Monthly Archives: August 2017

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Ten Painless Ways to Reduce Unnecessary Plastic

Plastic is here to stay in more ways than one. It is useful, lightweight and very, very durable. In fact, 79% of plastic waste ever produced is still here. It has become the go-to material for everything, including items that don’t need to be durable. It’s good to rethink some of the ways we use plastic. Here is a list of ten painless ways to reduce unnecessary plastic in your life.

  1. Bring along your reusable coffee mug. Most places we buy coffee at will give us a hefty discount for bringing our own.
  2. If you wear clothes made from synthetic fibers, wait until they’re dirty before washing them. This reduces the plastic microfibers leaving our washing machines and entering our environment. This cuts down on laundry time too!
  3. Stock up on thrift store forks and knives for big crowds. Mismatched metal forks are much classier than the plastic forks that wash up on our beaches.
  4. Bring your own reusable leftover container to restaurants. You’re probably not going to finish it. Your reusable plastic tub is better than the hard-to-recycle foam clamshell the restaurant provides.
  5. Say no to plastic straws. Sometimes a waiter will slip one in before you can object. Politely explain that you don’t want a straw and request that they ask first next time.
  6. Drink tap water, not bottled water. If you need water on the go, pour it into your reusable bottle.
  7. Keep the caps on when you recycle bottles and jars. Caps can now be recycled, but are too small to make it through sorting facilities by themselves.
  8. If you have a choice, choose paper over plastic. Don’t buy the argument about paper killing trees. Those trees would not be planted without a market for paper. If you want more trees, choose paper.
  9. Choose recyclable plastic over non-recyclable plastic. This is a tough one because lots of things we like to eat, like potato chips, candy bars and pre-washed salad, are packaged in non-recyclable bags. If there’s a choice, choose recyclable.
  10. Bring reusable bags to the store. We can reduce the number of plastic bags used, but it’s hard to eliminate them. We still have plastic bags that apples, potatoes and rice come in. Reuse them! As long as the bags are clean, you can add them to the BlueTube at your beach. Make it easy for others to grab a bag, pick up those coffee cups, plastic forks, foam containers, straws, water bottles, plastic caps from the beach, and throw them away.

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The Fate of our Plastic

Each morning we pour cereal from a plastic bag, add milk from a plastic jug, squeeze toothpaste from a plastic tube onto our plastic toothbrush. We tidy our hair with a plastic brush and put on clothes that made of plastic fibers. Plastic, rare before the 1950’s, is a large and still growing part of modern life.

Until now no one knew how much plastic has been produced and what has happened to it. The first worldwide analysis of all plastic was published last month in the journal Science Advances. The authors, Roland Geyer, Jenna Jambeck and Kara Lavender Law, are the same number crunchers who in 2015 figured out which countries leaked the most plastic into the ocean.

This new research accounts for polymer resins (PET, HDPE, PVC, etc.) plastic additives (like flame retardants, fillers and plasticizers) and synthetic fibers (fishing nets, ropes, polyester leisure suits). To date, 8300 million metric tons (Mt) of plastics have been produced. About one-third of this plastic is still in use. The remaining 6300 Mt is waste. Of this plastic waste, 9% has been recycled, 12% incinerated and the remaining 79% is accumulating in landfills and the environment.

Some plastic, like PVC pipes and vinyl siding, are used as building materials. These have a useful life of decades. Today the biggest use of plastic is for packaging, and this has a useful life of less than a year. Once the soda or chips have been eaten, the packaging it came in is garbage.

Before the 1980’s, plastic recycling was almost nonexistent. Now about 9% of plastic, mostly polymer resins, is recycled worldwide. The technology and markets for recycling polymer resins are improving. But when resins contain additives, they are harder to recycle and have less residual value. Synthetic fibers aren’t recycled at all. Through recycling we get more use out of plastic, but it doesn’t go away. Recycling merely delays plastic’s fate as waste.

Twelve percent of plastic waste is incinerated. Right now, this is the only way we have to completely eliminate plastic. Incineration is not a perfect solution. It produces hazardous chemicals, like dioxin, which can cause cancer, neurological damage and problems with reproductive, thyroid and respiratory systems.

The remaining 79% of plastic waste is accumulating. Plastic fragments into smaller and smaller pieces, but it does not decompose and go away. Plastic is piling up on our land, in our rivers and in our oceans. We are producing more plastic than ever before and still have no strategy to deal with the waste. We need global solutions fast. In the meantime, you can help. Grab a used plastic bag from the BlueTube at your beach. Pick up plastic. Throw it away. Sending plastic to landfills is not a permanent solution, but it gives us time. And we need time to come up with strategies to deal with our plastic waste.