxin that stays in the environment, marine animals ingest it, and it enters their bodies and then ours."

Some social justice activists who work in low-income urban neighborhoods or communities of color also argue that plastic bags are a particular scourge. "A lot of the waste ends up in our communities," says Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, an environmental and social justice-oriented community organization in Brooklyn. "Plastic bags not only destroy the physical infrastructure," she says, referring to the way they clog up storm drains and other systems, "they contribute to emissions." And she points out that marine plastic pollution is a threat to low-income people who fish for their dinner: "So many frontline communities depend on food coming from the ocean." That's why her group supported New York City's bag fee even though it's more of a burden on lower-income citizens. A single mom, or someone working two jobs, is more likely to have to do her shopping in a rush on the way home from work than to go out specifically with a tote bag in hand. But for UPROSE, that concern is outweighed by the negative impacts of plastic bags on disadvantaged communities.

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Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Not So Fast

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Like cigarettes, plastic bags have recently gone from a tolerated nuisance to a widely despised and discouraged vice. Last month, the New York City Council passed a 5-cent-per-bag fee on single-use bags handed out by most retailers.

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20+ Reasons Why Plastic Bags Should be Banned - Conserve Energy Future

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20+ Reasons Why Plastic Bags Should be Banned - Conserve Energy Future

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Plastic Bag Pollution Facts - The World Counts

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Plastic Bag Pollution Facts - The World Counts

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Look at the number of plastic bags being produced! It goes on for a long time.

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lt;h2>The Bad Boy of Pollution

Plastic bags are one of the main causes of marine pollution, and the focus on plas...

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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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Plastic pollution is the accumulation of plastic objects and particles (e.g. plastic bottles, bags and microbeads) in the Earth's environment that adversely affects humans, wildlife and their habitat. Plastics that act as pollutants are categorized by size into micro-, meso-, or macro debris. Plastics are inexpensive and durable, making them very adaptable for different uses; as a result, manufacturers choose to use plastic over other materials. However, the chemical structure of most plastics renders them resistant to many natural processes of degradation and as a result they are slow to degrade. Together, these two factors allow large volumes of plastic to enter the environment as mismanaged waste which persists in the ecosystem and travels throughout food webs.

Plastic pollution can afflict land, waterways and oceans. It is estimated that 1.1 to 8.8million tonnes of plastic waste enters the ocean from coastal communities each year. It is estimated that there is a stock of 86million tons of plastic marine debris in the worldwide ocean as of the end of 2013, with an assumption that 1.4% of global plastics produced from 1950 to 2013 has entered the ocean and has accumulated there. Global plastic production has surged from 1.5million tons in the 1950s to 335million tons in 2016, resulting in environmental concerns. A significant issue arises from the inefficient treatment of 79% of plastic products, leading to their release into landfills or natural environments.

Some researchers suggest that by 2050 there could be more plastic than fish in the oceans by weight. Living organisms, particularly marine animals, can be harmed either by mechanical effects such as entanglement in plastic objects, problems related to ingestion of plastic waste, or through exposure to chemicals within plastics that interfere with their physiology. Degraded plastic waste can directly affect humans through direct consumption (i.e. in tap water), indirect consumption (by eating plants and animals), and disruption of various hormonal mechanisms.

As of 2019, 368million tonnes of plastic is produced each year; 51% in Asia, where China is the world's largest producer. From the 1950s up to 2018, an estimated 6.3billion tonnes of plastic has been produced worldwide, of which an estimated 9% has been recycled and another 12% has been incinerated. This large amount of plastic waste enters the environment and causes problems throughout the ecosystem; for example, studies suggest that the bodies of 90% of seabirds contain plastic debris. In some areas there have been significant efforts to reduce the prominence of free range plastic pollution, through reducing plastic consumption, litter cleanup, and promoting plastic recycling.

As of 2020, the global mass of produced plastic exceeds the biomass of all land and marine animals combined. A May 2019 amendment to the Basel Convention regulates the exportation/importation of plastic waste, largely intended to prevent the shipping of plastic waste from developed countries to developing countries. Nearly all countries have joined this agreement. On 2 March 2022, in Nairobi, 175 countries pledged to create a legally binding agreement by the end of the year 2024 with a goal to end plastic pollution.

The amount of plastic waste produced increased during the COVID-19 pandemic due to increased demand for protective equipment and packaging materials. Higher amounts of plastic ended up in the ocean, especially plastic from medical waste and masks. Several news reports point to a plastic industry trying to take advantage of the health concerns and desire for disposable masks and packaging to increase production of single use plastic.

There are differing estimates of how much plastic waste has been produced in the last century. By one estimate, one billion tons of plastic waste have been discarded since the 1950s. Others estimate a cumulative human production of 8.3billion tons of plastic, of which 6.3billion tons is waste, with only 9% getting recycled.

It is estimated that this waste is made up of 81% polymer resin, 13% polymer fibres and 32% polymer additives. In 2018 more than 343million tonnes of plastic waste were generated, 90% of which was composed of post-consumer plastic waste (industrial, agricultural, commercial and municipal plastic waste). The rest was pre-consumer waste from resin production and manufacturing of plastic products (e.g. materials rejected due to unsuitable colour, hardness, or processing characteristics).

Several studies have attempted to quantify plastic leakage into the environment at both national and global levels which have highlight the difficulty of determining the sources and amounts of all plastic leakage. One global study has estimated that between 60 and 99million tonnes of mismanaged plastic waste were produced in 2015. Borrelle et al. 2020 has estimated that 19-23million tonnes of plastic waste entered aquatic ecosystems in 2016. while the Pew Charitable Trusts and SYSTEMIQ (2020) have estimated that 9-14million tonnes of plastic waste ended up in the oceans the same year.

Despite global efforts to reduce the generation of plastic waste, losses to the environment are predicted to increase. Modelling indicates that, without major interventions, between 23 and 37million tonnes per year of plastic waste could enter the oceans by 2040 and between 155 and 265million tonnes per year could be discharged into the environment by 2060. Under a business as usual scenario, such increases would likely be attributable to a continuing rise in production of plastic products, driven by consumer demand, accompanied by insufficient improvements in waste management. As the plastic waste released into the environment already has a significant impact on ecosystems, an increase of this magnitude could have dramatic consequences.

Types of plastic debris

There are three major forms of plastic that contribute to plastic pollution: micro-, macro-, and mega-plastics. Mega- and micro plastics have accumulated in highest densities in the Northern Hemisphere, concentrated around urban centers and water fronts. Plastic can be found off the coast of some islands because of currents carrying the debris. Both mega- and macro-plastics are found in packaging, footwear, and other domestic items that have been washed off of ships or discarded in landfills. Fishing-related items are more likely to be found around remote islands. These may also be referred to as micro-, meso-, and macro debris.

Microdebris

Microdebris are plastic pieces between 2 mm and 5 mm in size. Plastic debris that starts off as meso- or macrodebris can become microdebris through degradation and collisions that break it down into smaller pieces. Microdebris is more commonly referred to as nurdles. Nurdles are recycled to make new plastic items, but they easily end up released into the environment during production because of their small size. They often end up in ocean waters through rivers and streams. Microdebris that come from cleaning and cosmetic products are also referred to as scrubbers. Because microdebris and scrubbers are so small in size, filter-feeding organisms often consume them.

Nurdles enter the ocean by means of spills during transportation or from land based sources. The Ocean Conservancy reported that China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam dump more plastic in the sea than all other countries combined. It is estimated that 10% of the plastics in the ocean are nurdles, making them one of the most common types of plastic pollution, along with plastic bags and food containers. These micro-plastics can accumulate in the oceans and allow for the accumulation of Persistent Bio-accumulating Toxins such as bisphenolA, polystyrene, DDT, and PCB's which are hydrophobic in nature and can cause adverse health affects.

Amounts, locations, tracking, and correlations of the microdebris

A 2004 study by Richard Thompson from the University of Plymouth, UK, found a great amount of microdebris on beaches and in waters in Europe, the Americas, Australia, Africa, and Antarctica. Thompson and his associates found that plastic pellets from both domestic and industrial sources were being broken down into much smaller plastic pieces, some having a diameter smaller than human hair. If not ingested, this microdebris floats instead of being absorbed into the marine environment. Thompson predicts there may be 300,000 plastic items per square kilometre of sea surface and 100,000 plastic particles per square kilometre of seabed. International Pellet Watch collected samples of polythene pellets from 30 beaches in 17 countries which were analysed for organic micro-pollutants. It was found that pellets found on beaches in the US, Vietnam and southern Africa contained compounds from pesticides suggesting a high use of pesticides in the areas. In 2020 scientists created what may be the first scientific estimate of how much microplastic currently resides in Earth's seafloor, after investigating six areas of around 3 km (1.9 mi) depth about 300 km (190 mi) off the Australian coast. They found the highly variable microplastic counts to be proportionate to plastic on the surface and the angle of the seafloor slope. By averaging the microplastic mass per cm ³, they estimated that Earth's seafloor contains about 14million tons of microplastic - about double the amount they estimated based on data from earlier studies - despite calling both estimates "conservative" as coastal areas are known to contain much more microplastic. These estimates are about one to two times the amount of plastic thought - per Jambeck et al., 2015 - to currently enter the oceans annually.

