Tag: plastic waste

When The Mermaids Cry – THE CONSENSUS

THE CONSENSUS

Undeniably a culture of behavioural changes, now in its infancy, need to further blossom and be implemented/prompted at all levels: individual, associative, governmental, legislative, industrial, technological, educational, philosophical, national, and international.

It simply starts with individual choices. That is the enormous task, yet the enormous power as well because it resides within each and every one of us. Indeed, thanks to an increased awareness of the plastic pollution spread, local, national, individual, and associative actions have taken place worldwide to stop the plastic hemorrhage at the source.

EDUCATION, LEGISLATION, AND AWARENESS

Education

The starting point of all greater good does remain education and information.

More and more awareness and preventive programs are promoted.

For instance, in 2004, the Australian government launched a campaign called Keep the Sea Plastic Free, in which it attempted to educate the public to dispose of plastic waste properly.

Surfrider foundation is aiming to raise awareness of plastic marine debris and reduce the proliferation of single-use plastic bags and water bottles, as well as the number one littered item worldwide, cigarette butts. The Rise Above Plastics program also seeks to promote a more sustainable lifestyle and educate people about the prevalence of plastic marine debris on our beaches and oceans and how deadly it can be to marine life.

Southeast Asia
South East Asia – Philippines, 2008. Photo: Tamara Thoreson Pierce

The Indonesian government, for instance “(is) seriously concerned about improving its waste management and informing the public,” quoted the Jakarta Post, 2008. The head of the Maritime and Coastal Resources Studies, Tridoyo Kusumastanto, said that both individual and industrial dumpers should learn from scavengers who take solid waste out instead of dumping it into rivers, canals and the sea. Tridoyo estimated that some 40 tons of waste have been dumped into rivers and other waterways daily in surrounding areas and thus polluting the Java Sea. A campaign against river and sea pollution has been called, and people are urged to change their culture of throwing garbage into waterways and other common places.

Being educated on the situation and aware of the consequences ultimately leads us toward better choices in term of consumption and waste management of plastic at an individual level. It can be as simple as refraining from discarding plastic after first use…plastic inherently chosen for its durability.

plastic-pollution-india

Mumbai Impressions… when the water retreats… Plastic Pollution. Captions and Photo source: ©© Don Domingo

As H. Takada mentioned: “We can’t avoid using plastic, but we use too much. “In fact, he’s added a fourth “R” to the ecologist’s classic mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle: refuse. The current bring-your-own-bag movement at retail stores and supermarkets is a good start in terms of refusing, he notes.

Instantaneous, prompt eradication of plastics in its current form, rate of production, and consumption is not realistically feasible, yet constant pressure is impacting industry and politicians to “think green,” to have environmentally responsible approach, production, prevention plans, and legislations.

EXTEND PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY

Relentless associative campaigns have proven that change can happen, such as the recent victory from the Uk’s Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) campaign against mermaid tears.

“SAS launched a campaign to rid British coastlines of mermaid tears, and will continue to build up until factory practice changes.” On June 5th 2009, the release of the British Plastic Federation’s (BPF) Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) guidance manual was a victory on the preventive field. OCS is aimed at improving British plastic factories efficient use of plastic pellets, commonly referred to as mermaid’s tears. SAS initially highlighted the problem of mermaid’s tears on UK beaches to the BPF in 2007, delivering a bottle of 10,000 mermaid’s tears, collected from one Cornish beach, to a BPF biopolymer seminar. SAS also released a covert film documenting mermaid’s tears in the storm drains of plastic factories in the southwest, highlighting the route from factory to beach. SAS and the BPF have worked together on the OCS solution. SAS has already signed up Contico, one of the southwest’s largest plastic factories, to pilot some of the improvements within OCS.

Shoichiro Kobayashi, from The Japan Plastics Industry Federation, says that its members have taken measures to reduce spillage of plastics nurdles.

“Awareness of the problem is high,” says Kobayashi, and has been since JEAN and other NPOs started publicizing the issue about 15 years ago. The federation has about 1,000 members. Together with the 2,200-member All Japan Plastic Products Industrial Foundation, the two groups represent the largest plastic producing companies in Japan. Kobayashi says his organization encourages members and associated transport companies to avoid spillage and to cover all drainage pipe openings with wire mesh. That’s helped reduce the problem at larger companies, but there are more than 20,000 producers of plastic goods in Japan.

On September 22nd 2009 in California, a press conference was held by DTC director Maziar Movassaghi and Project Kaisei founder Mary Crowley, along with representatives from the State of California and various nonprofit groups. They pushed for Extended Producer Responsibility, the philosophy that companies that create products must take responsibility for the full life cycle of those products, products that are “benign by design.” Mary Crowley added, “Let’s reduce the source of this pollution by not only choosing healthy, plastic-free products ourselves, but also urging our legislators to pass Extended Producer Responsibility legislation. In fact, such a bill is currently on the table in the state of California. AB283, the California Product Stewardship Act, is an important step in this process.”

