Perilous Plastics: Assessing the Impact of Disposability
San Francisco, CA
2014, Senior, Creative Writing
Humans have risen to supremacy over this planet by being the species most adept at exploiting the natural environment. After centuries of technological advancement, people have perfected a hydrocarbon polymer possessing the essential qualities of affordability, durability, and plasticity. Plastic is in many ways the cornerstone of modern life. Yet, once discarded, plastic products cease to interest us. Each year, humankind pollutes the ocean with more than 260 tons of plastic debris, covering the planet in a film of filth. The product of a society based on conspicuous consumption, plastic waste jeopardizes marine species. Ecosystems are threatened by plastics in a myriad of ways, many of which are not fully understood. By expanding knowledge, implementing legislation, and adopting profound cultural changes, the global community can protect marine habitats and, ultimately, the entire biosphere.
Materialism is deeply rooted in the “American Dream,” argues Captain Charles Moore, a pioneering ocean activist. He states that material abundance is taken as an indicator of social class (1997). This consumerism became prevalent during the market revolution of the nineteenth century, as industrialization took hold and more people became hourly workers. Turning minutes into money, the hourly worker relies on cheap manufactured products and meals to save time. Convenience goods reached massproduction after World War II, when companies that used to produce war goods began massproducing consumer products. Cars, clothing, prepared foods, and, importantly, plastics, began to be cheaper, of higher quality, and ubiquitous in American homes.
With increased consumption and urbanization, Americans were for the first time faced with largescale waste disposal problems. Moore asserts that manufacturing giants supported organizations such as “Keep America Beautiful,” in order to propagate the message “don’t be a litterbug.” This emphasized the consumer’s responsibility for waste. Moore posits that the acceptance of this message led to “delinking plastic pollution and the industries making it.” Thus, waste disposal became a solely municipal problem.
The State of California spends “$428 million per year in costs to stop litter from becoming pollution that harms the environment, tourism and other economic activity.” Yet our current wastedisposal methods are far from perfect, as evidenced by the finding that “about 40 percent of the world’s ocean surfaces” are contaminated by microscopic plastic debris. Most microplastics find their way into the environment because of careless handling and accidents during transportation. For example, in 2012 150 tonnes of plastic pellets were washed overboard by a typhoon near Hong Kong. In fact, Wace has found that “as many as 600,000 plastic containers worldwide [are] dumped daily at sea by shipping.” Plastic can also become flotsam after being haphazardly discarded by consumers or overflowing from landfills.
Is runnaway plastic such a problem? Once plastic escapes management systems, it is inevitably drawn to the ocean by the world’s watershed systems. The currents of the ocean then work in coordination with the spin of the earth to form a massive vortex called a ‘gyre’, swirling millions of tons of plastic debris into concentrated patches in the centres of the oceans. At the center of the North Pacific gyre, for example, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, discovered by Capt. Charles Moore in 1997 occupies “nearly 440,000 square miles,” approximately “twice the size of Texas.” This giant garbage conglomeration is an ecological, economic, and ethical disaster.
The chemical nature of plastic makes it a powerful pollutant. The plastic products that define our consumer lifestyle start out as oil reserves deep in the earth. Once extracted, components of crude oil are heated and separated by density. Some of these brokendown hydrocarbon components are further refined and then shaped into pellets several millimeters in diameter. These unformed pieces of raw plastic are called “nurdles” and are dangerous even before being shaped into bottles, bags, and toothbrushes, as they can pick up toxins from land and transport them to sea. Upon interacting with seawater, nurdles can concentrate nowbanned toxins that persist in the environment, such as dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). When contaminated plastics are ingested by animals, toxins accumulate in animal tissues. Poisoning becomes more severe in successive trophic levels, a phenomena known as “biomagnification.” The biomagnification of DDT and PCBs has been shown to reduce sea creatures’ reproductive fitness, a phenomenon with potentially devastating consequences.