Macrodebris

Plastic production

Decomposition of plastics

Plastics themselves contribute to approximately 10% of discarded waste. Many kinds of plastics exist depending on their precursors and the method for their polymerization. Depending on their chemical composition, plastics and resins have varying properties related to contaminant absorption and adsorption. Polymer degradation takes much longer as a result of saline environments and the cooling effect of the sea. These factors contribute to the persistence of plastic debris in certain environments. Recent studies have shown that plastics in the ocean decompose faster than was once thought, due to exposure to sun, rain, and other environmental conditions, resulting in the release of toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A. However, due to the increased volume of plastics in the ocean, decomposition has slowed down. The Ocean Conservancy has predicted the decomposition rates of several plastic products. It is estimated that a foam plastic cup will take 50 years, a plastic beverage holder will take 400 years, a disposable nappy will take 450 years, and fishing line will take 600 years to degrade.

Persistent organic pollutants

Commercial pollutants

In 2019, the group Break Free From Plastic organized over 70,000 volunteers in 51 countries to collect and identify plastic waste. These volunteers collected over "59,000 plastic bags, 53,000 sachets and 29,000 plastic bottles," as reported by The Guardian. Nearly half of the items were identifiable by consumer brands. The most common brands were Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and Pepsico. According to the global campaign coordinator for the project Emma Priestland in 2020, the only way to solve the problem is stopping production of single use plastic and using reusable products instead.

Pepsico responded that they want to decrease "virgin plastic in our beverage business by 35% by 2025" and also expanding reuse and refill practices what should prevent 67billion single use bottles by 2025.

Major plastic waste generator and polluter countries

Plastic waste generation

The United States is the world leader in generating plastic waste, producing an annual 42million metric tons of plastic waste. Per capita generation of plastic waste in the United States is higher than in any other country, with the average American producing 130.09 kilograms of plastic waste per year. Other high-income countries, such as those of the EU-28 (annual per capita generation 58.56 kg), also have a high per capita plastic waste generation rate. Some high-income countries, such as Japan (annual per capital generation 38.44 kg), produce far less plastic waste per capita.

Plastic pollution

The United States National Academy of Sciences estimated in 2022 that the worldwide entry of plastic into the ocean was 8million metric tons of plastic per year. A 2021 study by The Ocean Cleanup estimated that rivers convey between 0.8 and 2.7million metric tons of plastic into the ocean, and ranked these river's countries. The top ten were, from the most to the least: Philippines, India, Malaysia, China, Indonesia, Myanmar, Brazil, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Thailand.

Mismanaged plastic waste polluters

In 2018 approximately 513million tonnes of plastics wind up in the oceans every year out of which the 83,1% is from the following 20 countries: China is the most mismanaged plastic waste polluter leaving in the sea the 27.7% of the world total, second Indonesia with the 10.1%, third Philippines with 5.9%, fourth Vietnam with 5.8%, fifth Sri Lanka 5.0%, sixth Thailand with 3.2%, seventh Egypt with 3.0%, eighth Malaysia with 2.9%, ninth Nigeria with 2.7%, tenth Bangladesh with 2.5%, eleventh South Africa with 2.0%, twelfth India with 1.9%, thirteenth Algeria with 1.6%, fourteenth Turkey with 1.5%, fifteenth Pakistan with 1.5%, sixteenth Brazil with 1.5%, seventeenth Myanmar with 1.4%, eighteenth Morocco with 1.0%, nineteenth North Korea with 1.0%, twentieth United States with 0.9%. The rest of world's countries combined wind up the 16.9% of the mismanaged plastic waste in the oceans, according to a study published by in 2015.

A 2019 study calculated the mismanaged plastic waste, in millions of metric tonnes (Mt) per year:

Total plastic waste polluters

Around 275million tonnes of plastic waste is generated each year around the world; between 4.8 million and 12.7million tonnes is dumped into the sea. About 60% of the plastic waste in the ocean comes from the top five countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The table below list the top 20 plastic waste polluting countries in 2010 according to a study published by , Jambeck et al (2015).

In a study published by Environmental Science & Technology, Schmidt et al (2017) calculated that ten rivers: two in Africa (the Nile and the Niger) and eight in Asia (the Ganges, Indus, Yellow, Yangtze, Hai He, Pearl, Mekong and Amur) "transport 88-95% of the global plastics load into the sea."

The Caribbean Islands are the biggest plastic polluters per capita in the world. Trinidad and Tobago produces 1.5 kilograms of waste per capita per day, is the biggest plastic polluter per capita in the world. At least 0.19 kg per person per day of Trinidad and Tobago's plastic debris end up in the ocean, or for example Saint Lucia which generates more than four times the amount of plastic waste per capita as China and is responsible for 1.2 times more improperly disposed plastic waste per capita than China. Of the top thirty global polluters per capita, ten are from the Caribbean region. These are Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Guyana, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Bahamas, Grenada, Anguilla and Aruba, according to a set of studies summarized by (2019).

Effects on the environment

The distribution of plastic debris is highly variable as a result of certain factors such as wind and ocean currents, coastline geography, urban areas, and trade routes. Human population in certain areas also plays a large role in this. Plastics are more likely to be found in enclosed regions such as the Caribbean. It serves as a means of distribution of organisms to remote coasts that are not their native environments. This could potentially increase the variability and dispersal of organisms in specific areas that are less biologically diverse. Plastics can also be used as vectors for chemical contaminants such as persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals.

In January 2022 a group of scientists defined a planetary boundary for "novel entities" (pollution, including plastic pollution) and found it has already been exceeded. According to co-author Patricia Villarubia-Gómez from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, "There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950. This is projected to triple again by 2050". There are at least 350,000 artificial chemicals in the world. They have mostly "negative effects on planetary health". Plastic alone contain more than 10,000 chemicals and create large problems. The researchers are calling for limit on chemical production and shift to circular economy, meaning to products that can be reused and recycled.

The problem of ocean plastic debris is ubiquitous. It is estimated that 1.5-4% of global plastics production ends up in the oceans every year, mainly as a result of poor waste management infrastructure and practices combined with irresponsible attitudes to the use and disposal of plastics. The weathering of plastic debris causes its fragmentation into particles that even small marine invertebrates may ingest hence contaminating the food chain. Their small size renders them untraceable to their source and extremely difficult to remove from open ocean environments. In the marine environment, plastic pollution causes "Entanglement, toxicological effects via ingestion of plastics, suffocation, starvation, dispersal, and rafting of organisms, provision of new habitats, and introduction of invasive species are significant ecological effects with growing threats to biodiversity and trophic relationships. Degradation (changes in the ecosystem state) and modifications of marine systems are associated with loss of ecosystem services and values. Consequently, this emerging contaminant affects the socio-economic aspects through negative impacts on tourism, fishery, shipping, and human health".

Plastic pollution as a cause of climate change

According to the "Plastic and Climate" report, in 2019 production and incineration of plastic contributed greenhouse gases in the equivalent of 850million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO ₂) to the atmosphere. In trend, annual emissions from these sources would grow to 1.34billion tonnes by 2030. By 2050 plastic could emit 56billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, as much as 14 percent of the earth's remaining carbon budget. Those are emission from production, transportation, incineration, but there are also releases of methane and effects on phytoplankton.

The emissions of methane from plastic decomposition and impact on phytoplankton, were still not known well when the report was released. According to one estimate, plastic floating in the ocean can emit annually 76 Mt methane equal to 2,129 Mt CO2e, based on the 100 years global warming potential of methane. But these numbers are very preliminary. From one side, it can be an overestimate as it is based on the emissions of LDPE in powder form, the most emission intensive type of plastic in this case and in tropical water where intense radiation increases decomposition. But from the other side it can be an underestimate, as it is not including the decomposition of plastic on land which is probably more emission intensive, the effects on phytoplankton which can be significant, the emissions from submerged plastic. Therefore, the authors prefer to not include them in the official estimate, but to write them in the full report, as a base for further discussion noting the high importance of the problem.

The United Nations Environment Programme used 2 different studies to estimate the impact of plastic on climate: according to the first, by the year 2040 the annual emissions from plastic will reach 2.1 GtCO2 and will consume 19% of the 1.5 degrees carbon budget, while the second estimated the emissions in the year 2015 as 1.7 GtCO2 and predicted that by the year 2050 they will reach 6.5 GtCO2, consuming 15% of the carbon budget. The OECD estimated the emissions from plastic as 1.8 GtCO2 (3.7% of total emissions) in 2019 which will rise to 4.3 GtCO2 (4.5% of total emissions) in 2060, without measures to reduce them.

