I am a scientist and therefore a skeptic by nature. I take everything with a grain of salt and I don’t fall victim to eloquent rhetoric, dramatic photos, or emotional appeals when true substance is lacking. I say this because it is not often that I get so affected by something I’ve only just become aware of. Yesterday on the radio I heard of an online documentary about the legendary Floating Island of Garbage. I always thought it was an urban myth, but apparently these guys went there and documented what they found. I decided to check it out myself, so I went to the website and watched the video. It was a very professional production and the information it revealed was positively shocking.
Toxic Garbage Island: episode 1
(there are 12 episodes in all, but you need only watch the first to get the gist of the message; you will probably end up wanting to see them all)
Garbage Island, aka: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is not really an Island in the sense of a cohesive landmass. Instead, it is an area of the North Pacific Ocean that is approximately twice the size of Texas and lies in the centre of a large, circular flow of oceanic currents. These currents pass along the west coast of North America and the East Coast of Asia – picking up untold amounts of garbage and pollutants and drawing the stuff into their centre, an area called the North Pacific Gyre.
In the days before synthetic, non-biodegradeable products were manufactured by the millions, the organic refuse that found its way here represented a source of food to the myriad creatures who inhabit this region. From oceanic scavengers to filter feeders one can imagine the evolution of an entire ecosystem based on the forces of Nature that sweep up the refuse of the sea and deposit it here, in the oceanic version of a landfill. If something is biodegradable then, by definition, something is going to want to eat it. Therefore, so long as the human contribution consisted of natural materials (basically everything up to the last two hundred years) our garbage probably didn’t present too much of a problem to the world’s oceans.
And then along came plastics.
Now, if you are like me you maybe thought that the worst thing about plastic was that it didn’t go away. Bottles and nozzles, hard hats and flowerpots, broom handles and ballpoint pens…I imagined that these items would just remain in their manufactured forms until some time, perhaps centuries from now, when future archeologists would dig it up and wonder at the sheer folly of our disposable culture. But no, the truth is much more frightening than that.
Because you see, it turns out that many plastics are photodegradable. Which means that while floating along on the ocean’s currents exposed to all that sunlight they are broken down into slimy, sticky puddles of plastic taffy that look remarkably like jellyfish to the detriment of sea turtles or basically anything that swims into it, including the jellyfish themselves:
Yet it gets worse… many plastics also degrade into tiny plastic fragments that look somewhat like confetti. The waters of the Gyre are so littered with the stuff that the ratio of plastic particles to plankton is over 6:1 (and in some areas upwards of 1000:1). Just imagine a filter feeder taking a nice mouthful of ocean water and getting ten times more plastic than nutrients in its belly.
I could go on, but watch the video and you’ll come to the same point I’m at now…
…how can we even begin to fix this?
My first thought after watching was “I am NEVER using plastic again!”. But seriously folks, that is not an easy thing to do. The computer I’m typing on right now is made of plastic. My glasses have plastic in the frames. I’m not sure it would even be possible to replace everything in my life that is made with plastic (my car, for example). While I applaud the efforts of bloggers like Fake Plastic Fish and Life Less Plastic the sad reality is that this problem – the toxic plastic garbage wasteland of the North Pacific gyre – is not going to go away because a few of us choose to use stainless steel tupperware or cloth grocery bags. The problem is not only global (want another freaky thought? there are four other oceanic Gyres on Earth…) , but goes to the very nature of our society and its dependence on a material that is non-biodegradable and unmanageable as waste. It’s bad enough that we Westerners created this stuff and then became totally dependent on it, but now we are exporting our disposable plastic lifestyle to countries that lack curbside recycling and waste management facilities.
But even if we were to recycle every piece of plastic manufactured there would still be the issue of garbage (ever seen what happens to the area around a McDonalds restaurant, despite the presence of multiple waste bins?). There’s also those darned nurdles – the tiny plastic pellets that are melted down and then coloured and moulded into the final product – which escape from train cars and truck beds, blowing in the wind like dust, and collecting all over the earth’s surface including the oceans.
I think what needs to happen is we need to make this issue so well-known that people raise enough of a stink about it to prompt some change. People need to start viewing plastic the same way we view non-dolphin friendly tuna. Our society needs to invent/find materials to replace plastic that can be disposed of responsibly and which do not pose such a threat to life on this planet.
In the meantime, I’m going to do my bit by trying to cut all unnecessary plastic out of my life (starting with my shampoo). I have written in the past about being plastic bag free; Google around and you’ll come up with many more suggestions and tips. And if you feel overwhelmed, as I did when I first watched that documentary, just take a deep breath and say to yourself “One step at a time”… Spread the word, and hopefully one day the ecological horror show that is Garbage Island will become simply one more embarrassing episode of human history that we somehow managed to survive without going extinct.
April 18, 2008 at 10:07 pm
You’re right. The plastic in the North Pacific Gyre is not going to go away. That’s the really sad part. But folks like me who are trying our hardest to buy no new plastic are doing what we can at the individual level and then blogging to spread the word to others so we don’t make the problem worse than it already is.
The plastic problem can be overwhelming. And our efforts might not make any difference in the long run. But if we don’t try, we’re sure to fail.
Beth
April 19, 2008 at 7:37 am
Hi Beth! I hope I didn’t sound like I thought what you (and others) are doing was useless or unimportant. Your website is an amazing resource, and bloggers like you are at the forefront of this issue, spreading the word – an invaluable contribution! I just wanted to emphasize that we as a society need to work towards getting rid of synthetic plastics altogether. The old “reduce, reuse, recycle” just doesn’t seem to cut it in the face of this issue and its enormity, kwim?