Changzhi, Shanxi Province
Changzhi, Shanxi Province. Photo: Stringer Shanghai

Local legislations, with clear frames and enforcements measures, are increasingly being presented and passed in concert with international programs and legislations, which need ratification by as many countries as possible as the pollution is without frontiers.

LEGISLATION AND INTERNATIONAL CONCERTED PROGRAMS

Internationally

In 1972, the London Convention, a United Nations agreement to control ocean dumping, was entered into. It was followed by the most well known piece of International legislation, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from ships (MARPOL). Annex V of MARPOL was introduced in 1988 with the intention of banning the dumping of most garbage and all plastic materials from ships at sea. A total of 122 countries have ratified the treaty. There is some evidence that the implementation of MARPOL has helped to reduce the marine debris problem.

UK Beach
UK Beach. Photo Source: SWNS

In 1972 and 1974, conventions were held in Oslo and Paris, respectively, which resulted in the passing of the OSPAR Convention, an international treaty controlling marine pollution in the north-east Atlantic Ocean around Europe. A similar Barcelona Convention exists to protect the Mediterranean Sea. The Water Framework Directive of 2000 is a European Union directive committing EU member states to make their inland and coastal waters free from human influence. In the United Kingdom, the proposed Marine Bill is designed to “ensure clean healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas, by putting in place better systems for delivering sustainable development of marine and coastal environment”.

Under the umbrella of UNEP, numerous cooperative efforts have been held to reach protocols and conventions. For instance, a Protocol on Integrated Coastal Zone Management was approved in January 2008, involving 21 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the European Union. Within the framework of Land Based Sources Protocol for pollution reduction from land-based sources, Mediterranean countries and parties to the Barcelona Convention have agreed this year on an initial set of actions covering the reduction of municipal pollution and the elimination of a number of Persistent Organic Pollutants.

The Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP) continues to encourage member states in meeting the Caribbean Challenge target of protecting 20 percent of marine and coastal habitats by 2020. The Caribbean Large Marine Ecosystem Project and development of a Regional Fund for Wastewater Management will support regional collaboration to reduce the vulnerability of sensitive coastal and marine ecosystems by improving national and regional governance structures and developing new and innovative mechanisms for financing new pollution reduction activities.

Even though the greatest problem with international legislation is its actual enforcement, the efforts toward concerted actions can only be promoted.

Nationally

A strict Chinese limit on ultra-thin plastic bags significantly reduced bag-related pollution nationwide during the past year. “Our country consumes a huge amount of plastic shopping bags each year” a spokesperson for China’s State Council said, when announcing the ban last May. “While plastic shopping bags provide convenience to consumers, this has caused a serious waste of energy and resources and environmental pollution because of excessive usage, inadequate recycling and other reasons.” In January 2008, The State Council, China’s parliament, passed legislation to prohibit shops and supermarkets from providing free plastic bags that are less than 0.025 millimeters thick. The State Administration of Industry and Commerce also threatened to fine shopkeepers and vendors as much as 10,000 Yuan ($1,465) if they were caught distributing free bags. The country avoided the use of 40 billion bags, according to government estimates. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) estimated that the limit in bag production saved China 1.6 million tons of petroleum.

The first country to ban plastic bags was Bangladesh, which did so in 2002. Following a particularly damaging typhoon, authorities discovered that millions of bags were clogging the country’s system of flood drains, contributing to the destruction.

In the same year, Ireland took another approach and instituted a steep tax on plastics. According to the country’s Ministry of Environment, use fell by 90 percent as a result and the tax money that was generated funded a greatly expanded recycling program throughout the country. In 2003, the government of Taiwan put in place a system by which bags were no longer made available in markets without charge. Carryout restaurants were even required to charge for plastic utensils.

Larger economies have joined the cause and passed legislations on a national level. In 2005, French legislators imposed a ban on all non-biodegradable plastic bags, which will go into effect in 2010. Italy will also ban them that year.

During its 2008 session, the New York State Legislature passed legislation requiring the reduction, reuse, and recycling of checkout bags. The previous year, the city of San Francisco banned plastic bags altogether, at least the flimsy ones of yore. National Public Radio reported a few months later that the ban had been a boom for local plastics manufacturers, who have been introducing heavy-duty, recyclable, and even compostable bags into the marketplace.

MEDIA AND CREATIVE AWARENESS

An impactful vehicle for information and awareness is indubitably found in the media and creative ventures.