In a 2024 Bloomberg article, the ever-increasing consumption of plastics was highlighted as a critical environmental issue. Global use is projected to reach 1.1 billion metric tons by 2050, up from just 2 million in the 1950s. The plastic industry's greenhouse gas emissions are substantial, having emitted 1.8 billion metric tons in 2019, with the potential to exceed 2.5 billion metric tons by 2050 if no changes are made.

With global recycling rates for plastic packaging at a mere 20%, most discarded plastics end up incinerated or in landfills, where they emit methane as they decompose.

The international community is divided on how to address the plastic issue. Proposals range from national pledges to mandatory production controls, with the latter being supported by entities like the European Union. However, the recycling solution is under scrutiny due to low success rates. As a result, there's a growing movement towards reducing plastic production and implementing bans on single-use plastics. States like Maine and Oregon are taking legislative action with extended producer responsibility laws to ensure that manufacturers are accountable for the lifecycle environmental impact of their products.

Effects of plastic on land

In 2021 a report conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization stated that plastic is often used in agriculture. There is more plastic in the soil than in the oceans. The presence of plastic in the environment hurt ecosystems and human health and pose a threat to food safety. Chlorinated plastic can release harmful chemicals into the surrounding soil, which can then seep into groundwater or other surrounding water sources and also the ecosystem of the world. This can cause serious harm to the species that drink the water. A 2025 study confirmed that agricultural soil contain up to 23 times more plastic particles in comparison to the ocean. The particles can be absorbed by the crops through the roots and be eaten by humans. This create different health hazards, especially as the chemicals replacing BPA in the plastic can be more dangerouse than BPA itself.

Effect on flooding

Volunteers clearing gutters in Ilorin, Nigeria during a volunteer sanitation day. Even when there is adequate infrastructure for sanitation, plastic pollution can prevent drainage and impede sewage flow.

Plastic waste can clog storm drains, and such clogging can increase flood damage, particularly in urban areas. A buildup of plastic garbage at trash cans raises the water level upstream and may enhance the risk of urban flooding. For example, in Bangkok flood risk increases substantially because of plastic waste clogging the already overburdened sewer system.

In tap water

A 2017 study found that 83% of tap water samples taken around the world contained plastic pollutants. This was the first study to focus on global drinking water pollution with plastics, and showed that with a contamination rate of 94%, tap water in the United States was the most polluted, followed by Lebanon and India. European countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and France had the lowest contamination rate, though still as high as 72%. This means that people may be ingesting between 3,000 and 4,000 microparticles of plastic from tap water per year. The analysis found particles of more than 2.5 microns in size, which is 2500 times bigger than a nanometer. It is currently unclear if this contamination is affecting human health, but if the water is also found to contain nano-particle pollutants, there could be adverse impacts on human well-being, according to scientists associated with the study.

In terrestrial ecosystems

Effects of plastic on oceans and seabirds

A variety of marine life is endangered due to plastic pollution, ranging from zooplankton to large marine mammals. It was shown that more than 900 marine species are affected by plastic pollution (not including smaller organisms). Marine wildlife such as seabirds, whales, fish and turtles mistake plastic waste for prey and ingest plastic objects or particles, including microplastics. This has an impact, ranging from lacerations, infections, reduced ability to swim, internal injuries to death due to blocked stomachs and guts . "Globally, 100,000 marine mammals die every year as a result of plastic pollution. This includes whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea lions". Another impact is caused by entanglement, meaning that marine wildlife gets trapped and ensnared by plastic debris such as fishing gear and plastic objects containing loops.

Effects on freshwater ecosystems

Plastics make their way into bodies of freshwater, underground aquifers, and moving freshwaters through runoff and erosion of mismanaged plastic waste (MMPW). In some areas, the direct waste disposal into rivers is a remaining factor of historical practices, and has only been somewhat limited by modern legislation. Rivers are the primary transport of plastics into marine ecosystems, sourcing potentially 80% of the plastic pollution in the oceans. Research on the top ten river catchments ranked by annual amount of MMPW showed that some rivers contribute as high as 88-95% of ocean-bound plastics, the highest being the Yangtze River into the East China Sea.

Impacts on freshwater biodiversity

Invertebrates

A study analyzing ingestion of plastics across a variety of previously published experiments showed that out of the 206 species covered, the majority of papers documented ingestion in fish. This does not quite mean that fish ingest plastic more than other organisms, but instead highlights the underrepresentation of plastic effects in equally important organisms, like aquatic plants, amphibians and invertebrates. Despite this disparity, controlled experiments analyzing microplastic impact on aquatic plants like the algae Chlorella spp and common duckweed Lemna minor have yielded significant results. Between microplastics of polypropylene (PP) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), PVC demonstrated greater toxicity to Chlorella pyrenoidosa, overall negatively impacting their photosynthetic ability. This effect on photosynthesis is likely due to the 60% reduction of algal chlorophyll a associated with high PVC concentrations found in the same study. When analyzing the effect of polyethylene microbeads (origin: cosmetic exfoliants) on the aquatic macrophyte L. minor, no effect on photosynthetic pigments and productivity was found, but root growth and root cell viability decreased. These results are concerning as plants and algae are integral to nutrient and gas cycling within an aquatic system, and have the capacity to create significant changes in water composition due to their sheer density. Crustaceans have also been analyzed for their response to plastic presence. There is proof that freshwater crustaceans, specifically European crabs and crayfish, suffer entanglement in polyamide ghost nets used in lake fishing. When exposed to plastic nanoparticles of polystyrene, Daphnia galeata (common water flea) experienced reduced survival within 48 hours as well as reproductive issues. Over a span of 5 days, the amount of pregnant Daphnia decreased by nearly 50%, and less than 20% of exposed embryos survived without any immediate repercussions. Other arthropods, like juvenile stages of insects are susceptible to similar plastic exposure as some spend part of their adolescence fully submerged in a freshwater resource. This similarity in lifestyle to other aquatic invertebrates indicates that insects may experience similar side effects of plastic exposure.

Vertebrates

An American robin dead after becoming tangled in discarded fishing line

Plastic exposure in amphibians has mostly been studied in adolescent life stages, when the test subjects are still dependent on an aquatic environment where it can be easier to manipulate variables experimentally. Studies on a common South American freshwater frog, Physalaemus cuvieri indicated that plastics may have the potential to induce mutagenic and cytotoxic morphological changes. Much more research needs to be done on amphibian response to plastic pollution, especially since amphibians can serve as initial indicator species of environmental decline. Freshwater mammals and birds have long been known to have negative interactions with plastic pollution, often resulting in entanglement or suffocation/choking after ingesting. While inflammation within the gastrointestinal tract in both groups has been noted, unfortunately there is little to no data on the toxicological effects of plastic pollutants in these organisms. Fish have been studied the most regarding plastic pollution in freshwater organisms, with the majority of studies indicating evidence of plastic ingestion in wild-caught samples and lab specimens. There have been some attempts to look at lethality of plastics in a common freshwater model species, Danio rerio, aka zebrafish. Increased mucus production and inflammation response in the D. rerio GI tract was noted, but additionally, researchers noted a distinct shift in the microbial communities within the zebrafish intestinal microbiome. This finding is significant, as research within the last few decades has increasingly revealed how much power intestinal microbiomes have regarding their host's nutrient absorption and endocrine systems. Because of this, plastics may have a far more drastic effect on individual organism health than is currently known so far, thus warranting the need for further research as soon as possible. Many of these findings also have been found in a laboratory setting, so more effort needs to be channeled into measuring plastic abundance and toxicology in wild populations.

Effects on humans

Compounds that are used in manufacturing pollute the environment by releasing chemicals into the air and water. Some compounds that are used in plastics, such as phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA), polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE), are under close statute and might be very harmful. Even though these compounds are unsafe, they have been used in the manufacturing of food packaging, medical devices, flooring materials, bottles, perfumes, cosmetics and much more. Inhalation of microplastics (MPs) have been shown to be one of the major contributors to MP uptake in humans. MPs in the form of dust particles are circulated constantly through ventilation and air conditioning systems indoors. The large dosage of these compounds are hazardous to humans, destroying the endocrine system. BPA imitates the female's hormone called estrogen. PBD destroys and causes damage to thyroid hormones, which are vital hormone glands that play a major role in the metabolism, growth and development of the human body. MPs can also have a detrimental effect on male reproductive success. MPs such as BPA can interfere with steroid biosynthesis in the male endocrine system and with early stages of spermatogenesis. MPs in men can also create oxidative stress and DNA damage in spermatozoa, causing reduced sperm viability. Although the level of exposure to these chemicals varies depending on age and geography, most humans experience simultaneous exposure to many of these chemicals. Average levels of daily exposure are below the levels deemed to be unsafe, but more research needs to be done on the effects of low dose exposure on humans. A lot is unknown on how severely humans are physically affected by these chemicals. Some of the chemicals used in plastic production can cause dermatitis upon contact with human skin. In many plastics, these toxic chemicals are only used in trace amounts, but significant testing is often required to ensure that the toxic elements are contained within the plastic by inert material or polymer. Children and women during their reproduction age are at most at risk and more prone to damaging their immune as well as their reproductive system from these hormone-disrupting chemicals. Pregnancy and nursing products such as baby bottles, pacifiers, and plastic feeding utensils place infants and children at a very high risk of exposure.