Although chemical pollution from plastics is widespread and dangerous, the most heartwrenching effect of the plastic in our oceans is the murder of sea creatures by entanglement or ingestion of plastic debris. Large pieces of plastic, such as plastic bags, bottles, and lawn flamingos remain adrift at sea for years (Andrews, n.d.). Many species are known to mistake plastics floating in surface waters as food. This phenomena is particularly welldocumented among Northeastern seabirds, in whose adult population 55% of birds surveyed had plastic in their stomachs. The effects of plastic ingestion are gruesome. While large plastics may block the gastrointestinal tract, leading to death by suffocation, internal bleeding, or blocked digestion, ingested plastics can kill in a subtler way; creatures who eat a bellyfull of plastic will feel full, stop eating, and starve to death.
Equally calamitous is the casestudy of the fur seal, whose “curious and playful” young are eager to “poke their heads into loops and holes.” Jose G.B Derraik further cites how, after inserting their heads through an open plastic loop, the grain of an otter’s fur will prevent the creature from removing its head. Derraik has found that a young otter with a neck obstruction may expend up to four times as much energy as an unafflicted juvenile in order to move and metabolize. This extra energy expenditure means that the otter needs more food, food which may not be available. A larger predator, however, will have less trouble than usual in finding a meal, as its prey is already trapped. Moreover, as the animal grows, it will slowly but surely be strangled to death.
Another danger associated with plastic pollution is unexpected and poorly understood; recent studies have shown that plastic nurdles can serve as vectors for the introduction of invasive species. Research by David K. A. Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey has shown that “human litter more than doubles the rafting opportunities for biota” (2002). Organisms can hitch rides across the oceans on pieces of plastic which are ideal for migration because of their buoyancy, longevity, and adhesible surfaces. Introduced species can outcompete native species by more effectively finding food, exploiting the habitat, and reproducing. Ultimately, invasive species can harm environments by reducing biodiversity. This consequence of plastic pollution has ramifications on a global scale because it may reduce the ocean’s ability to cope with additional environmental changes, such as acidification and increased surface temperatures. The effects of human manipulations of the environment will prove cumulative: the changes we bring to ecosystems may, taken together, prove too drastic for many species to tolerate.
While the dark depths of the benthic zone may not conjure up images as beautiful as those of coral reefs, bottomdwelling organisms are an essential component of worldwide food and chemical circulation. These fragile communities are endangered by an unforeseen facet of plastic pollution: plastic also sinks. Despite plastic’s buoyancy, some eventually descends to the seabed, due to “rapid and heavy fouling” that increases density. This phenomena is evidenced by the coating of plastic trash found in some seabeds, of which the Mediterranean sea has been most extensively studied. Upon settling, debris may blanket the seabed and prevent gas exchange, leading to hypoxia in the deep, killing or limiting many forms of animal life.
The surprising nature of these mechanisms of damage implies that many facets of plastic pollution are not understood. Gathering information is vital to mitigating the plastics problem effectively. In his 2002 article, “The Pollution of the Marine Environment by Plastic Debris,” Derraik cites that in “all 742 papers published in the journal Conservation Biology…only 5% focused on marine ecosystems and species, compared with 67% on terrestrial and 6% on freshwater.” Why does this disparity, reflective of inequality in funding and focus, exist? A key factor stems from the political and economic nature of the ocean wilderness; while every square inch of land has been claimed by some entity or another, the oceans remain 95% unexplored. In 1973, the United Nations Convention on the Law Of the Sea established the “Exclusive Economic Zone” (EEZ), an area of coastal waters extending 200 nautical miles perpendicular to shore and to which adjacent countries could claim economic ownership. The value of the resources found in this exploitable territory has attracted the preponderance of ocean exploration and research investments. Plastics, conversely, accumulate towards the centers of the oceans, leaving the pollution problem out of sight and out of mind.
The effects of ocean dumping can be felt worldwide, since the oceans are a commons shared by all people. The global nature of plastic pollution makes international legislation both difficult and desirable. Such farreaching legislation against preventable pollution was attempted with the International Convention on the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), Annex V. The Annex specifically addresses fishing, recreation, and commercial dumping, as these sources account for over 40% of all ocean pollution. Unfortunately, the MARPOL protocol has only been adopted by about 50% of international shippers and has not produced substantial reductions in plastic pollution. Nations across the globe should create new legislation and more strictly enforce the existing MARPOL legislation against pollution from ships.