A good example of such ventures is the team of two South African surfers, Ryan and Bryson Robertson, and one Canadian, Hugh Patterson, who created the OceanGybe mission. Their plan is to circumnavigate the globe in a small 40ft sailboat and surf remote reef breaks on far flung islands while interacting with the local cultures. They intend to spread awareness of the vast tracts of plastic and trash afloat on the world’s oceans that inevitably ends up on some unsuspecting shore.

Fishing debris on beach
Fishing debris on beach. Photo Source: unknown

More publicized and funded is the environmentalist and Adventure Ecology founder David de Rothschild’s expedition: the Plastiki mission.

The Plastiki, a one-of-a-kind 60-foot catamaran, was created out of 10,000 reclaimed plastic soda bottles, self-reinforced PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and recycled materials. The vessel’s name is a nod to famed explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who led a 1947 voyage on the Kon-Tiki to test theories of Polynesian settlement by South Americans. The Plastiki is about to make its momentous voyage across the Pacific Ocean, a 10,000-mile expedition from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia by the end of this year, to inspire people to rethink current uses and waste of plastic as a resource and bring attention to the GGP.

De Rothschild explained that Plastiki’s construction has already jump-started research into a future “smart plastics” industry before ever leaving port. For instance, studies are underway on glues that could someday replace common marine epoxies and plastics that could replace non-recyclable fiberglass.
“The Plastiki voyage will be a great adventure, but I think more exciting is the ability to create a conversation on the issue of plastics.”

Philosophy

Adventures of philosophical nature have been taking place as well.

Indeed, French thinkers such as Michel Serre or Luc Ferry, The new ecological order, have developed a train of thought aiming towards a legal recognition, therefore legal protection of Nature. This type of philosophy has been called, deep ecology. The principle is quite simple: democracies have installed their legislative framework, their “social contract,” omitting Nature as a protagonist/subject of law. Therefore, to protect Nature, i.e. our environment, should we confer legal right to it, thus making nature a legal subject/person?

Obviously, all subject of law have rights, but they also have obligations. If we can easily forsee what the right and protection would be for this legal subject, what would be its obligations?

This leads many thinkers towards a notion of “droit ou devoir d’ingerence ecologique” (right or duty of intervention/assistance), trying to mirror the situation on the humanitarian field. The notions of “self defense” and “non assistance a personne en danger” have also been explored as possible legal frames to better enforcement of laws and conventions aimed to protect the environment, and curb ocean plastic pollution for that matter.

plastic pollution albanie

Décharge Plage, Albanie. Photo: ©© Antoine Giret / Un2Vue

Sustainable And Future Technologies – Opportunities And Innovations

  • Biodegradable Plastics

    Biodegradable plastics have been considered as a future, sustainable option to curb our voracious demand and consumption of plastic material as known in its current form. According to the Biodegradable Plastics Society (2005), when such plastics are composted they break down to carbon dioxide and water.

    Controversy does exist though, because it is possible that biodegradable plastics do not break down fully, especially under environmental conditions which are not ideal for composting, and leave non-degradable constituents, some of which may be equally, if not more, hazardous. Also, there is a danger that biodegradable plastics will be seen as “litter friendly” materials, conveying the wrong message to the public and potentially leading to less responsible and more wasteful practices.

    A change in behavioral propensities to over-consume plastics, discard and thus pollute, need to be promoted to the fullest.

  • Ongoing Discoveries And Solutions To The Traditional Plastic Waste Problem

    Scientists have been searching for solutions to the traditional plastic waste problem.

    In 2008 and 2009, two high school students who discovered plastic-consuming microorganisms, might have found groundbreaking solutions.

    Africa

    African coast, plastic pollution and marine debris. Photo: Candace Feit

    The first was Daniel Burd (2008). The second was Tseng I-Ching(l May 2009), a high school student in Taiwan.

    Daniel’s simple and clever process was to immerse ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth, then isolating the most productive organisms. After several weeks of tweaking and optimizing temperatures, Burd was achieved a 43 percent degradation of plastic in six weeks, an almost inconceivable accomplishment. It appeared as an environmentalist’s dream: a non-chemical, i.e. fully organic, low cost and nontoxic method for degrading plastic.

    There have been several successful bacteria based solutions developed at the Dept. of Biotechnology in Tottori, Japan, as well as at the Dept. of Microbiology at the National University of Ireland, but both apply only to styrene compounds.

    Similarly, a 2004 study at the University of Wisconsin isolated a fungus capable of biodegrading phenol-formaldehyde polymers previously thought to be non-biodegradable.

  • Green Chemistry And “Begnign By Design” Concept

    A growing interest amongst chemists, and ultimately industries, is Green chemistry- policy, also called “benign by design”.