A 2022 study published in Environment International found microplastic in the blood of 80% of people tested in the study, and such microplastic has the potential to become embedded in human organs.

Clinical significance

Due to the pervasiveness of plastic products, most of the human population is constantly exposed to the chemical components of plastics. In the United States, 95% of adults have had detectable levels of BPA in their urine. Exposure to chemicals such as BPA have been correlated with disruptions in fertility, reproduction, sexual maturation, and other health effects. Specific phthalates have also resulted in similar biological effects.

Thyroid hormone axis

Bisphenol A affects gene expression related to the thyroid hormone axis, which affects biological functions such as metabolism and development. BPA can decrease thyroid hormone receptor (TR) activity by increasing TR transcriptional corepressor activity. This then decreases the level of thyroid hormone binding proteins that bind to triiodothyronine. By affecting the thyroid hormone axis, BPA exposure can lead to hypothyroidism.

Sex hormones

BPA can disrupt normal, physiological levels of sex hormones. It does this by binding to globulins that normally bind to sex hormones such as androgens and estrogens, leading to the disruption of the balance between the two. BPA can also affect the metabolism or the catabolism of sex hormones. It often acts as an antiandrogen or as an estrogen, which can cause disruptions in gonadal development and sperm production.

Carotid arteries

A recent research found that approximately 58% of patients who underwent vascular surgery for clogged blood vessels were patients with invisible plastic nano particles in their carotid arteries, blocking the blood supply to the brain and neck. The researchers also found that the blood vessels of those with plastic were inflamed, thus putting them at risk of heart attacks, strokes, and death. Another research found that amounts of polyethylene were found in the plaque tissues of 150 people who underwent carotid endarterectomy.

Breast milk

Reduction efforts

Efforts to reduce the use of plastics, to promote plastic recycling and to reduce mismanaged plastic waste or plastic pollution have occurred or are ongoing. The first scientific review in the professional academic literature about global plastic pollution in general found that the rational response to the "global threat" would be "reductions in consumption of virgin plastic materials, along with internationally coordinated strategies for waste management" - such as banning export of plastic waste unless it leads to better recycling - and describes the state of knowledge about "poorly reversible" impacts which are one of the rationales for its reduction.

In January 2019 a "Global Alliance to End Plastic Waste" was created by companies in the plastics industry. The alliance aims to clean the environment from existing waste and increase recycling, but it does not mention reduction in plastic production as one of its targets. Moreover, subsequent reporting has suggested the group is a greenwashing initiative.

On 2 March 2022 in Nairobi, representatives of 175 countries pledged to create a legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution. The agreement should address the full lifecycle of plastic and propose alternatives including reusability. An Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) that should conceive the agreement by the end of the year 2024 was created. The agreement should facilitate the transition to a circular economy, which will reduce GHG emissions by 25%. Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP called the decision "a triumph by planet earth over single-use plastics".

Biodegradable and degradable plastics

The use of biodegradable plastics has many advantages and disadvantages. Biodegradables are biopolymers that degrade in industrial composters. Biodegradables do not degrade as efficiently in domestic composters, and during this slower process, methane gas may be emitted.

Also worth noting is the evolution of new enzymes allowing microorganisms living in polluted locations to digest normal, hard-to-degrade plastic. A 2021 study looking for homologs of 95 known plastic-degrading enzymes spanning 17 plastic types found a further 30,000 possible enzymes. Despite their apparent ubiquity, there is no current evidence that these novel enzymes are breaking down any meaningful amount of plastic to reduce pollution.

Incineration

At a large scale, plastics, paper, and other materials provides waste-to-energy plants with useful fuel. About 12% of total produced plastic has been incinerated. Many studies have been done concerning the gaseous emissions that result from the incineration process. Incinerated plastics release a number of toxins in the burning process, including dioxins, furans, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls. When burned outside of facilities designed to collect or process the toxins, this can have significant health effects and create significant air pollution.

Agencies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency and US Food and Drug Administration often do not assess the safety of new chemicals until after a negative side effect is shown. Once they suspect a chemical may be toxic, it is studied to determine the human reference dose, which is determined to be the lowest observable adverse effect level. During these studies, a high dose is tested to see if it causes any adverse health effects, and if it does not, lower doses are considered to be safe as well. This does not take into account the fact that with some chemicals found in plastics, such as BPA, lower doses can have a discernible effect. Even with this often complex evaluation process, policies have been put into place in order to help alleviate plastic pollution and its effects. Government regulations have been implemented that ban some chemicals from being used in specific plastic products.

In Canada, the United States, and the European Union, BPA has been banned from being incorporated in the production of baby bottles and children's cups, due to health concerns and the higher vulnerability of younger children to the effects of BPA. Taxes have been established in order to discourage specific ways of managing plastic waste. The landfill tax, for example, creates an incentive to choose to recycle plastics rather than contain them in landfills, by making the latter more expensive. There has also been a standardization of the types of plastics that can be considered compostable. The European Norm EN 13432, which was set by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), lists the standards that plastics must meet, in terms of compostability and biodegradability, in order to officially be labeled as compostable.

Given the significant threat that oceans face, the European Investment Bank Group aims to increase its funding and advisory assistance for ocean cleanup. For example, the Clean Oceans Initiative (COI) was established in 2018. The European Investment Bank, the German Development Bank, and the French Development Agency (AFD) agreed to invest a total of €2billion under the COI from October 2018 to October 2023 in initiatives aimed at reducing pollution discharge into the oceans, with a special focus on plastics.

The Clean Ocean Initiative plans to give €4billion in funding towards decreasing plastic waste at sea by the end of 2025. Improved wastewater treatment in Sri Lanka, Egypt, and South Africa are some examples, as is solid waste management in Togo and Senegal.

Voluntary reduction efforts failing

There have been several international covenants which address marine plastic pollution, such as the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter 1972, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973 and the Honolulu Strategy, there is nothing around plastics which infiltrate the ocean from the land.

In 2019, the Basel Convention was amended to include plastic waste. 187 countries agreed to limit the export of plastic waste following rules from the Basel Convention. The Convention prohibits Parties from trading with non-Parties (e.g. United States) unless the countries have a pre-determined agreement that meets Basel criteria. During January 2021, the first month that the agreement was in effect, trade data showed that overall scrap exports from the U.S. actually increased.

Legally binding plastics treaty

Many academics and NGOs believe that a legally binding international treaty to deal with plastic pollution is necessary as plastic pollution is an international problem, moving between maritime borders, and also because they believe there needs to be a cap on plastic production.

In 2022, United Nation member states agreed to devise a global plastic pollution treaty by 2024, under United Nations Environment Assembly mandate 5/14. After six negotiation sessions no legally binding agreement was obtained by August 2025.

Waste import bans

Circular economy policies

Laws related to recyclability, waste management, domestic materials recovery facilities, product composition, biodegradability and prevention of import/export of specific wastes may support prevention of plastic pollution. A study considers producer/manufacturer responsibility "a practical approach toward addressing the issue of plastic pollution", suggesting that "Existing and adopted policies, legislations, regulations, and initiatives at global, regional, and national level play a vital role".

Standardization of products, especially of packaging which are, as of 2022, often composed of different materials (each and across products) that are hard or currently impossible to either separate or recycle together in general or in an automated way could support recyclability and recycling.

For instance, there are systems that can theoretically distinguish between and sort 12 types of plastics such as PET using hyperspectral imaging and algorithms developed via machine learning while only an estimated 9% of the estimated 6.3billion tonnes of plastic waste from the 1950s up to 2018 has been recycled (12% has been incinerated and the rest reportedly being "dumped in landfills or the natural environment").

Collection, recycling and reduction

The two common forms of waste collection include curbside collection and the use of drop-off recycling centers. About 87 percent of the population in the United States (273million people) have access to curbside and drop-off recycling centers. In curbside collection, which is available to about 63 percent of the United States population (193million people), people place designated plastics in a special bin to be picked up by a public or private hauling company. Most curbside programs collect more than one type of plastic resin, usually both PETE and HDPE. At drop-off recycling centers, which are available to 68 percent of the United States population (213million people), people take their recyclables to a centrally located facility. Once collected, the plastics are delivered to a materials recovery facility (MRF) or handler for sorting into single-resin streams to increase product value. The sorted plastics are then baled to reduce shipping costs to reclaimers.

