About Patty Goffinet

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India’s Plastic Roads

India struggles with mountains of plastic waste because, like many other developing countries, it lacks waste management infrastructure to deal with post-consumer plastic. Garbage collection is neither reliable nor widespread. If waste is collected, it is more likely to go to an open, leaky dump than a secure, engineered landfill that holds waste in. Armies of waste pickers scour dumpsites for anything of value, and in this is way some plastic is recycled, but much of the plastic that’s thrown out has no value. Waste pickers collect and recycle high quality plastic like PET (what water and soda bottles are made of) but leave lower value plastics like bags, single-use pouches and foam containers. Waste pickers can’t make enough money on these, so low-value plastics pile up in the environment.

India also struggles with bad roads and many fatal traffic accidents. The country has the second largest network of roads in the world, but many are in terrible condition. Monsoon rains and extreme heat degrade asphalt roads quickly. Road maintenance is poor. The result is roads with potholes that are big enough to swallow trucks whole. There are around 150,000 traffic deaths per year in India, and about a tenth of these are caused by potholes.

Rajagopalan Vasudevan, chemistry professor at Thiagarajar College of Engineering, is tackling both of these problems at once. Experimenting in his laboratory with a wok, a thermometer, shredded plastic waste and asphalt, he found that plastic, which is derived from petroleum, and asphalt, which is a form of petroleum, bind well with each other when heated. Asphalt mixed with plastic binds much better to gravel than asphalt alone, resulting in better roads. By replacing 10 percent of the asphalt used to build roads with shredded plastic scrap, roads last three times as long as traditional asphalt roads and are less likely to crack or form potholes. They are also cheaper to build because plastic waste is much less expensive than asphalt. A variety of plastics can be used for building roads, including low-value plastics that would not otherwise be recycled.

Professor Vasudevan, who’s also known as India’s Plastic Man, built the first plastic road in 2002 at his university. Now there are 100,000 km of roads built with plastic in India, with many more kilometers of road coming soon. India has committed 11 billion dollars over the next five years to improve and expand roads, and since a 2015 government mandate, all new highways are required to be built with plastic waste.

Each kilometer of new road consumes 1 ton of post-consumer plastic. Plastic in the roads means less plastic along roadways, better roads and fewer traffic fatalities. Plastic roads also mean more income for waste pickers. There is a demand now for plastic that would otherwise end up in the environment and waste pickers can earn a living by collecting it. The government sells subsidized plastic shredders to groups of waste pickers who collect, sort and shred plastic scrap and then sell the shredded plastic to road builders. Other countries are watching India’s low-tech, plastic road experiment with great interest.

Plastic has been added to roads since the 1970’s in North America, Europe and Saudi Arabia, but these are built with virgin plastic or crumb rubber (shredded tires) and are more expensive than regular asphalt roads. There are new designs being tested for snap-together road panels built completely with plastic waste, but that is a topic for a later post.

Innovations like India’s plastic roads will help solve our ocean plastic problem. In the meantime we can all help. Grab a clean, used plastic bag from the BlueTube at your beach, pick up plastic, keep it off the beach and out of the ocean.

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Plume Hunters

Hats are generally practical. They keep heads warm, faces shaded and bald spots covered. There was nothing practical about ladies’ hats in the Victorian era, though. Victorian Ladies’ hats were large, unwieldy accessories perched on heads with the help of painful little instruments called “hat pins.” These big hats were decorated with all sorts of baubles including bird feathers. The more feathers, the better the hat. Entire stuffed birds sometimes decorated hats.

During two strolls in a Manhattan neighborhood in 1886, Frank Chapman, ornithologist with New York’s Museum of Natural History, spotted feathers from forty different types of birds, all on hats. Breeding plumage from egrets were the most sought-after and most fashionable. Egrets attract their mates with long, wispy feathers during breeding season. Victorian women used egret feathers for the same purpose.

Egrets and other shorebirds are easy prey during breeding season, when their feathers are at their finest. They gather to mate, build nests and raise young in huge numbers in out-of-the-way marshes and mangrove islands. Here, plume hunters could bag hundreds of birds in one outing. They shot the mothers and fathers and left behind abandoned eggs and starving chicks. Hunters wiped out entire rookeries of nesting birds and were paid well for it. Feathers were worth, literally, more than gold, and as birds became scarcer, the price of their feathers soared.