    According to scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), a new type of environmentally friendly plastic that degrades in seawater may be developed. Robson F. Storey, Ph.D., a professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at USM, said, “We’re moving toward making plastics more sustainable, especially those that are used at sea.” Their study is funded by the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), which is supporting a number of ongoing research projects aimed at reducing the environmental impact of marine waste. The new plastics are made of polyurethane that has been modified by the incorporation of PLGA [poly (lactide-co-glycolide)], a known degradable polymer used in surgical sutures and controlled drug-delivery applications. When exposed to seawater, the plastics degrade via hydrolysis into nontoxic products, according to the scientists. The plastics are not quite ready for commercialization. “More studies are needed to optimize the plastics for various environmental conditions they might encounter, including changes in temperature, humidity and seawater composition”, Storey says.

    beach litter

    Photo: The Midway Journey

    A new kind of material, called oxo-biodegradable plastic, does not just fragment, but is consumed by microorganisms after the additive has reduced the molecular weight. It is thus biodegradable. This process continues until the material has biodegraded to nothing more than CO2, water, humus, and trace elements. There is little or no additional cost, as it can be made with the same machinery and workforce as conventional plastic. The time taken to degrade can be programmed to a few months or a few years and, until the plastic degrades, it has the same strength and other characteristics as conventional plastic. Oxo-biodegradable plastic will be engineered to degrade in a short time leaving no harmful residues.

  • Recycling And Zero Waste Concept

    A promising way toward a future of better plastic waste management is recycling the material. The recycling industry might eventually be a path leading to considerable opportunities and solutions.

    The BIR (Bureau of International Recycling), whose headquarters is in Belgium, is a trade federation representing the world’s recycling industry. About 800 companies and national federations from over 70 countries are affiliated with the BIR. Together they provide their expertise to other industrial sectors and political groups in order to promote recycling. It is estimated that the recycling industry employs more than 1.5 million people, annually processes over 500 million tons of commodities, and has a turnover exceeding $160 billion.

    However, this industry is faced with many challenges, as the recycling material itself is very diverse in a chemical sense and can release, when processed, extremely dangerous chemicals. For instance, a recycling factory in China was recently exposed to tragic consequences due to the recycling of very hazardous plastic materials. It was reported that a team of workers in China’s Zhejiang province collapsed after handling two metric tons of plastic scrap on September 13, 2009. At least 21 have since been hospitalized and three of them have died. According to the initial investigative conclusions, the victims were in contact with highly toxic chemical, dinitrophenol, which was found on the two tons of plastic scrap. Workers at the recycling factory were unaware of the hazard of the material and had no protection during the unloading. This particular tragedy is only the tip of the iceberg. China’s plastics recycling industry is poorly regulated, with scandals such as biohazard plastic waste being melted and reprocessed into consumer goods.

    Recycling is definitely a potentially great path to solving the plastic waste problem but definitely not the most unchallenging one.

     

    Photo: ©© tedxgp2 / Plastic pollution coalition

    Along the same lines, a responsible waste strategy, namely the concept of Zero Waste, has been widespread. Such a strategy encompasses waste reduction, reuse and recycling as well as producer responsibility and ecodesign. According to a Greenpeace report, strategies to achieve Zero Waste are adopted throughout the world, in industrialized countries and in less developed countries.

    Ultimately, this would mean reduction of the use of plastics. “Our understanding of disposal and reuse (of plastic, is what) is to blame.” as many environmentalist such as de Rothschild, said.

    This zero waste philosophy encourages the redesign of resource’s life cycles, so that all products are reused. Any trash sent to landfills is minimal. The process recommended is one similar to the way that resources are reused in nature. Zero waste can represent an economical alternative to waste systems, where new resources are continually required to replenish wasted raw materials.

    DTSC’s Environmental Chemistry Laboratory is currently analyzing some of the plastic marine debris collected at the Great Garbage Patch by Project Kaisei scientists, and explores the potential of converting the plastic collected into new material.

    Indeed, Doug Woodring from Project Kaisei stated last September that they intend to use some of the newest plastic technologies to detoxify and turn the plastic waste caught in the oceans either into fuel or another useable material. Thus, Project Kaisei hopes to assign value to that plastic collected, particularly the overwhelming majority that is never recycled. It becomes obvious that technologies that convert plastic to fuel, clothing, or simply more profitable plastic could give people a good reason to pick up all that plastic and make a profit from it. Numerous industries, such as fashion, are already increasingly focusing on new green materials as a base for their offered products, encouraging a way of life and cultural change toward better choices and awareness of the environment.

    “It’s controllable,” DougWoodring said. “We have to let people know that enough is enough, but it’s not just a negative story about toxicity and wrecking our oceans. There is a huge amount of opportunity for innovation.”