Reusable packaging refers to packaging that is manufactured of durable materials and is specifically designed for multiple trips and extended life. There are zero-waste stores and refill shops for selected products as well as conventional supermarkets that enable refilling of selected plastics-packaged products or voluntarily sell products with no or more sustainable packaging.

Another effective strategy, that could be supported by policies, is eliminating the need for plastic bottles such as by using refillable e.g. steel bottles, and water carbonators, which may also prevent potential negative impacts on human health due to microplastics release.

Ocean cleanup

Great Bubble Barrier

In the Netherlands, plastic litter from some rivers is collected by a bubble barrier, to prevent plastics from floating into the sea. This so-called 'Great Bubble Barrier' catches plastics bigger than 1 mm. The bubble barrier is implemented in the River IJssel (2017) and in Amsterdam (2019) and will be implemented in Katwijk at the end of the river Rhine.

Garbage cafe's

Mapping and tracking

Our World In Data provides graphics about some analyses, including maps, to show sources of plastic pollution - including that of oceans in specific.

Identifying largest sources of ocean plastics in high fidelity may help to discern causes, to measure progress and to develop effective countermeasures.

A large fraction of ocean plastics may come from - also non-imported - plastic waste of coastal cities as well as from rivers (with top 1000 rivers estimated by one 2021 study to account for 80% of global annual emissions). These two sources may be interlinked. The Yangtze river into the East China Sea is identified by some studies that use sampling evidence as the highest plastic-emitting (sampled) river, in contrast to the beforementioned 2021 study that ranks it at place 64. Management interventions at the local level at coastal areas were found to be crucial to the global success of reducing plastic pollution.

By country/region

In July 2018, Albania became the first country in Europe to ban lightweight plastic bags. Albania's environment minister Blendi Klosi said that businesses importing, producing or trading plastic bags less than 35 microns in thickness risk facing fines between 1 million to 1.5million lek (€7,900 to €11,800).

It has been estimated that each year, Australia produces around 2.5m tonnes of plastic waste annually, of which about 84% ends up as landfill, and around 130,000 tonnes of plastic waste leaks into the environment. Six of the eight states and territories had by December 2021 committed to banning a range of plastics. The federal government's National Packaging Targets created the goal of phasing out the worst of single-use plastics by 2025, and under the National Plastics Plan 2021, it has committed "to phase out loose fill and moulded polystyrene packaging by July 2022, and various other products by December 2022.

An Australian single-use plastic reduction initiative, Plastic Free July, that began in 2011 in Perth, Western Australia has gained a significant global outreach. As of 2022, it had a record 140million participants making conscious changes and reducing their waste by 2.6million tonnes in 2022. In 2022, in recognition of its contributions to promoting single-use plastic pollution solutions, Plastic Free July was one of two finalists in the annual UN Sustainable Development Action Awards.

China is the biggest consumer of single-use plastics. In 2020 China published a plan to cut 30% of plastic waste in five years. As part of this plan, single use plastic bags and straws will be banned.

European Union

On 3 July 2021, the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD, EU 2019/904) went into effect within EU member states. The directive aims to reduce plastic pollution from single-use disposable plastics. It focuses on the 10 most commonly found disposable plastics at beaches, which make up 43% of marine litter (fishing gear another 27%). According to the directive, there is a ban on plastic cotton buds and balloon sticks, plastic plates, cutlery, stirrers and straws, Styrofoam drinks and food packaging (e.g. disposable cups and one-person meals), products made of oxo-degradable plastic, which degrade into microplastics, while cigarette filters, drinking cups, wet wipes, sanitary towels and tampons receive a label indicating the product contains plastic, that it belongs in the trash, and that litter has negative effects on the environment. Article 8 of the directive also supports the use of extended producer responsibility schemes relating to plastic waste.

In December 2022 the EU took the first steps for banning the export of plastic waste to other countries. Agreement between the European Parliament and the European Council on a revision to the Waste Shipment Regulation, which will cover this matter, was reached on 17 November 2023.

Say no to polythene. Sign. Nako, Himachal Pradesh, India.

The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Government of India, has requested various governmental departments to avoid the use of plastic bottles to provide drinking water during governmental meetings, etc., and to instead make arrangements for providing drinking water that do not generate plastic waste. The state of Sikkim has restricted the usage of plastic water bottles (in government functions and meetings) and styrofoam products. The state of Bihar has banned the usage of plastic water bottles in governmental meetings.

The 2015 National Games of India, organised in Thiruvananthapuram, was associated with green protocols. This was initiated by Suchitwa Mission that aimed for " zero-waste" venues. To make the event "disposable-free", there was ban on the usage of disposable water bottles. The event witnessed the usage of reusable tableware and stainless steel tumblers. Athletes were provided with refillable steel flasks. It is estimated that these green practices stopped the generation of 120 tonnes of disposable waste.

In the year 2022 India has begun to implement a country wide ban on different sorts of plastic. This is necessary also for achieving the climate targets of the country as in plastic production are used more than 8,000 additives, part of them are thousands times more powerful greenhouse gases than CO ₂.

In Israel, two cities: Eilat and Herzliya, decided to ban the usage of single use plastic bags and cutlery on the beaches. In 2020 Tel Aviv joined them, banning also the sale of single use plastic on the beaches.

New Zealand

United Kingdom

From October 2023 many types of single use plastic will be banned in England including cutlery and plates. Scotland and Wales have already implemented such bans. The new rules entered into force on the first of October, but many are unaware and not prepared for it.

United States

In the beginning of 2024, 12 states and at least 500 municipalities had some kind of plastic bag ban. Three state bans and two city bans alone reduced the amount of plastic bags used in one year approximately by 6billion.

In 2011 and 2013, Kauai, Maui and Hawaii prohibit non-biodegradable plastic bags at checkout as well as paper bags containing less than 40 percent recycled material. In 2015, Honolulu was the last major county approving the ban.

In 2019, the state New York banned single use plastic bags and introduced a 5-cent fee for using single use paper bags. The ban will enter into force in 2020. This will not only reduce plastic bag usage in New York state (23 billion every year until now), but also eliminate 12million barrels of oil used to make plastic bags used by the state each year.

In 2019, Delaware, Maine, Oregon and Vermont enacted on legislation. Vermont also restricted single-use straws and polystyrene containers.

Obstruction by major plastic producers

Surgical mask among dry grass in Brastad during the COVID-19 pandemic

The ten corporations that produce the most plastic on the planet, The Coca-Cola Company, Colgate-Palmolive, Danone, Mars, Incorporated, Mondelēz International, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Perfetti Van Melle, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever, formed a well-financed network that has sabotaged for decades government and community efforts to address the plastic pollution crisis, according to a detailed investigative report by the Changing Markets Foundation. The investigation documents how these companies delay and derail legislation so that they can continue to inundate consumers with disposable plastic packaging. These large plastic producers have exploited public fears of the COVID-19 pandemic to work toward delaying and reversing existing regulation of plastic disposal. Big ten plastic producers have advanced voluntary commitments for plastic waste disposal as a stratagem to deter governments from imposing additional regulations.

Deception of the public about recycling

As early as the early 1970s, petrochemical industry leaders understood that the vast majority of plastic they produced would never be recycled. For example, an April 1973 report written by industry scientists for industry executive states that sorting the hundreds of different kinds of plastic is "infeasible" and cost-prohibitive. By the late 1980s, industry leaders also knew that the public must be kept feeling good about purchasing plastic products if their industry was to continue to prosper, and needed to quell proposed legislation to regulate the plastic being sold. So the industry launched a $50million/year corporate propaganda campaign targeting the American public with the message that plastic can be, and is being, recycled, and lobbied American municipalities to launch expensive plastic waste collection programs, and lobbied U.S. states to require the labeling of plastic products and containers with recycling symbols. They were confident, however, that the recycling initiatives would not end up recovering and reusing plastic in amounts anywhere near sufficient to hurt their profits in selling new "virgin" plastic products because they understood that the recycling efforts that they were promoting were likely to fail. Industry leaders more recently have planned 100% recycling of the plastic they produce by 2040, calling for more efficient collection, sorting and processing.

Action for creating awareness

World Environment Day

Other actions

On 11 April 2013 in order to create awareness, artist Maria Cristina Finucci founded The Garbage Patch State at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, in front of Director General Irina Bokova. This was the first of a series of events under the patronage of UNESCO and of the Italian Ministry of the Environment.

In 2020, China disclosed a three-part proposal to reduce plastic pollution. The plan includes a nationwide prohibition on single-use plastics, introduced as the country's plastic waste had risen to an anticipated 45million tons in 2025, partly as a result of a surge in e-commerce packaging.