Big hats were big business. The millinery industry employed 83,000 people in 1900. When cries of cruelty to egrets started hurting the hat business, milliners traded egret feathers for tern, grebes, white pelicans and albatross feathers. Millions of birds were killed for their feathers each year.

Conservation groups, including Audubon Society and American Ornithologists Union, worked hard to end the bird slaughter. They encouraged Congress to pass the Lacey Act in 1900 which prohibited interstate trade of wildlife hunted in violation of state laws. They were instrumental in outlawing plume hunting in Florida one year later. In 1903, conservation groups encouraged President Theodore Roosevelt to designate Pelican Island as the first federal bird reservation in what was to become National Wildlife Refuge System. Laws alone did not protect birds. Conservation groups hired armed wardens to protect important bird rookeries. This was dangerous work, and two wardens were shot and killed on the job. Paul Kroegel, a Sebastian resident who helped establish Pelican Island as a preserve, was hired as the first national wildlife refuge manager with a salary of $1 per year paid for by the Audubon Society.

Pelican Island is a small mangrove island in the Indian River lagoon near Sebastian on Florida’s east coast. It covered five acres in 1900, but eroded to only half this size by 2000. The shoreline has been stabilized to protect Pelican Island from further erosion and to build the island back up over time. The island is named for the thousands of brown pelicans that use the island year round. Fifteen other species of birds nest and raise young on the island, and 140 species use the refuge to roost, feed and hang out. Today, the island and surrounding 5400+ acres of lagoon and uplands make up the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge. This was the first of 55 bird reservations and game preserves set aside by Teddy Roosevelt in a program that now includes 563 National Wildlife Refuges.

In 1910, the plume hunting trade ended in the United States though it continued longer in Central and South America. New laws protecting birds, the establishment of wildlife refuges and wardens that guarded them certainly helped. Many probably realized that birds in the wild are lovelier than feathered hats. Fashions end, and this is one that should never resurface.

The good news is that bird populations have rebounded. Shorebirds have recovered from severe losses. Egrets are once again a common yet spectacular site. The hunters are gone, but there is a new threat to shore birds: plastic, specifically monofilament fishing line. A friend of mine paddled out recently to an island that is heavily used by birds in the Indian River lagoon. He found twelve dead birds tangled in fishing line, dangling from mangrove branches. He cut the birds out then painstakingly cut and removed all the monofilament line from among the branches. Bird carcasses eventually decompose, but plastic line remains for a long time, ready to entangle and kill more birds. To save birds, remove monofilament fishing line. To save birds and countless other creatures, remove all the plastic waste you find along shores. BlueTube can help. Look for BlueTubes at waterfront parks, boat ramps and beaches. Grab a bag, pick up plastic and throw it away. Add your clean, used plastic bags to the BlueTubes and help everyone keep shorebirds safe and our environment clean.

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Estrutural Dump Closes!

In the 1960’s, the capital of Brazil, Brasilia, was carefully planned, then built on what had been a cattle ranch in the country’s highland plateau. Brasilia’s dump, Estrutural dump, was not planned. The dump grew haphazardly alongside the city in a low, wetland area just twelve miles from the Presidential Palace. Today Brasilia boasts 2.5 million residents, and Estrutural has the distinction of being Latin America’s largest dump. On January 19th of this year, Estrutural dump closed and was replaced with an engineered landfill twenty miles away.

We often use the words “dump” and “landfill” interchangeably, but they are different. Unlike the engineered landfills that the developed world sends its trash to, dumps have no environmental or health safeguards. The International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) believes that dumps are the world’s most polluted places and a global health emergency.

Droughts and water shortages plague Brasilia, and Estrutural makes the situation worse by polluting the groundwater. As rainwater percolates through garbage dumps, it picks up a range of contaminants from discarded garbage and delivers them directly to groundwater and streams. The engineered landfill that is replacing Estrutural has an impermeable liner that holds this toxic soup, or leachate, in. Leachate is collected and treated before it is released.

