Bottle-Filled Oceans Stand Between Us and Death
President Biden stepped down from the 2024 campaign just days after his administration launched the first federal ocean plastic strategy. Just how bad is global plastic pollution?
On the first weekend of June, I woke up early. I dragged myself out of bed, drank a sad cup of old coffee, and walked to the Columbus Circle subway station. From there, I took the D train to Brooklyn’s Coney Island.
I had been on that train line plenty of times before. You breathe a sigh of relief every time your car escapes the bowels of Manhattan, climbing up tracks over the East River. The ride continues for about an hour before you get off at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station.
The Atlantic Ocean is just under 10 minutes away. You turn left onto Stillwell Avenue, pass Surf Avenue and Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, and trudge up past Luna Park and Deno’s Wonder Wheel onto the boardwalk.
My final destination was the boardwalk’s entrance to the New York Aquarium: the oldest continually operating aquarium in the United States. The entrance is marked by a large gate, decorated with metal cutouts of fish and other marine life. While I often visit the aquarium to see Quint the sea otter, the nearby rookery of African Black-Footed penguins, and roughtail stingrays at the “Sharks!” building, this day was different.
It was World Ocean Day. And, for the first time in my life, I would participate in a beach clean-up.
During the previous June, I vacationed in Hawaii. On the islands of Maui and Hawaii, I found the bluest waters and cleanest shores I had ever seen in person. Hawaiians take their environmental responsibilities a lot more seriously than most New Yorkers. I was following a nonprofit called Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii on Instagram and was incredibly impressed by their stewardship and drive.
That trip happened months before I signed up for classes at Columbia University. The classes I took examined climate and water resources and the monitoring and analysis of marine and estuary systems — on all scales. At that point, I didn’t know what nurdles were: small plastic pellets that serve as raw material in plastic product manufacturing. I hadn’t written my final paper on the effects of plastic pollution on marine life off the coast of California. It also came before I reported and penned my 6,200-word thesis on the impacts of climate change on the Greenland shark and the Atlantic Ocean’s ecosystems. In the summer of 2023, I knew some very basic things about oceans and climate, but nothing about the scale of the issue of plastic pollution.
Less than a month after graduation from Columbia Journalism School, I went to Coney Island Beach. There, I met tens of other clean-up volunteers. Organizers gave us reusable bags, rubber gloves, and trash pickers. After a brief instructional speech, they released us to hunt for plastic and other trash. I made my way toward the shoreline.
It only took two minutes to find something. I picked up a multi-colored beach ball, beer bottles, berry containers, bottle caps, plastic beach toys, bags, and spoons. While most of the people on the beach that day did not seem to notice my presence, one man selling drinks gave me his empty bottles. Several people stopped to thank me before I returned to the boardwalk.
I came away from that experience with renewed energy. There is so much about the climate crisis and its repercussions on our oceans that I cannot individually fix. This was something I could do to protect our shores and the organisms that rely on them.
Unfortunately, the scope of our plastic pollution problem is unfathomably broad. Humans each inhale about one credit card of microplastics every week, according to researchers, and microplastics have already been found in our organs. Microplastics are small plastic pieces that are less than five millimeters long and can come in all shapes. A human red blood cell is 5 microns and an average human hair has a diameter of 100 microns. Most humans cannot see things that are smaller than 40 microns with just their eyes. Nanoplastics, which are broken-down microplastics, have a length of less than one micron. Nanoplastics can cross through the placenta to unborn babies, according to Norwegian scientists.
A lot of what we know about the consequences of plastic pollution on human health is just emerging. In March, a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that people who had microplastics or nanoplastics in a main artery were more likely to experience heart attacks, strokes, or even death. There were only 200 people in the three-year research, and the authors of the study caution that their findings did not show that the microplastics and nanoplastics were the cause of poor health. Other factors, like socio-economic status, could be the main drivers, they said. And, a January study in PNAS, published by researchers at Columbia University, found that a liter of bottled water — on average — contained some 240,000 detectable plastic fragments: a sum that is 10 to 100 times greater than previous estimates.
For the Earth’s marine life, threats from plastics of all sizes are more widely known. For example, some creatures may eat plastic and debris. It can take up room in their stomachs, stop them from eating real food, and potentially cause injury or death. It can also result in choking. An Environmental Pollution survey from last year said that more than 68% of the 22 marine mammals they surveyed were found to have at least one microplastic particle in their tissue. These particles can also carry pathogens, according to a 2022 study published in Scientific Reports. Furthermore, plastics can contribute to climate change by generating greenhouse gases as they decompose in the ocean, according to MIT Climate. Greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere trap heat, contributing to the planet’s warming.