1. ^ "Campaigners have identified the global trade in plastic waste as a main culprit in marine litter, because the industrialised world has for years been shipping much of its plastic "recyclables" to developing countries, which often lack the capacity to process all the material."

2. ^ "The new UN rules will effectively prevent the US and EU from exporting any mixed plastic waste, as well plastics that are contaminated or unrecyclable - a move that will slash the global plastic waste trade when it comes into effect in January 2021."

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57. ^ UNEP. Environment Assembly (5th sess. : 2021 : Nairobi) (ed.). 5/14. End plastic pollution: towards an international legally binding instrument: resolution. Nairobi: UN.

58. ^ Qureshi, Muhammad Saad; Oasmaa, Anja; Pihkola, Hanna; Deviatkin, Ivan; Tenhunen, Anna; Mannila, Juha; Minkkinen, Hannu; Pohjakallio, Maija; Laine-Ylijoki, Jutta (1 November 2020). "Pyrolysis of plastic waste: Opportunities and challenges". Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis. 152 104804. Bibcode:2020JAAP..15204804Q. doi:10.1016/j.jaap.2020.104804. ISSN 0165-2370. S2CID 200068035.

59. "AF&PA Releases Community Recycling Survey Results". Archived from the original on 2 June 2012.

60. ^ Li, Dunzhu; Shi, Yunhong; Yang, Luming; Xiao, Liwen; Kehoe, Daniel K.; Gun'ko, Yurii K.; Boland, John J.; Wang, Jing Jing (November 2020). "Microplastic release from the degradation of polypropylene feeding bottles during infant formula preparation". Nature Food. 1 (11): 746-754. doi:10.1038/s43016-020-00171-y. hdl:2262/94127. ISSN 2662-1355. PMID 37128027. S2CID 228978799.
News reports with lay summaries:

61. ^ Willis, Kathryn; Hardesty, Britta Denise; Vince, Joanna; Wilcox, Chris (17 June 2022). "Local waste management successfully reduces coastal plastic pollution". One Earth. 5 (6): 666-676. Bibcode:2022OEart...5..666W. doi:10.1016/j.oneear.2022.05.008. ISSN 2590-3322. S2CID 249562648.

62. ^ Wahlquist, Calla (15 April 2021). "'Single-use plastics' to be phased out in Australia from 2025 include plastic utensils and straws". The Guardian.

63. ^ PDF CC BY 4.0.

64. ^ "The Macroproblem of Microplastics". Ohio River Valley Institute. 3 August 2020. China, the world's biggest consumer of single-use plastics.

65. ^ EUR-Lex, Directive (EU) 2019/904 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 June 2019 on the reduction of the impact of certain plastic products on the environment (Text with EEA relevance), accessed 12 December 2023

66. ^ "Avoiding use of bottled water" (PDF).

67. ^

68. ^ "Plastic ban in Bangalore" (PDF).

69. ^ "Plastic Waste Management in Maharashtra". Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. 23 June 2018. Archived from the original on 21 August 2018.

70. "State Plastic Bag Legislation".

71. ^

72. ^ "The garbage patch territory turns into a new state". United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 22 May 2019.

73. ^ "Rifiuti Diventano Stato, Unesco Riconosce 'Garbage Patch' | Siti - Patrimonio Italiano Unesco". Archived from the original on 14 July 2014.

This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under Cc BY-SA 3.0 IGO ( license statement/permission). Text taken from Drowning in Plastics - Marine Litter and Plastic Waste Vital Graphics​, United Nations Environment Programme.

Further reading

Lecture of Erik van Sebille (Utrecht University) on plastic pollution

Colette, Wabnitz & Wallace J. Nichols. Editorial: Plastic Pollution: An Ocean Emergency. 3 March 2010. 28 January 2013.

Biodegradable Plastics and Marine Litter. Misconceptions, concerns and impacts on marine environments, 2015, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Nairobi.

A million bottles a minute: world's plastic binge 'as dangerous as climate change'. The Guardian. 28 June 2017.

Guess What's Showing Up In Our Shellfish? One Word: Plastics. NPR. 19 September 2017

Microplastic pollution revealed 'absolutely everywhere' by new research. The Guardian. 6 March 2019

After bronze and iron, welcome to the plastic age, say scientists. The Guardian. 4 September 2019.

Planet Plastic: How Big Oil and Big Soda kept a global environmental calamity a secret for decades. Rolling Stone. 3 March 2020.

Plastics an 'unfolding disaster' for US marine life. BBC, 19 November 2020.

Elizabeth Kolbert, "A Trillion Little Pieces: How plastics are poisoning us", The New Yorker, 3 July 2023, pp. 24-27. "If much of contemporary life is wrapped up in plastic, and the result of this is that we are poisoning our kids, ourselves, and our ecosystems, then contemporary life may need to be rethought." (p. 27.)

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Plastic pollution is the accumulation of plastic objects and particles (e.g. plastic bottles, bags and microbeads) in the Earth's environment that adversely affects humans, wildlife and their habitat. Plastics that act as pollutants are categorized by size into micro-, meso-, or macro debris.

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Essay on Plastic Pollution: Top 4 Essays

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Essay on Plastic Pollution: Top 4 Essays

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Essays, Research Papers and Articles on Environmental Pollution

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Read this essay to learn about plastic pollution. After reading this essay you will learn about: 1. Introduction to Plastic Pollution 2. Causes of Plastic Pollution 3. Effects 4. Control.

Essay # 1. Introduction to Plastic Pollution:

In the last decade, plastic has affected the health and life of human beings very badly. Some incidents have attracted the attention of the whole world and put a question mark about the use of plastic in daily life.

Plastic, the wonder material that we use for everything and which pollutes our environment, is perhaps the most harmful of trash dumped by mariners and sea-goers in sea because it does not readily break down in nature. In-fact, the plastic that goes over the side today may still be around in hundreds of years to foul up the fishing gear, boat propellers, and beaches of future generations.

Careless disposal of plastic can have dire consequences. A plastic bag looks like a tasty jellyfish to an indiscriminate feeder like the sea turtle, but plastic is indigestible. It can choke, block the intestines of, or cause infection in those animals that consume it.

A plastic bag can also clog an outboard engine's cooling system. Lost or discarded monofilament fishing line can foul propellers, destroying oil seals and lower units of engines, or it can become an entangling web for fish, seabirds, and marine mammals.

According to the Centre for Marine Conservation, over 25,000 pieces of fishing line were collected from U.S. beaches during the 1996 annual beach clean-up and at least 40% of all animal entanglements reported during the clean-ups involved fishing line.

Every day, more and more plastic is accumulating in our oceans. Recreational boaters are not the only group that improperly disposes off plastic refuse at sea. Plastics also enter the marine environment from sewage outfalls, merchant shipping, commercial fishing operations, and beachgoers.

In the middle stage, it is very flexible and can be given any shape depending on temperature and pressure. In practices, urea, formaldehyde, poly ethylene, polystyrene, polycithylcholide, phenoloic compounds and other substances are used in the preparation of plastics pollution.

Now-a-days the most popular plastic pollution is caused is polyvinyl chloride (P.V.C.). When any food material or blood is stored in the said plastic containers then gradually the soluble chemical gets dissolved in them causing death due to cancer and other skin diseases.

Polyvinyl chloride has also been found to destroy the fertility of the animals and their respiratory systems. When mixed with water, it causes paralysis and also damages bones and causes irritation to the skin.

Recently U.S.A. has banned the use of P.V.C. plastic in space apparatus and in food containers (as chemicals get dissolved in the food). India should immediately ban the use of P.V.C. in water pipes, food and medicine containers to save the lives of millions who are already suffering from different types of ailments.

Essay # 2. Causes of Plastic Pollution:

Plastics are used because these are easy and cheap to make and they can last a long time. Unfortunately these very useful qualities make plastic a huge pollution problem. Because the plastic is cheap it gets discarded easily and its persistence in the environment can do great harm. Unbanization has added to the plastic pollution in concentrated form in cities.

Plastic thrown on land can enter the drainage lines and choke them resulting into floods in local areas in cities as was experienced in Mumbai, India in 1998. It was claimed in one of the programmes on TV channel that eating plastic bags results in death of 100 cattle per day in U.P. in India.

In stomach of one dead cow, as much as 35 kg of plastic was found. Because plastic does not decompose, and requires high energy ultra-violet light to break down, the amount of plastic waste in our oceans is streadily increasing.

More than 90% of the articles found on the sea beaches contained plastic. The plastic rubbish found on beaches near urban areas tends to originate from use on land, such as packaging material used to wrap around other goods.

On remote rural beaches the rubbish tends to have come from ships, such as fishing equipment used in the fishing industry. This plastic can affect marine wildlife in two important ways: by entangling creatures, and by being eaten.