Anaerobic decomposition of garbage produces methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. At dumps methane seeps out into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. When methane builds up and is then exposed to air, it can explode. Modern, engineered landfills have gas collection systems to capture methane, which makes it safer. When this captured methane is used to create electricity, heat buildings or power garbage trucks, its threat as a greenhouse is reduced.

Dumps are big, open and porous. There are no boundaries to keep garbage in or keep people and animals out. Garbage blows out with the wind or washes away in rain. At landfills, only a small area, the “working face,” is open at any one time. Trash is tipped at the working face and then covered with dirt at the end of the day. Garbage is entombed by dirt. This keeps garbage in and rats away. Garbage dumped at Estrutural easily leaks out into the environment.

At dumps, recycling is done informally by waste pickers who scavenge through the garbage and collect anything of value. Two million people scavenge at dumpsites worldwide. Next to Estrutural dump is a shanty town where 40,000 waste pickers and their families live. Scavenging is filthy, dangerous work. One hundred fifteen people died at a dump in Ethiopia in 2017 when a mountain of trash collapsed. Waste pickers are killed in fires, explosions and by heavy machinery. They die young from diarrhea, malaria, cholera and yellow fever that breed in the unsanitary, mosquito-infested conditions at dumps. What is the appeal of scavenging? People can earn a living. A good waste picker earns three times Brazil’s minimum wage. No formal education is needed. Even children can scavenge, and they do.

At landfills, there is no access and no scavenging. Some waste pickers will be employed at sorting and recycling facilities near the new landfill where work conditions are much safer. Many won’t. Finding work for these people may be one of the hardest parts of closing a dump.

ISWA is on a mission to close the world’s fifty largest dumpsites and replace them with engineered landfills. In 2016 they published A Roadmap to Closing Waste Dumpsites to help developing countries make the transition from dumps to engineered landfills. The report covers the political, financial, technical, environmental as well as social requirements necessary to close a dump. There are forty-nine dumpsites left on their list.

Let’s hope ISWA reaches its goal soon. Most plastic in the ocean comes from developing countries with sieve-like waste infrastructure. These countries have dumps, not landfills, and trash leaks out of open dumps. Closing the world’s remaining forty-nine largest dumps will help plug the flow of plastic entering the oceans. Landfills are an important first step in solving our ocean plastic problem, but we need to do more than find a safe place to put our plastic waste. Landfills give us time to learn how to use plastic wisely. We can all help while we learn. Grab a bag from the BlueTube at your beach. Pick up plastic. Maybe it floated in from a dump on ISWA’s list. Throw it away. Keep that plastic out of the ocean. Send it to a landfill.

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Mr. Trash Wheel

Baltimore Harbor bustled with shipyards, canneries and steel manufacturing for most of its history. Heavy industry disappeared by the 1970’s, leaving behind a blighted waterfront with empty warehouses, parking lots and not much else. In the 1980’s Baltimore Harbor was redeveloped. Today it is home to restaurants, museums, shops and parks that attract 10 million visitors each year.

Baltimore Harbor was transformed into a thriving, beautiful destination, except after heavy rains. That’s when the detritus of modern, urban life washed into the Harbor. Plastic bottles, styrofoam containers and cigarette butts bobbed on the surface, giving the water a walkable appearance on bad days.

John Keller was director of Baltimore Maritime Museum at the time and would look out from his office on an old Coast Guard ship docked in the Harbor. After every rain, he would watch trash wash in, and then see the tourists react to the trash with disgust. It was an ugly problem, and Keller thought hard about solving it.

Baltimore City had skimmer boats that crisscrossed the Harbor and scooped up trash. These helped, but Keller knew that to make a noticeable difference trash would have to be captured where it was most concentrated. The trash did not come, as many believed, from careless boaters and visitors to the waterfront. It came from a much wider area. Jones Falls River is the largest tributary to Baltimore Harbor. It drains an area of 40 square miles of rural countryside, at it’s outer reaches, to heavily urbanized land closer to the Harbor. Keller had been to the mouth of Jones Falls River during a rainstorm and knew that this was the place to intercept trash.

