Monthly Archives: May 2015

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Save the Lugworms!

We humans are perilously ignorant of the sad fate of lugworms (Arenicola marina) and our role in their demise. We may not see lugworms because they spend their lives burrowing in the intertidal mud of Northern Europe. We don’t see the tiny pieces of plastic that blend seamlessly, to our human eyes, with that mud. How much harm can be done if we can’t even see it? A lot, according to a paper in the journal Current Biology.

Scientists studied the big, fleshy marine worms in the laboratory. Lugworms were put in sediment with varying concentrations of PVC plastic. Some plastic floats; these are the types of plastic found far out at sea. Other plastic, including PVC, sinks. Both plastics photo-degrade and break down into smaller and smaller pieces. The sinking types of plastic, which are turned into products like water bottles, plastic cups and plastic pipes, end up in the sediments near shore. In some hotspots, plastic concentrations in the mud reach over 3% by weight.

Lugworms live in this sediment. They also eat it. They swallow sediments loaded with organic material, then the sediment minus the organic food, makes its way out the other end. It is not a glamorous way to earn a living, but it works. Or rather, it worked until plastics were added to their diet. Researchers found that when lugworms ate PVC with their sediment at concentrations similar to those found in some wild lugworm habitats, they became significantly less fleshy. Their energy reserves were depleted by up to 50%. In healthy lugworms, sediment continually enters and then exits their bodies. Study lugworms exposed to PVC ate more slowly, sediment remained in guts longer and their immune systems responded to the PVC with inflammation. PVC affects lugworm growth, reproduction and survival.

Perhaps you’re not moved by the plight of the lugworm. You should care about their role in the environment. Lugworms keep silt from burying nearshore bottoms so they remain pleasant places to visit. This silt is turned into lugworm, and many of these worms get converted into beautiful shorebirds and tasty fish. Lugworms tunnel through sediments and bring oxygen into an environment that would be too harsh for the crabs, shrimps, clams and other delicious animals that live in it to survive. If we want to continue to enjoy lugworm benefits, we must stop the indiscriminate disposal of plastic. Save the lugworms! Keep intertidal mud plastic-free! Use the BlueTube at your beach!

 

Wright, Stephanie L., Darren Rowe, Richard C. Thompson, and Tamara S. Galloway. “Microplastc Ingestion Decreases Energy Reserves in Marine Worms.” Current Biology 23.23 (2013): 1031-033.

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Plastic - Where’s It Coming From?

We know that plastic is piling up in our oceans. What we didn’t know, until now, is where it’s coming from. A recent paper in Science, “Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean” looks at 192 coastal countries, their populations within 50 km of the coast, their waste per capita, the percentage of that waste that’s plastic, and the quality of their waste management systems. With these data they have come up with a rough estimate of the plastic trash per country that heads out to sea.

They found that sixteen of the top twenty polluters (see list below) are heavily populated, middle income countries. These countries are wealthy enough to buy a lot of plastic, but they lag behind in managing their waste. They have a high percentage of “mismanaged waste.” What has worked in the past, burying, burning and even tossing trash, doesn’t work now because plastic doesn’t decompose like food waste, paper and wood, and it isn’t inert like glass and tin cans.

The countries with large populations but a smaller percentage of mismanaged waste are typically wealthier. These countries have good waste collection, modern landfills that contain waste so it is doesn’t end up in the ocean, and recycling. Though less waste is mismanaged, wealthy countries generate more waste and more of it is plastic. In 1960, plastic made up 1% of our waste in the United States. Today it is 10% and growing, and the developing world is catching up with our plastic consumption.

So what are the answers to this problem? Waste management infrastructure in developing countries must be improved. Collecting garbage, recycling what can be recycled and landfilling the rest won’t be easy or cheap, but it has to be done to slow the flow of plastic to the sea. We also need to reduce our plastic waste. A good place to start is single-use plastic. We use plastic straws and forks for twenty minutes and then they become waste, possibly mismanaged waste that floats off to sea. We need more recycling of the plastic we do use. Plastic producers need to ensure that their products can be recycled once their useful life is over.

There’s one more thing we can do to help. We can use the BlueTubes at our beach. Next time you’re at the beach, go ahead and take a bag, fill it with trash and throw it in the garbage can. We may pick up trash from a beach visitor who was careless with theirs, or we may pick up weathered trash that floated in from a far away country. It doesn’t really matter where the trash comes from. What does matter is that our beach is cleaner, our ocean has a little less plastic in it, and we are part of the solution.

Top 20 Countries Ranked by Mass of Mismanaged Plastic Waste in 2010

1. China 11. South Africa
2. Indonesia 12. India
3. Philippines 13. Algeria
4. Vietnam 14. Turkey
5. Sri Lanka 15. Pakistan
6. Thailand 16. Brazil
7. Egypt 17. Burma
8. Malaysia 18. Morocco
9. Nigeria 19. North Korea
10. Bangladesh 20. United States

Jambeck, James R., Roland Geyer, Chris Wilcox, Theodore R. Siegler, Miriam Perryman, Anthony Andrady, Ramani Narayan, and Kara Lavender Law. “Plastic Waste Inputs from Land into Ocean.” Science 347 (2015): 768-71.