Turtles are particularly badly affected by plastic pollution, and all seven of the world's turtle species are already either endangered or threatened for a number of reasons. Turtles get entagled in fishing nets, and many sea turtles have been found dead with plastic bags in their stomachs. Turtles mistake floating transparent plastic bags for jellyfish and eat them.

In one dead turtle found off Hawaii in the Pacific more than 1000 pieces of plastic were found in its stomach. A recent US report concluded that more than 100000 marine mammals die every year in the world's oceans by eating or getting entangled in plastic rubbish, and the position is worsening world-wide, 75 marine bird species are known to eat plastic articles. This includes 36 species found off South Africa.

A recent study of blue petrel chicks on South Africa's remote Marine Island showed that 90% of chicks examined had plastic in their stomachs apparently fed to them accidentally by their parents. South African seabirds are among the worst affected in the world. Plastics may remain in the stomach, blocking digestion and possibly causing starvation.

Essay # 3. Effects of Plastic Pollution:

Since the development of plastic earlier this century, it has become a popular material used in a wide variety of ways. Today plastic is used to make, or wrap around, many of the items we buy or use. The problem arises when we no longer want these items and we have to dispose off them, particularly the throwaway plastic material used in wrapping or packaging.

Plastics are used because they are easy and cheap to make and they can last a long time. Unfortunately these same useful qualities can make plastic a huge pollution problem. The cheapness means plastic gets discarded easily and its long life means it survives in the environment for long periods where it can do great harm.

Because plastic does not decompose, and requires high energy ultraviolet light to break down, the amount of plastic waste in our oceans is steadily increasing.

The plastic rubbish found on beaches near urban areas tends to originate from use on land, such as packaging material used to wrap around other goods. On remote rural beaches the rubbish tends to have come from ships, such as fishing equipment used in the fishing industry.

i. Effect on Ocean Wildlife:

This plastic can affect marine wildlife in two important ways; by entangling creatures, and by being swallowed.

The bodies of almost all marine species, ranging in size from plankton to marine mammals, and including some of the wildest and most vulnerable species on the planet - animals that make nearly their entire living far from human beings - now contain plastic.

Sixty per-cent of 6,136 surface plankton net tows conducted in the Western North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea from 1986 to 2008 contained buoyant plastic pieces, typically millimetre in size.

Plastics turn up in bird nests, are worn by hermit crabs instead of shells, and are present in sea turtle, whale and albatross stomachs. Over 260 species, including invertebrates, turtles, fish, seabirds and mammals, have been reported to ingest or become entangled in plastic debris, resulting in impaired movement and feeding, reduced reproductive output, lacerations, ulcers, and finally death.

Ingestion of plastic items occurs much more frequently than entanglement. At sea, plastic bags may often be mistaken for jellyfish, whilst on shorelines seabirds have been seen to pick up plastic items the same way they pick up cuttlefish bones. In the North Sea, almost all Northern Fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) contain some plastic.

Microscopic fragments, in some locations outweighing surface zooplankton, revealed a significant increase in abundance when samples from the 1960s and 1970s were compared with those of 1980s and 1990s. When ingested, such small particles can also be carried from the gut into other body tissues.

Ingestion of plastic can lead to wounds (internal and external); impairment of feeding capacity; blockage of digestive tract followed by satiation and starvation; and general debilitation often leading to death.

Plasticizers and organic contaminants they typically sorb and concentrate on plastics at levels far superior to the surrounding marine environment have been shown to affect both development and reproduction in a wide range of marine organisms.

Molluscs and crustaceans appear to be particularly sensitive to these compounds. Being an important food item for many species, plastics ingested by invertebrates then have the potential to transfer toxic substances up the food chain. The mechanism by which ingestion leads to illness and death can often only be surmised because the animals at sea are unobserved or are found dead ashore.

Once fouled with marine life or sediment, plastic items sink to the seafloor contaminating the sea bed. Deployment of a remotely operated vehicle submarine in the Fram Strait (Arctic) revealed 0.2 to 0.9 pieces of plastic per km at Hausgarten (2,500 m).

On dives between 5,500 and 6,770 m, 15 items of debris were observed, of which 13 were plastic. The presence of plastic at shallow and greater depths may harm sediment wildlife such as worms, sessile filter feeders, deposit feeders and detritivores, all known to accidentally ingest plastics.

The hard surface of pelagic plastics also provides an attractive and alternate substrate to natural floating debris (e.g., seeds, pumice, and wood) for a number of opportunistic colonizers. The increasing availability of these synthetic and non-biodegradable materials in marine debris may increase the dispersal and prospects for invasion by non-indigenous species.

ii. Plastic Pollution and Turtles:

Turtles are particularly badly affected by plastic pollution, and all seven of the world's turtle species are already either endangered or threatened for a number of reasons. Turtles get entangled in fishing nets, and many sea turtles have been found dead with plastic bags in their stomachs.

It is believed that they mistake these floating semi-transparent bags for jellyfish and eat them. The turtles die from choking or from being unable to eat. One dead turtle found off Hawaii in the Pacific was found to have more than 100 pieces of plastic in its stomach including part of a comb, a toy truck wheel and nylon rope.

All sea turtle species are particularly prone and may be seriously harmed by 'feeding on' anthropogenic marine debris, particularly plastics. Of particular concern is floating plastic bags that might be mistaken for jellyfish, and discarded fishing gear in which sea turtles get entangled, or pieces of which they ingest.

Laboratory experiments demonstrated that green and loggerhead turtles actively target and consume plastics whether it is small pieces intermixed with food items, or single 1 to 10 cm ² sheets. Sub lethal impacts of plastics on sea turtles can be substantial, yet mortality resulting from interactions with plastic debris is much more difficult to quantify.

Plastic ingestion by sea turtles is a relatively common occurrence, albeit often in small quantities. However, even in small quantities, plastics can kill sea turtles due to obstruction of the oesophagus or perforation of the bowel for example.

Relief of gastrointestinal (GI) obstruction of a green turtle off Melbourne beach, Florida, resulted in the animal defecting 74 foreign objects over a period of a month, including four types of latex balloons, five different types of strings, nine different types of soft plastic, four different types of hard plastic, a piece of carpet-like material, and 2 to 4 mm tar balls.

Fishing line can be particularly dangerous, when, during normal intestinal function, different parts of the digestive tract pull at different ends of the line. This can result in the gut gathering along the length of the line. This can result in the gut gathering along the length of the line preventing digesta from passing through the tract.

Plastic ingestion may also indirectly lead to death of an animal through nutrient dilution, i.e., plastic pieces displacing food in the gut (and reducing the surface available for absorption).

Typical consequences include decreased growth rate, longer developmental periods at sizes most vulnerable to predation, depleted energy reserves, and lower reproductive output and survivorship of animals. The latter is likely to be an important threat to smaller individuals with a lower ability to increase intake to meet their energetic requirements than larger animals.

Young pelagic sea turtles typically associate with "floating islands" of drifting seaweeds such as Sargassum. Floating plastics, tar from terrestrial and oceanic (ship) sources and lost fishing gear are drawn by advection into the same drift lines.

As young sea turtles indiscriminately feed on pelagic material, large occurrence of plastic is common in the digestive tract of these small sea turtles, often resulting their mortality.

As plastics can accumulate in multiple segments of the gut, stomach lavages underestimate the incidence of ingestion.

iii. Marine Mammals:

There is great concern about the effect of plastic rubbish on marine mammals in particular, because many of these creatures are already under threat of extinction for a variety of other reasons e.g. whale population has been decimated by uncontrolled hunting.

A recent US report concluded that 100000 marine mammals die every year in the world's oceans by eating or becoming entangled in plastic rubbish, and the position is worsening.

When a marine mammal such as a Cape fur seal gets caught up in a large piece of plastic, it may simply drown, or get exhausted and die of starvation due to the greater effort needed to swim, or the plastic may kill slowly over a period of months or years as it bites into the animal causing wounds, loss of blood and/or severing of limbs.

iv. "Ghost Nets":

A large number of marine creatures become trapped and killed in "ghost nets". These are pieces of gill nets which have been lost by fishing vessels. Other pieces of fishing equipment such as lobster pots may also keep trapping creatures.

v. Marine Birds:

World-wide, 75 marine bird species are known to eat plastic articles. This includes 36 species found off South Africa. A recent study of blue petrel chicks at South Africa's remote Marion Island showed that 90% of chicks examined had plastic in their stomachs apparently fed to them accidently by their parents.

South African seabirds are among the worst affected in the world. Plastics may remain in the stomachs, blocking digestion and possibly causing starvation. As particular species seem to be badly affected this may be a threat to the entire population of these birds.

vi. Plastic Pollution and Elephant Seal:

Plastic's devastating effect on marine mammals was first observed in the late 1970s, when scientists from the National Marine Mammal Laboratory concluded that plastic entanglement was killing up to 40,000 seals a year. Annually, this amounted to a four to six percent drop in seal population beginning in 1976. In 30 years, a 50% decline in Northern Fur Seals population has been reported.