In 2008, Keller installed a prototype trash wheel in the mouth of the Jones Falls River. A floating boom stretched across the river and funneled trash towards his invention. Water flow turned a paddle wheel, which was attached to a metal rake and a conveyor belt. The rake captured debris and deposited it on the slowly moving conveyor. The conveyor lifted the trash and emptied it into a dumpster on an adjacent barge. When full, the dumpster of trash was brought to a waste-to-energy plant and incinerated.

It worked. The harbor was visibly cleaner. However, the amount of trash that flowed down Jones Falls had been vastly underestimated. A bigger, stronger, faster version was needed, but this took money, which the City of Baltimore did not have. Adam Lindquist, director of the Healthy Harbor Initiative stepped in to help raise the funds. His organization’s goal is to make the Harbor swimmable and fishable by 2020, and the trash wheel would help.

A permanent trash wheel was installed in 2014. It works the same way the prototype did, but better. This trash wheel has solar panels to move the conveyor when water flow is sluggish. It can be operated remotely, which is nice in a storm. Perhaps the biggest improvement to the new trash wheel is its big pair of googly eyes. The googly eyes transformed the trash wheel into Mr. Trash Wheel, and he quickly became a media star. Now thousands of people from around the world follow Mr. Trash Wheel on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. There is even a live feed so fans can check Mr. Trash Wheel’s progress from afar.

A year ago, Mr. Trash Wheel was joined by a long-lashed female friend on Harris Creek, Professor Trash Wheel. Harris Creek is fed by storm drains. Plastic trash that slips through these drains is nabbed by Professor Trash Wheel before it enters the Harbor.

The trash wheel duo is making a huge, measurable improvement: 1.8 million pounds of trash have been removed since 2014. Keller and Lindquist say trash wheels are an immediate solution to an immediate situation. They are not, though, the answer to our ocean plastic problems. BlueTube is not the answer either, but like trash wheels, it helps right now. When we learn how to use plastic wisely, we can solve our ocean plastic problem. In the meantime, we do what we can. Grab a bag from the BlueTube at your beach. Pick up plastic. Throw it away. Add your clean, used bags so others can help too.

 

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Dangerous Times for Right Whales

It’s been a terrible year for right whales (Eubalaena glacialis). There have been sixteen deaths so far in 2017. With a total population of fewer than 500 right whales, sixteen fatalities is way too many. Why are right whale numbers so low, and what are the biggest threats to their survival?

The right whale population was decimated centuries ago by hunting. They were considered the “right” whales to hunt. Right whales were relatively easy to kill because they swim slowly and close to shore. They also float when dead because of their high blubber. Their large (up to 60’) bodies yielded valuable blubber that was used for oil to light lamps. Baleen, used by whales to filter the zooplankton they eat from seawater, was used by people to whip horses and cinch in wastes. Right whales were so heavily hunted that by the 1750’s, commercial hunting was no longer profitable. Whale hunting was banned worldwide in 1949.

Right whales migrate to the coastal waters off Nova Scotia and New England to feed, and then pregnant females travel south to the waters off Georgia and Florida in winter to give birth. This puts them in some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Ship collisions have taken a big toll on this slow-moving whale. In an effort to save the whale, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration regulated ship speed in 2009. Ships over 65’ can travel no faster than ten knots in certain areas at certain times of the year when right whales are likely to be present. There are additional voluntary speed restrictions in areas where right whales are sighted. These restrictions are helping, and the number of collisions has fallen in slow-speed zones.

While death by ship has decreased, mortality through entanglement is increasing. Entanglement in fishing gear is the number one threat to right whales today. Eighty-three percent of all right whales bear scars from ropes. Many have scars from multiple entanglements. Fishing gear entanglement often has grave health consequences even when it doesn’t cause dismemberment or death. Entanglement may be the reason right whales are not reproducing as often or living as long as they have in the past.