David

WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY: THE GREAT PLASTIC TIDE – INTRODUCTION

By Claire Le Guern
Last updated in March 2018.

INTRODUCTION

The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced.

Washed out on our coasts in obvious and clearly visible form, the plastic pollution spectacle blatantly unveiling on our beaches is only the prelude of the greater story that unfolded further away in the world’s oceans, yet mostly originating from where we stand: the land.

For more than 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics have continued to rise. An estimated 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012, and confirming and upward trend over the past years.(See: Worldwatch Institute – January 2015). In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tons, and, according to a 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 297.5 million tons by the end of 2015.

Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature.

Although inhabited and remote, South Sentinel island is covered with plastic! Plastic pollution and marine debris, South Sentinel Island, Bay of Bengal. Photo source: © SAF — Coastal Care

A simple walk on any beach, anywhere, and the plastic waste spectacle is present. All over the world the statistics are ever growing, staggeringly. Tons of plastic debris (which by definition are waste that can vary in size from large containers, fishing nets to microscopic plastic pellets or even particles) is discarded every year, everywhere, polluting lands, rivers, coasts, beaches, and oceans.

Published in the journal Science in February 2015, a study conducted by a scientific working group at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), quantified the input of plastic waste from land into the ocean. The results: every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in our oceans. It’s equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world. In 2025, the annual input is estimated to be about twice greater, or 10 bags full of plastic per foot of coastline. So the cumulative input for 2025 would be nearly 20 times the 8 million metric tons estimate – 100 bags of plastic per foot of coastline in the world!

Lying halfway between Asia and North America, north of the Hawaiian archipelago, and surrounded by water for thousands of miles on all sides, the Midway Atoll is about as remote as a place can get. However, Midways’ isolation has not spared it from the great plastic tide either, receiving massive quantities of plastic debris, shot out from the North Pacific circular motion of currents (gyre). Midways’ beaches, covered with large debris and millions of plastic particles in place of the sand, are suffocating, envenomed by the slow plastic poison continuously washing ashore.

Then, on shore, the spectacle becomes even more poignant, as thousands of bird corpses rest on these beaches, piles of colorful plastic remaining where there stomachs had been. In some cases, the skeleton had entirely biodegraded; yet the stomach-size plastic piles are still present, intact. Witnesses have watched in horror seabirds choosing plastic pieces, red, pink, brown and blue, because of their similarity to their own food. It is estimated that of the 1.5 million Laysan Albatrosses which inhabit Midway, all of them have plastic in their digestive system; for one third of the chicks, the plastic blockage is deadly, coining Midway Atoll as “albatross graveyards” by five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, who recently filmed and photographed the catastrophic effects of the plastic pollution there.

Albatross, victim of plastic ingestion. Photo: Unknown.

From the whale, sea lions, and birds to the microscopic organisms called zooplankton, plastic has been, and is, greatly affecting marine life on shore and off shore. In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different animal species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, as well as millions of birds and fishes.

The United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution (GESAMP), estimated that land-based sources account for up to 80 percent of the world’s marine pollution, 60 to 95 percent of the waste being plastics debris.

However, most of the littered plastic waste worldwide ultimately ends up at sea. Swirled by currents, plastic litter accumulates over time at the center of major ocean vortices forming “garbage patches”, i.e. larges masses of ever-accumulating floating debris fields across the seas. The most well known of these “garbage patches” is the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch, discovered and brought to media and public attention in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore. Yet some others large garbage patches are highly expected to be discovered elsewhere, as we’ll see further.

The plastic waste tide we are faced with is not only obvious for us to clearly see washed up on shore or bobbing at sea. Most disconcertingly, the overwhelming amount and mass of marine plastic debris is beyond visual, made of microscopic range fragmented plastic debris that cannot be just scooped out of the ocean.

Slow, silent, omnipresent, ever increasing, more toxic than previously thought, the plastic pollution’s reality bears sobering consequences, as recently unveiled by the report of Japanese chemist Katsuhiko Saido at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in August 2009 and the findings from the Project Kaisei and Scripps (Seaplex) scientific cruise-expeditions collecting seawater samples from the Great Garbage Patch. Both, the reports and expeditions uncovered new evidence of how vast and “surprisingly” (as it was termed at the ACS meeting) toxic the plastic presence in the marine environment is.