The goals of MARPOL have not yet come to fruition in the United States due in large part to the distance between ocean pollution and landdwelling voters. However, plastic dumped from ships only stays out of sight so long before some of it returns to our beaches and, hence, to public awareness. When plastic washes up on beaches, it creates not only an eyesore and but also an economic problem. In the United States, for example, “New Jersey now spends $1,500,000 annually to clean up its beaches.” Because developing countries’ beach tourism industries may be decimated by rising maintenance costs, the international problem of marine plastic pollution places a heavier burden on some countries than on others.
Public beaches can be superficially cleaned by debris collection, but the removal of all of the plastic from our beaches would be impossible; the small size and vast number of microscopic nurdles makes their removal beyond our current technological capabilities. Consequently, prevention is essential in order to keep our beaches and oceans as nurdlefree as possible. Although Roberts suggests that “skimmer” nets can be strung across rivers to collect debris on their way to sea (2012), pollution can more efficiently be reduced by minimizing the amount of plastic consumed. Consider the following: Arrowhead Water, in the past 20 years, “has reduced its halfliter bottle[s’] plastic content by 60 percent.” What other ways can needless waste be removed from our plastic products and lifestyles? If everyone takes responsibility to reduce, reuse, and recycle in daily life, the environmental impact of our civilization will be reduced.
The plastics problem can not be solved without a change in popular mentality. Environmental education programs and awareness campaigns are not only prompting consumers to make smarter purchasing decisions, but also fostering innovation. The development of bioplastics, biologicallyderived and ecofriendly alternatives to petroleum plastics, offers hope. Recently, researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute developed “shrilk,” a “fully degradable bioplastic isolated from shrimp shells” that “releases rich nutrients” upon decomposition. While inventions like these show that progress is underway, no truly practical (let alone economical) alternative to petroleum plastic has been found.
Plastic pollution may also be alleviated by eliminating existing plastic debris. In the past decade, Hawaii has implemented a garbage burning program that has proven successful at both reducing landfill volume and generating electricity. Currently, Hawaii’s Honolulu Program Of Waste to Energy Recovery (HPOWER) provides “4 percent of Oahu’s energy needs,” although the program is limited because only certain types of garbage can be burned. Unfortunately, “Burning plastic in incinerators releases toxic heavy metals and chemicals” that may negate the positive impact of Waste to Energy.
The most profound environmental progress will arise not from specific innovations, but from a shift in the cultural assumptions on which we base our consumer lifestyle. This task has many dimensions, including the reassessment of manufacturer responsibility. In order to reduce wastes resulting from cost externalization and profit maximization, efforts to legislate for better “cradletograve” waste responsibilities have been enacted in recent years. In 2007, for example, California adopted an Extended Producer Responsibility Framework aimed at “reduc[ing] the environmental impacts” of a series of products. Expansion of such Manufacturer Responsibility programs, as well as programs to incentivize waste reduction, and careful plastics handling, can help reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in our oceans.
An example of successful plasticreduction policy is found in the implementation of taxes on plastic bags. This movement was initiated by a single determined activist, Rebecca Hoskins, who “persuaded her home village of Modbury in England to do away with plastic bags.” Magnifying the success of Hoskins’ environmental movement, a plastic bag tax was later implemented nationwide by the Republic of Ireland. Declaring this effort a success, Convery cites not only a vast (~90%) reduction in commercial use of plastic bags, but also the fact that the law is “so popular with the Irish public that it would be politically damaging to remove it” (2007). Following the Irish lead, many other countries and cities have come to adopt antiplastic bag measures, laying the framework for future efforts to mitigate the pollution problem via legislation addressing consumer habits.
Programs like the plastic bag tax and the Extended Producer Responsibility Framework are first steps in the general cultural change that must take place if we are to reduce our pollution. We must also promote environmental education, in order to foster the ingenuity that may be the key to reversing the tide of environmental degradation. Plastics harm the environment by concentrating toxins and posing the danger of entanglement/ingestion. Furthermore, plastic pollution has caused unexpected disasters, such as the reduction of biodiversity by the introduction of invasive species, and the killing of benthic organisms by debrisinduced hypoxia. What other effects are yet undiscovered? Continuing to analyze plastics pollution’s plethora of effects is crucial to developing solutions that will save the oceans from becoming the most drastic example of the tragedy of the commons that the world has ever seen. The oceans are a precious international resource that must be protected from the perils of plastic pollution in order to preserve the health of the planet for future generations.