Still, plastic is everywhere and it’s not biodegradable. It can break down over decades, but it never truly disappears. The United Nations says as many as 12 million tonnes of plastic (a “ton” is 2,000 pounds and a “tonne” is 2,204 pounds) are swept into the oceans each year, and that the volume of plastic in them is estimated at approximately 75–199 million tonnes. Plastic accounts for 85% of marine litter and a grocery bag was even found in the Mariana Trench: the deepest part of the ocean.
More than 430 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced by humans annually, contributing to the problem, with two-thirds being thrown away upon a single use. Should we continue global production at increased rates, that number is forecast to balloon to 1,100 million tonnes by 2050. The estimated tally of yearly plastic pollution entering the ocean is projected to triple over the course of the next two decades.
In an effort to tackle this mammoth-sized predicament, the Biden-Harris administration recently released the first-ever federal report outlining a comprehensive U.S. approach to addressing plastic pollution. It came out just days before President Joe Biden (who also signed a historic climate bill) announced he would step down from the 2024 presidential race, handing the proverbial reins to Vice President Kamala Harris. A fact sheet detailing the 83-page report and new pledges said key principles of future action included taking steps to reduce pollution from the extraction of fossil fuels and production of plastic, advancing the exploration of alternative materials and processing methods, limiting initial use of unnecessary materials, improving environmentally sound waste management, and leading federal efforts to clean up existing plastic pollution and prevent additional plastic pollution. “The Biden-Harris Administration recognizes that pollution can occur at every stage of the plastic lifecycle, disproportionately impacting communities with environmental justice concerns, contributing to loss of biodiversity, and exacerbating the impacts of climate change,” the White House said.
The plan has drawn reaction from groups like the American Chemistry Council, which represents plastics companies. The ACC touted its own framework, writing in its own release that it agrees plastic production needs to be more cyclical. “We caution the administration that prescribing alternative materials could work against its climate objectives as plastic often has a lower lifecycle GHG footprint compared to paper, metal and alternative materials,” the ACC said. In addressing progress to combat plastic pollution, the administration said agencies were advancing work to explore alternative materials and processing methods, such as through the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Circular Economy Program. The U.S. plastics industry generates $371 billion year over year, according to the ACC.
Conversely, aquariums and zoos across the country lauded the administration’s goals to phase out the federal procurement of single-use plastics from food service operations, events, and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035. In a joint press release from the Aquarium Conservation Partnership on Friday, the organizations’ leadership said the federal government formally acknowledged the severity of the plastic pollution crisis for the first time, and recognized “explicit connections” between tackling plastic pollution as “an environmental justice, human health, and climate change issue as well as an environmental one.” The leaders said the new strategy would create “a strong guiding approach for all branches of the federal government.” “Our nation generates more plastic waste than any other country in the world, per capita as well as by total mass. The actions described in this report represent the Administration’s commitment to address plastic pollution throughout the lifecycle of plastic and sets a foundation for federal agencies to take action in the U.S.,” the statement said.
However, before all of this, the largely conservative Supreme Court overturned a decades-old ruling: Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. According to The Associated Press, it was used to instruct the lower courts to defer to federal agencies when passed laws are not totally clear. Recently, administrations have increasingly turned to federal regulation to set policy changes, especially as Congress continues to become more and more partisan. Overturning Chevron could open up past environmental regulations to legal challenges. Some say it could also complicate future regulation and legislation. But, at this point, the future remains unclear.
Certainly, this problem won’t be solved immediately, or in years. But, suggestions and solutions — with the potential to save money and create jobs — have been identified by national and international bodies. The United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee aims to finalize plastic pollution negotiations by the end of this year.
In the U.S., the Biden-Harris administration said multiple efforts were already underway to address plastic pollution across its lifecycle, including providing critical health protections and finalizing rules to reduce toxic air pollutant emissions, reducing single-use plastic on public lands and in Department of the Interior facilities, investing in solid waste infrastructure for recycling grants, and cleaning up existing plastic pollution by providing millions in federal funding.
What can you do? People can carry reusable bags and shop sustainably, reuse drinking bottles when traveling, dress more sustainably, choose plastic-free personal care products, advocate for education and change, and clean up rivers. It is estimated that 1,000 rivers are accountable for nearly 80% of global annual riverine plastic emissions into the ocean.
Lastly, if you live near the coast, you can volunteer for a beach clean-up. And, hopefully, you can feel the way I did that day in June.