 

Extremely littered beach in northern Norway. Photo source: ©© Bo Eide

Environmentalists have long denounced plastic as a long-lasting pollutant that does not fully break down, in other terms, not biodegradable. In 2004, a study lead by Dr Richard Thompson at the University of Plymouth, UK, reported finding great amount of plastic particles on beaches and waters in Europe, the Americas, Australia, Africa and Antarctica. They reported that small plastic pellets called “mermaids tears”, which are the result of industry and domestic plastic waste, have indeed spread across the world’s seas. Some plastic pellets had fragmented to particles thinner than the diameter of a human hair. But while some cannot be seen, those pieces are still there and are still plastic. They are not absorbed into the natural system, they just float around within it, and ultimately are ingested by marine animals and zooplankton (Plankton that consists of tiny animals, such as rotifers, copepods, and krill, larger animals eggs and larvae’s and of microorganisms once classified as animals, such as dinoflagellates and other protozoans.). This plastic micro-pollution, with its inherent toxicity and consequences on the food chain, had yet to be studied…

Dr Saido’s study was the first one to look at what actually happens over the years to these tons of plastic waste floating in the world’s oceans. The study presents an alarming fact: these tons of plastic waste reputed to be virtually indestructible, do decompose with surprising speed, at much lower temperature than previously thought possible, and release toxic substances into the seawater, namely bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomer. These chemicals are considered toxic and can be metabolized subsequent to ingestion, leading Dr Saido to state “…plastics in the ocean will certainly give rise to new sources of global contaminations that will persist long into the future”.

This past August a different study, from a group of oceanography students from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), UCSD, accompanied by the international organization Project Kaisei’s team, embarked on two vessels, New Horizon and Kaisei, through the North Pacific Ocean to sample plastic debris and garbage. SIO director Tony Haymet described the trip as “ …a forage into the great plastic garbage patch in the north.” To summarize the scientific data collected on the ship, Miriam Goldstein, chief scientist on New Horizon, stated: “We did find debris… coming up in our nets in over 100 consecutive net tows over a distance of 1,700 miles… It is pretty shocking.” She said, “[There is] not a big island, not a garbage dump [that we] can really see easily.” She described it more as a place where large debris floats by a ship only occasionally, but a lot of tiny pieces of plastic exist below the surface of the water. “Ocean pretty much looks like ocean,” she said. “The plastic fragments are mostly less than a quarter inch long and are below the surface. It took at first a magnifying-glass to see the true extent of plastic damage in the North Pacific.”

The overwhelmingly largest unquantifiable plastic mass is just made of confetti-like fragmented pieces of plastic.

In a press conference in September 2009, the director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), Maziar Movassaghi, referring to Project Kaisei’s findings, held a small glass bottle filled with seawater sampled at the Great North Garbage Patch. Inside was murky seawater with hundreds of fragmented plastics pieces: “That is what we have to stop”.

All sea creatures, from the largest to the microscopic organisms, are, at one point or another, swallowing the seawater soup instilled with toxic chemicals from plastic decomposition. The world population “… (is) eating fish that have eaten other fish, which have eaten toxin-saturated plastics. In essence, humans are eating their own waste.” (Dixit Renee Brown, WiredPress).

 

Photo: Manan Vastsyayana

The scientists from Project Kaisei and Scripps hope their data gives clues as to the density and extent of these debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch might have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger.” We’re afraid at what we’re going to find in the South Gyre, but we’ve got to go there,” said Tony Haymet.

The “Silent World” is shedding mermaid tears. A plastic-poison has undeniably been instilled by us, prompting an unwilling and illegitimate confrontation of two titans: one synthetic (plastic), the other oceanic. The crisis is of massive proportion. An unprecedented plastic tide has occurred, pervasively affecting the world’s oceans, beaches, coasts, seafloor, animals and ultimately, us.

David

China plastic waste ban throws global recycling into chaos

In 2018, China n 2018, China stopped accepting foreign plastics for recycling, causing the trade to divert to South East Asia where cowboy firms are dumping and burning waste.

From grubby packaging engulfing small Southeast Asian communities to waste piling up in plants from the US to Australia, China's ban on accepting the world's used plastic has plunged global recycling into turmoil.

For many years, China received the bulk of scrap plastic from around the world, processing much of it into a higher quality material that could be used by manufacturers.

But at the start of 2018, it closed its doors to almost all foreign plastic waste, as well as many other recyclables, in a push to protect the local environment and air quality, leaving developed nations struggling to find places to send their waste.

"It was like an earthquake," Arnaud Brunet, director general of Brussels-based industry group The Bureau of International Recycling, told AFP.

"China was the biggest market for recyclables. It created a major shock in the global market."

Instead, plastic is being redirected in huge quantities to Southeast Asia, where Chinese recyclers have shifted en masse.

With a large Chinese-speaking minority, Malaysia was a top choice for Chinese recyclers looking to relocate, and official data showed plastic imports tripled from 2016 levels to 870,000 tonnes last year.

In the small town of Jenjarom, not far from Kuala Lumpur, plastic processing plants suddenly appeared in large numbers, pumping out noxious fumes day and night.