Vertical ropes, like those attached to crab pots, lobster traps or gill nets used for bottom fish, are especially dangerous. Closing fisheries during right whale season, reducing the number of vertical lines in the water and promoting the use of sinking ground line are all being considered to reduce the risks to whales.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has a warehouse full of ropes removed from whales as well as data on every entanglement. In a promising new study, researchers analyzed this fishing gear and data and found that reducing the breaking strength of the rope could reduce probability of death. Fishing gear was originally made from weaker, biodegradable natural fibers, but these were replaced with synthetic material in the 1950’s. Blends of different plastics came on the market in the mid-1990’s, and these are widely used today. These new lines do not biodegrade, and they are very strong. Most are much stronger than they need to be for the job they do. Young whales and weaker species of whales, like minke, are less likely to break free from stronger ropes. Researchers determined that reducing the breaking strength of ropes to 1700 pounds could cut the probability of death by 72%.

Right whales need a less perilous ocean fast. A baby boom would really help too. Pregnant whales are heading south to Georgia and Florida now, and should start giving birth soon. Let’s hope it’s a bumper year for baby right whales and that 2018 is less treacherous for them too.

 

 

 

 

 

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Why I Give Thanks for the Ocean: My Top Nine Reasons

This week, Americans everywhere will stop and give thanks. No matter where we live, what we believe, or who we voted for, we will all take time to appreciate what we have. The one thing that unites those of us in the BlueTube community is our appreciation for the ocean. Here are nine reasons why I am thankful for the ocean.

  1. It’s the perfect place to spend time with family, friends or myself.
  2. The ocean gave my father great joy, and he passed this joy on to me. I’m happy that my children share their parents’ love of the ocean too.
  3. The ocean is always different, always engaging. There’s always something new to discover and admire: the light, the sky, what flies overhead, swims past, or washes up.
  4. The ocean is good for my soul. My problems seem small next to its vastness. Perhaps this is why I’m kinder, happier and more patient when I spend time at the ocean.
  5. The sea cures physical ills. Poison ivy? The itch goes away when you float in the ocean. Sore throat? Gargle while you swim. Sinus problems? Dive down and smell the bottom.
  6. The ocean is outside. Being outside is always better than being inside.
  7. I feel at home in the ocean. Maybe there are memories from my early, ocean-dwelling ancestors lurking in my blood. I don’t know why I feel at home. I just do.
  8. Most of the oxygen I breathe (70%) is produced by phytoplankton in the ocean.
  9. The ocean is a great place to think. My mind flits around and takes everything in but focuses on nothing in particular, and sometimes, a great idea pops into my head.

The idea for BlueTube appeared one day at the beach. What if ocean-lovers everywhere had a bag and a reminder when they got to the beach? They would, of course, keep the beach clean, keep plastic out of the ocean, and provide bags for others to do the same. And this is what we do. We don’t have to. We want to. Your list is different from mine, but we all have plenty of reasons to give thanks for the ocean. It’s a pleasure to protect and care for what we love.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

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Scrap Plastic for Sale – Cheap!

China announced in July that it will not buy certain types of paper and plastic scrap after this year because the material coming into their country is just too contaminated. This news has unnerved many in the recycling industry as well as environmentalists who want to stop plastic pollution. Last year, China imported half of the world’s plastic scrap, including $5.6 billion worth of scrap commodities from the United States. Losing our biggest customer is bringing changes and uncertainty.

PET and HDPE plastic bottles (#1 and #2) are easily recycled and retain more value after use than other plastics. Much PET and HDPE stays in this country. Manufacturers here buy used PET bottles and turn them into new bottles, carpet and clothing. Recycled HDPE that stays in the U.S. turns into new containers, plastic decking and outdoor furniture.

The other plastics, #3 through #7 (yogurt tubs, plastic jars and everything else that is recyclable) have little value. We were able to send this low-value plastic to China through cheap “backhaul” shipping. Cargo ships leave China full. Ships returning to China are often empty and will only get emptier with the ban. Now material recovery facilities (MRF’s) are desperate to find new buyers for their used plastic.

The ban has already flooded the market with #3 through #7 scrap. With little demand, some MRF’s have resorted to stockpiling plastic scrap. Stockpiling only helps until warehouses fill up. If buyers can’t be found, the scrap ends up in landfills or incinerators. Some municipalities are deciding to stop collecting low-value plastics at the curb.

