Earth Day Thoughts, Part II
How we got here, and what here looks like.
This is all research I personally have done via Google, so this information is out there, scientifically proven, and corroborated by multiple sources. This is my layman/informed citizen tl;;dr summary of the real cost of plastic usage + plastic waste.
Between California and Hawaii, there is a collection of garbage floating around like a massive, tangled iceberg, but trash, also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is no small iceberg. It’s 80,000 tons of garbage. For scale, it covers an area twice the size of Texas.
There’s a similar collection, also known as the Western Pacific Garbage Patch, off the coast of Japan.
This isn’t the most of it. The Ocean Conservancy estimates that 8 MILLION tons of garbage, mostly plastic, are dumped, littered, or otherwise deposited in the ocean.
A history of humans <-> plastics
So, a brief history of humanity’s relationship with plastics, and how it impacts us and the world around us.
Plastics, defined as synthetic or semi-synthetic malleable organic compounds, first were derived from casein, milk protein, or cellulose, plant fiber. In the war years, investment in plastics research skyrocketed (no puns intended). Notable plastics include nylon, a synthetic silk used for parachutes. Styrofoam was light, moldable, and used to protect items being shipped. Polypropylene and polystyrene are commonly used in packaging of foods, manufactured goods (think packaging for batteries, bed sets, and tupperware), and in long-term use plastics (think the plastic in your smoke detector, kitchen appliances, etc). I mean, hey, plastic is useful! It’s moldable, can be flexible (clingfilm) or hard (soda bottles), and sterile, which is important in food safety and medical applications. Mass production of what we commonly think of today as plastic (PETE, PVC, HDPE, PVC) began in the 1950’s.
This mass production enabled the first use cases for single-use plastic, a convenient, cheap, watertight, disposable solution for American businesses trying to lower their costs and improve convenience for customers. Brands such as McDonald’s and Coke popularized plastic straws and soda cups. (Believe it or not, soda pop used to come in glass, which was then returned for cleaning and reuse at racks like these.)
Fun fact, Loop is a business founded on similar principles. Clean and reuse packaging material! (Loop is now available in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and DC!) #nonewideas
In the 60’s and 70’s, it was common to toss your trash in the park, on the side of the street, and in waterways. It wasn’t until the littering began to clutter highways that people began to realize that this space needed to be regulated. In an interesting twist of capitalist propaganda, Keep America Beautiful, an anti-littering campaign supported by several large beverage companies, ran the famous Crying Indian ad in an effort to undercut momentum for Vermont’s attempt to ban single use plastics. (In the same legislation, Vermont tried to make beverage manufacturers responsible for accessible deposit and recycling for the bottles they used to package their drinks.) From then on, the onus of recycling packaging or products properly was on the consumer, not the manufacturer. In the zero waste movement, this would be called not being responsible for a product’s end-of-life.
Since then, plastics have become ubiquitous in our world. In my room, right now, just within eyesight, these are the things that use plastic.
- a reusable nylon tote
- packaging for all my skincare
- my polyester fleecy blanket
- spandex in a pair of leggings
- the keys on my laptop keyboard
- my Phillips sun light
- a fake plant
- a headband
- my whiteboard markers
- covers on some books
- a pencil case
- a bag of Cheez-its
- my suitcase (the wheels and the handles)
- plastic storage bins
Pretty much everywhere.
How plastics impact our world
Note: it’s not any animal’s natural diet to consume plastic. They are not trying to eat plastic. Animals are attracted to plastic because it smells like food. “One bag can kill more than once: Carcasses decay, but plastic lasts and can choke or trap again.” — National Geographic
Directly killing animals:
Plastic is pretty indestructible. It’s also, shocker, not part of any animal’s natural diet. Plastics can directly kill animals in several ways. Plastics can choke animals when they try to eat plastic. Plastics can also build up in an animal’s stomach (usually seabirds). By reducing the space in the stomach, plastic buildup leads to starvation because these birds cannot properly consume and digest enough food. To bring this closer to home, 25% of fish in California markets contain plastics in their gut when caught.
Source: https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/
Ghost nets:
Ghost nets are fishing nets that are lost or dumped in the sea by commercial fishers. These nets CONTINUE TO FISH after they are no longer monitored by humans. They continue to trap small animals, which in turn attract larger animals that can be caught, and when they die they attract scavengers that can be trapped as well. In the same way that sea turtles can be caught in shrimp trawl nets or long line nets that are in use (which is called bycatching, unintentionally catching something other than what one is fishing for), animals can be caught in nets that have been thrown away.
Source: https://www.ghostfishing.org/the-problem/
Microplastics:
Microplastics come from things like washing microfiber clothes/cloths, the beads in a lot of facial scrubs, or larger plastic being broken down after being tossed away. Microplastics have been show to inhibit energy production and inhibit AChE activity in juvenile gobies (a kind of fish), a key chemical in neurotransmission (Oliveira 2013)
Both of these effects lead to higher mortality rates. In a world where species are regularly going extinct, and ecosystems can not continue to sustain (and sequester carbon) if they lose more than a certain number of key species.
Recently, an American diver set the new record for deepest human dive in a place called the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. In addition to noticing several new species, he spotted two pieces of plastic, in the deepest point of our oceans. Many deep sea creatures are consuming plastic, because that’s where everything collects eventually. From the highest peak to the deepest ocean, plastic has become a part of our reality. These are some of the tangible effects plastic has had on animals and ecosystems.
Part I: Turning nothings to somethings