Huge mounds of plastic waste, dumped in the open, piled up as recyclers struggled to cope with the influx of packaging from everyday goods, such as foods and laundry detergents, from as far afield as Germany, the United States, and Brazil.

Residents soon noticed the acrid stench over the town — the kind of odour that is usual in processing plastic, but environmental campaigners believe some of the fumes also come from the incineration of plastic waste that was too low quality to recycle.

"People were attacked by toxic fumes, waking them up at night. Many were coughing a lot," local resident, Pua Lay Peng, told AFP.

"I could not sleep, I could not rest, I always felt fatigued," the 47-year-old added.

Toxic fumes

Pua and other community members began investigating and by mid-2018 had located about 40 suspected processing plants, many of which appeared to be operating secretly and without proper permits.

Initial complaints to authorities went nowhere but they kept up pressure, and eventually the government took action. Authorities started closing down illegal factories in Jenjarom, and announced a nationwide temporary freeze on plastic import permits.

Thirty-three factories were closed down, although activists believe many have quietly moved elsewhere in the country. Residents say air quality has improved but some plastic dumps remain.

In Australia, Europe and the US, many of those collecting plastic and other recyclables were left scrambling to find new places to send it.

They face higher costs to get it processed by recyclers at home and in some cases have resorted to sending it to landfill sites as the scrap has piled up too quickly.

"Twelve months on, we are still feeling the effects but we have not moved to the solutions yet," said Garth Lamb, president of industry body Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia.

Some have been quicker to adapt to the new environment, such as some local authority-run centres that collect recyclables in Adelaide, southern Australia.

The centres used to send nearly everything — ranging from plastic to paper and glass — to China but now 80 percent is processed by local companies, with most of the rest shipped to India.

"We moved quickly and looked to domestic markets," Adam Faulkner, chief executive of the Northern Adelaide Waste Management Authority, told AFP.

"We've found that by supporting local manufacturers, we've been able to get back to pre-China ban prices," he added.

Consume less, produce less

In mainland China, imports of plastic waste have dropped from 600,000 tonnes per month in 2016 to about 30,000 a month in 2018, according to data cited by a new report from Greenpeace and environmental NGO Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.

Once bustling centres of recycling have been abandoned as firms shifted to Southeast Asia.

On a visit to the southern town of Xingtan last year, Chen Liwen, founder of environmental NGO China Zero Waste Alliance, found the once-booming recycling industry had disappeared.

"The plastic recyclers were gone — there were 'for rent' signs plastered on factory doors and even recruitment signs calling for experienced recyclers to move to Vietnam," she told AFP.

Southeast Asian nations affected early by the China ban — as well as Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam were hit hard — have taken steps to limit plastic imports, but the waste has simply been redirected to other countries without restrictions, such as Indonesia and Turkey, according to the Greenpeace report.

With only an estimated nine percent of plastics ever produced recycled, campaigners say the only long-term solution to the plastic waste crisis is for companies to make less and consumers to use less.

Greenpeace campaigner Kate Lin said: "The only solution to plastic pollution is producing less plastic."

David

Is your phone or laptop destined to become a ‘technofossil’?

Forty-four million tonnes of e-waste was generated last year. Activists want big tech to start dealing with the problem.

by

27 Aug 2019
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Because worldwide annual e-waste is worth $62.5bn - more than the gross domestic product of many countries - environmental advocates are encouraging reclamation efforts like this mobile-phone recycling workshop in Lima, Peru [File: Guadalupe Pardo/Reuters]

Because worldwide annual e-waste is worth $62.5bn – more than the gross domestic product of many countries – environmental advocates are encouraging reclamation efforts like this mobile-phone recycling workshop in Lima, Peru [File: Guadalupe Pardo/Reuters]

Janet Gunter was working at an international nongovermental organisation (NGO) when she noticed an alarming trend. She had grown up with technology and started blogging in 2001, but she watched as the people she knew – even those who would call themselves conscientious about the environment – upgraded their phones every several months without giving a second thought to the e-waste they were generating.

So Gunter decided to do something about the waste. In 2012, she and her friend Ugo Vallauri starting throwing "restart" parties where people could bring their old electronics and learn how to upgrade them. Those efforts eventually led them to found the Restart Project, a community-led initiative designed to give the average person the skills and tools necessary to fix and repair personal electronics rather than consigning them to the trash heap.

"We found that a community of fixers emerged, and this community has propelled us for the past seven years," Guntner told Al Jazeera. "We’re also really excited that most community groups in our network are up for coming together to change the system upstream."

The Restart Project is part of a burgeoning movement to stem the growing tide of mobile phones, laptops and other gadgets washing up on beaches, clogging landfills and polluting Earth's air, soil and water. 