But amid piles of plastic, there is hope. Low prices may encourage manufacturers to build facilities here that can use #3 through #7 recycled feedstock. Manufacturers no longer have to compete with prices that China was willing to pay. Low prices also make recycled plastic more attractive than virgin plastic. Scrap prices have had to compete with cheap plastic resin that is a byproduct of the U.S. shale oil boom. Now some buyers have turned in favor of recycled plastic thanks to the ban. A number of companies, including Target, Proctor and Gamble and Coca Cola, are requiring their suppliers to use more recycled content in products like industrial crates and garbage cans.

There is also hope that China will use the plastic ban to clean up its environment. A study in 2015 determined that China leaks more plastic into the ocean than any other country. Once plastic enters the ocean it becomes a global problem. Plugging these leaks will benefit everyone.

One thing is certain: The quality of our plastic scrap must improve. High quality means better sorting and no garbage. We toss a lot of stuff into our recycling bins that can’t be recycled. Plastic bags, garden hoses and plastic forks do not belong in recycling. These have to be removed, often manually at high cost, or they risk contaminating bales of scrap. Contaminated bales are not attractive to buyers. Mary McClellan, Executive Director of Carolina Recycling Association, says: “Contamination in recycling is a long standing issue. China provided a Band-Aid to an underlying issue, which is that the public does not completely understand what can be recycled.” She recommends checking Earth911 and Recycle Often. Recycle Right to find out what’s recyclable and where.

Want to do more to help prevent plastic pollution? Grab a bag from the BlueTube at your beach. Pick up plastic. Maybe the plastic travelled from China, South America or was dropped by a visitor to the beach. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s removed and thrown away. Stock BlueTubes with clean, used plastic bags so others can help defeat plastic pollution too.

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In Support of Drinking Fountains

When Perrier introduced bottled water to the United States in the 1970’s, many people thought it was a joke. Why would anyone spend money on water when it flowed out of our taps for free? Perrier advertising claims it’s sexy, but who buys that? Apparently, plenty of people do. Today the average American drinks 39.3 gallons of bottled water per year. Sales of bottled water climbed 9% from 2014 to 2015 and this upward trajectory shows no signs of bottoming out. Chris Hogan, of the International Bottled Water Association, says that bottled water has an “undeniable appeal.” He doesn’t claim bottled water is sexy, but he does say it’s healthy, convenient, reliable, safe and has zero calories.

Yet our tap water is safe. We have strict national standards for contaminants in public drinking water thanks to the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. All consumers of publicly supplied water are mailed annual water quality reports so we know exactly what is in our water. Americans should not take clean, safe drinking water for granted. Compared to the rest of the world, America’s tap water is remarkably safe. One out of four people in the world doesn’t have a safe source of water. This one-fourth has to drink bottled water or risk coming down with a host of nasty diseases including diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio.

Tap water is healthy, and it also, of course it, has zero calories. Tap water used to be convenient and reliable too. We used to be able to find clean, working water fountains in public places. But as bottled water has become the norm, maintenance on water fountains is no longer a priority. Water fountains fall into disrepair and are removed rather than fixed. Today, municipalities and businesses often don’t install water fountains in new parks, public spaces and stadiums, and this is neither convenient nor safe.

In 2007, the University of Central Florida built a 45,000 seat football stadium without any drinking fountains. Why let fans drink for free when concessions can sell bottles of water for $3? The stadium was packed for its inaugural football game in September. It was 97 degrees, and the concessions ran out of bottled water. Eighteen people were rushed to the hospital with heat exhaustion, and many more were treated by medics in the stadium. It took a lot of angry fans and students, but now the UCF stadium has water fountains.

If public drinking fountains become clean, working and plentiful again, the advantages of bottled water over tap water will disappear. After all, the disadvantage of bottled water over top water is clear enough - the plastic bottles. Three hundred million people in the United States drink a bottle of water every day. Some of these bottles and caps are recycled, but the vast majority of plastic we discard (79%) piles up in our landfills and natural environments.

Empty bottles and caps everywhere, including on our beaches and in our oceans. What’s a beach lover to do? Bring along a reusable water bottle filled with good, clean tap water. Ask your town to make public water fountains a priority again. Pick up those discarded bottles and caps next time you’re at the beach and keep them out of the ocean. BlueTube can help.

 

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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.

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