These curious, playful seals would often play with fragments of plastic netting or packing straps, catching their necks in the webbing. The plastic harness can constrict the seal's movements, killing the seal through starvation, exhaustion, or infection from deep wounds caused by the tightening material.

While diving for food, both seals and whales can get caught in translucent nets and drown. In the fall of 1982, a humpback whale tangled in 50 to 100 feet of net washed up on a Cape Cod beach. It was starving and its ribs were exposed. It died within a couple of hours.

Along Florida's coasts, brown pelicans diving for fish sometimes dive for the bait on a fisherman's line. Cutting the bird loose only makes the problem worse, as the pelican gets its wings and feet tangled in the line, or gets snagged onto a tree.

vii. Effect on Sea Birds:

Royal terns (Sterna maxima) are among several species of sea birds that dive from the air to the water to catch fish with their sharp beaks. A plastic bag floating at the surface would become invisible to the tern, and may even have attracted the fish in the first place.

In this photograph the tern's bill penetrated the plastic and left the bird wearing the bag around its sneck like shroud. It causes problem to terns to dive in & catch fish. They die due to starvation.

viii. Plastic Bags Litter the Landscape:

Once they are used, most plastic bags go into landfill, or rubbish tips. Each year more and more plastic bags are ending up littering the environment. Once they become litter, plastic bags find their way into our waterways, parks, beaches, and streets. And, if they are burnt, they infuse the air with toxic fumes.

ix. Plastic Bags Kill Animals:

About 100,000 animals such as cows, dogs and penguins are killed every year due to plastic bags. Many animals ingest plastic bags, mistaking them for food, and therefore die. And worse, the ingested plastic bag remains intact even after the death and decomposition of the animal. Thus, it lies around in the landscape where another victim may ingest it.

x. Plastic Bags are Non-Biodegradable:

And one of the worst environmental effects of plastic bags is that they are non-biodegradable. The decomposition of plastic bags takes about 1000 years.

xi. Petroleum is Required to Produce Plastic Bags:

As it is, petroleum products are diminishing and getting more expensive day by day, since we have been using this non-renewable resource increasingly. Petroleum is vital for our modern way of life. It is necessary for our energy requirements - for our factories, transport, heating, lighting, and so on.

Without viable alternate sources of energy yet on the horizon, if the supply of petroleum were to be turned off, it would lead to practically the whole world grinding to a halt. Surely, this precious resource should not be wasted on producing plastic bags, should it?

xii. Effect on Birds:

Birds like chicks are often mistakenly fed plastics by their parents, when chicks are unable to eject the plastics, which cause death of chicks - either due to starvation or choking. Bottle caps and other plastic objects are visible inside the decomposed carcases of some Laysan albatoss. The bird probably mistook the plastics for food and injested them while foraging.

xiii. Effects on Human Beings:

The quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink or bath on, and the earth in which we grow our food has an immense effect on our health. A recent US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention Study found that about 93 percent of the US population has bisphenol A, a chemical that can be found in canned goods and in hard, clear plastic items (including baby bottles), in their body.

Endocrine disruptors are ubiquitous in our environment and have deep impact on our health. Endocrine distruptor chemicals (EDC's) are added to plastic products to make them softer and easier to handle.

These EDCs are common in our environment and, when absorbed by human beings and wildlife, mimic the action of hormones and have been linked to reproductive problems in animals and human beings are known to affect fat cells.

Bisphenol A (an endocrine disruptor) is a key monomer in production of polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins. Polycarbonate plastic, which is clear and nearly shatter-proof, is used to make a variety of common products including baby and water bottles, sports equipment, medical and dental devices, dental composite (white) fillings and sealants and lenses.

The figure shows that as the plastic moves up in food chain, its concentration increases and when these fishes with huge amount of plastic are eaten by human cause diseases like cancer. Plastic plays the villain right from the stage of its production.

The major chemicals that go into the making of plastic are highly toxic and pose serious threat to living beings of all species on earth. Some of the constituents of plastic such as benzene are known to cause cancer. Recycling of plastic is associated with skin and respiratory problems, resulting from exposure to and inhalation of toxic fumes, especially hydrocarbons.
Thin plastics are thrown anywhere and everywhere causing the following environmental degradation problems:
i. It blocks the open sewage system and results in stagnation of sewage paving way for the mosquitoes which leads to the spread of various diseases.

ii. Plastic dumped on the soil prevents water percolation into the water table.

iii. It affects the very structure of soil.

iv. Water stagnating on the plastics strewn on the land becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes which, in turn, produce diseases.

v. Jelly fish-eating, Fishes mistaking the plastic floating in the water for Jellyfish eat them and then die their species is becoming extinct.

vi. Cattle eat plastic and die as a result thereof.

vii. Burning of plastics results in release of toxins in the atmosphere which, in turn, causes dreadly Cancer.

viii. Plastic is non-biodegradable and so the problems become perennial.

Essay # 4. Control of Plastic Pollution:

Plastic bags and bottles, like all forms of plastic, create significant environmental and economic burden. They consume growing amount of energy and other natural resources, degrading the environment in a number of ways.

In addition to using up fossil fuels and other resources, plastic products create litter, hurt marine life, and threaten the basis of life on earth. Here are some steps that we can take to reverse the tide of toxic, non-biodegradable pollution so that it may not overtake our planet.

i. Put produce in paper, canvas, and other healthy-fiber bags.

ii. If a clerk throws your box of soap into a plastic bag, ask him or her to replace it in one of your bags. Give the clerk a copy of "Why I Don't Use Plastic Bags". Our experience has been that they appreciate this information.

iii. Use wax paper bags, cloth napkins, or re-useable sandwich boxes (e.g., tiffins, described below).

iv. Use only glass bottles or cans.

v. Bottled water costs over 1000 times more per liter than water from your tap. Buying our most essential nutrient, water, from corporations represents an abdication of community control of the commons. If you have concerns about water safety, investigate a filter system such as Multi-Pure. Better yet, work with your water district to develop stricter standards for water purity.

vi. Pre-bagged produce not only uses wasteful packaging, but also tends to come from farther away, consuming more of our dwindling oil supplies in transport.

vii. Tiffins (stainless steel food containers) are a long tradition in India. They store food well, have longer life than Tupper Ware and its look-alikes (you've probably seen the fading, corroding, and chipping that occurs to these plastic containers), are more hygienic, and have a certain panache.

viii. Look for and reward earth-s friendly packaging choices, e.g.,

Buy greeting cards in paper boxes instead of clear plastic shells.

Ask you florist for flowers wrapped in paper, not clear film

Use pens that re-fill instead of land-fill.

ix. Conscious consumption is not only good for the earth, it's good for you. "Mindfulness", says Thick Nhat Hanh, "is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves."

x. Support recycling schemes and promote support for one in your local area.

xi. Fishermen throughout South Africa should not throw away waste line, net or plastic litter - this causes huge suffering and many deaths.

xii. Practice and promote paper disposal of plastics in your home and at the beach. Always remember that litter generates litter. Never dispose off plastics in the sewage system.

xiii. At the beach dispose off plastics and other litter in the bins provided. If these facilities are inadequate, contact the local authority responsible for this and lodge a complaint. Take your litter back home with you if there are no receptacles on the beach. Pick up any plastic litter you may see on the beach or in rock pools in the vicinity in which you are sitting or walking. Encourage young children to do likewise.

xiv. In the street never throw plastic or other litter out of your car and do not drop it on the pavement or in the gutter.

xv. Set an example for others and encourage them to help. Plastics are not themselves a problem. They are useful and popular materials which can be produced with relatively little damage to the environment. The problem is the excessive use of plastics in one-off applications together with careless disposal.

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Essay on Plastic Pollution: Top 4 Essays

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Read this essay to learn about plastic pollution. After reading this essay you will learn about: 1. Introduction to Plastic Pollution 2. Causes of Plastic Pollution 3. Effects 4. Control. Essay # 1. Introduction to Plastic Pollution: In the last decade, plastic has affected the health and life of human beings very badly.

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Causes, Effects and Solutions of Plastic Pollution - Conserve Energy Future

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Causes, Effects and Solutions of Plastic Pollution - Conserve Energy Future

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The known unknowns of plastic pollution - The environment

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The known unknowns of plastic pollution - The environment

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MR MCGUIRE had just one word for young Benjamin, in "The Graduate": plastics. It was 1967, and chemical engineers had spent the previous decade devising cheap ways to splice different hydrocarbon molecules from petroleum into strands that could be moulded into anything from drinks bottles to Barbie dolls.