E-waste is having such a profound effect on the planet that researchers have coined a new term – technofossils – to describe its unprecedented impact. While grassroots activists like Gunter are doing their best to clean up the mess, environmental advocates say lawmakers and big tech companies need to be more proactive – and start taking greater advantage of e-waste's potential benefits – rather than leaving the discarded gadgets to just pile up.

Rampant consumption, pervasive waste

Global consumers threw away 44 million tonnes of e-waste in 2018 alone – and the volume of that pollution is expected to double by 2050, found a recent report from the United Nations (UN).

Changing consumer trends mean new models of laptops and phones are released every few years – and devices often get thrown away before they've outlived their usefulness. Even when these machines are preserved for continued use, they can quickly become obsolete and impossible to fix. MacBook laptops, for instance, are considered vintage by Apple, their manufacturer, five years after they are produced. Just seven years later, they are considered "obsolete".

From e-toothbrushes to smartphones to toys that use batteries, discarded gadgets contain elements such as gold, silver and other precious metals that don't degrade easily – as well as hard plastics that resist breakdown, and soft plastics that release chemicals when they do degrade. The resulting pollution is so pervasive that in the United States alone, 70 percent of toxic waste in landfills comes from electronic devices that have been thrown away, reports the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

Discarded devices were dubbed technofossils in a 2014 study in Anthropocene Review, where University of Leicester researchers noted that as the tools we use have become more complex – and composed of increasingly durable materials – our fossil record is burgeoning at the cost of our natural world.

The build-up of technofossils and the pace of e-consumption have now reached the point where we're producing six kilogrammes of e-waste per year for every person on the planet – more than the combined weight of all the commercial aircraft ever built, according to the UN.

"Globally, this is not managed well," says Jim Puckett, executive director of the Basel Action Network, an NGO that monitors e-waste and that recently embedded 200 donated devices with GPS trackers to determine where the gadgets will end up.

"[E-waste] is being swept out of our homes and businesses from the North to the global South on a regular basis for re-use and highly dangerous recycling," Puckett told Al Jazeera.

When e-waste is recycled – which only 20 percent of it is – this can require intensive processes such as shredding a phone through a powerful machine, then melting it down to form a kind of smelted material. Harmful gases and fumes – such as chloride and mercury – can be released.

Even well-intentioned humanitarian efforts can add to e-waste when aid supplies wind up on the rubbish heap. "We are constantly seeing this plastic in places it shouldn't be, clogging up drains and rivers and eventually entering the ocean," says Rory Dickens, founder of Recycle Rebuild, an NGO that helps communities recycle waste into building materials and generate an immediate source of income for those affected by natural disasters.

Addressing e-waste

Though global action to address e-waste on a massive scale has yet to happen, concern over the effects of this pollution on the environment has grown over the past two decades.

In 2004, the UN launched the Solving the E-Waste Problem (StEp) project, which works to address e-waste at every stage, from devices' design to their production, usage, reuse and recycling. Today, the initiative counts 35 governments, academic institutions, businesses and other organisations among its members. 

The UN notes that the global e-waste produced annually is worth $62.5bn – more than the gross domestic product of most countries – and that there is 100 times more gold in a tonne of e-waste than in a tonne of gold ore. To capitalise on the economic potential of e-waste, the UN is supporting initiatives like a $15m "circular e-waste system" that will soon kick off in Nigeria.

Many countries have made recycling electronics easier in the last decade, as well as passing legislation to encourage people to do so. In the United Kingdom, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEED) came into effect in 2007. And various states across the US have passed bills that have similar purposes – to encourage people to recycle their electronics, as well as be more careful with what they dispose.

Since 2014, many cities and countries have passed laws to make throwing away electronics illegal, which encourages people to recycle their gadgets or donate them.

"It's not enough for us to gather and try and fix all the poorly designed devices in our communities," says the Restart Project's Gunther. "In the UK, we drafted The Manchester Declaration last year, calling on policymakers to do more to help community repair and reuse."

Gunther and other activists say governments and international bodies need to take more decisive action by encouraging people to be more responsible with their electronic consumption – and by implementing a code for technology companies to follow to ensure that their products aren't so quickly discarded.

"They need to begin to consider legislation that will mandate or incentivise toxic-free, green design, and design for longevity and recycling of IT equipment," says Puckett.

Recycle Rebuild's Dickens also believes technology companies need to be more proactive with environmentally friendly productive designs. 

"We live in a world where products are designed to be replaced," says Dickens. "If a manufacturer created a product that worked forever, they would eventually run out of customers, but if they were able to create products that could be easily separated back to their raw materials, we would have a more sustainable system."

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS

David