April 19, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Hi Rural
I’ve just posted on shampoos & cleaners etc, perhaps you might like to try these options, the recipes are wonderful and my hair feels great.
Blessings
April 22, 2008 at 8:46 am
[...] simple living I’ve been writing a few posts about environmental issues lately, like the mass of plastic waste floating in the North Pacific and the problem of exporting our disposable lifestyle to the developing world. When I think about [...]
December 29, 2008 at 7:19 pm
[...] if one is skeptical about the health effects, there is no longer any doubt that plastics pollute in a very nasty way. It would almost be better if they just sat there in the landfills forever but they do degrade [...]
September 15, 2009 at 12:25 pm
We need to SHOW how it COULD BE not how it already is. Show people the better alternative. Plastic is going to be ancient history. Create the alternative for people if you want plastic use to end. But were talking about all humans. Maybe the hemp revolution is the answer to all plastic products. STOP BUYING PLASTIC, and spread the word about a lifestyle absent of all plastic. Fucking outlaw the manufacturing of it, start a grassroots movement march on the government for HEMP and a plastic tax a HUGE plastic TAX that is spent on plastic recovery. What if we took all our plastic to a huge field in AZ or NV to let it biodegrade in the sun. We could create alot of jobs on a massive plastic recovery operation and a new Hemp Industry . Hemp is coming, hemp and rubber are all we need. HUGE plastic tax to reinvest, will cause people to buy the metal or rubber container. READ BUCKMINSTER FULLER it will reorientate you to your natural childish self.
September 17, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I think we are far away from making any large change in the lifestyles of Americans, without any true environmental conservationists in either party. Gore and his movie want you to think you are helping by buying carbon credits, and using biofuels which are made from corn, which strip the land, and use enormous amounts of natural gas to supply the fertilizer. It’s a money making business and truly no one will change unless you hit them in the dollars in cents.
I think a big step would be to charge the American grocery shopper for using plastic bags. Many countries such as England are already doing this and some have outlawed the use of plastic bags altogether.
December 5, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Here in Australia, there has been a big push to convert consumers to bringing “green-friendly” shopping bags that can be used many times, replacing the flimsy plastic ones. There are several problems with this approach, namely:
a) the store sells the bags to the consumers, immediately creating a non-environmental interest for the store. They reduce their costs as well as getting free advertising – bad start.
b) consumers still need something to put in their rubbish bins, so rather than recycle the bags their groceries came in, they have no option but to buy bin liners – the store wins again.
The bottom line is that the energy used to create the reusable bags is *in excess* of what people would have used had they used the flimsy bags for rubbish. The “green solution” is anything but, yet there is a stigma associated with using flimsy plastic bags that is directly proportional to the smugness exhibited by the “green” shoppers.
If the stores really want a green solution, they’d go back to giving away the paper bags from years ago. I’d make do with them for rubbish bags, the plastic rush would be slowed, the landfill would be far better off and we’d put to use some of the recyclable paper that currently goes to waste. Downsides?
December 5, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I think the problem as described in the reply above is the idea that we need plastic bags to line our rubbish bins. We don’t, particularly since most rubbish bins are plastic and therefore easily rinsed out. As for the curbside cans, our district requires that garbage be bagged in large garbage bags. So even if you have a bunch of small waste bagged in grocery store bags, you still need to put it all in one big garbage bag. So I think the argument that people “need” the grocery bags to line their home bins is not a solid one. Not to mention that the cost of manufacturing paper bags (in terms of resources, energy, transport, etc) is substantial (as it is, admittedly, for any consumer product). My method (bring your own bags and don’t line home bins with plastic bags) at least eliminates one source of production (plastic grocery bags) and their waste. Even if the stores do sell reusable bags, there is a limit to how many any one customer needs, and they are reusable saving the use of bags in other areas of use.
December 6, 2009 at 3:21 pm
It’s easy to solve all of the world’s problems if you allow arguments that inconvenience people – many people could replace their car with public transport, for example. The fact is, the higher the inconvenience, the less traction any solution will get. There are gains that can be made without inconvenience and while they may be moderate, they’re achievable on a far wider scale. I would use paper bags, but I wouldn’t wash my rubbish bin every time I emptied it, particularly in a drought-stricken country like Australia where we have water restrictions in place.
Additionally, only a third of paper collected for recycling here ever gets used – the rest ends up in landfill. While there is a cost to producing them, brown paper bags can presumably be produced at a reasonably low environmental cost, particularly given that the raw material is free and bountiful.
I admire your approach (bring your own bags and don’t line home bins with plastic bags), but you’re never going to get widespread adoption. It’s not that people just haven thought of it, it’s that the cost exceeds their care factor. Sad, but true.
December 18, 2009 at 10:49 pm
And what happens to tons of plastic that is used in hospitals and clinics, where disposable supplies are the norm? I am a student nurse and I have not seen any recycling indications on any of the tubes, syringes, bags, and containers that they are teaching me about. The additional problem here is that this plastic is biohazard because of contamination with pathogens and cannot be put into regular recycling containers. So, does anyone here know what happens to this stuff?
December 19, 2009 at 10:33 am
Yes, hospital plastics use is a big problem. Disposability is definitely a plus when it comes to managing contamination, but not so good for the environment. Right now I believe the stuff is incinerated, which is awful b/c of the substances released in that process. In this case, I think someone is going to have to come up with a major technological revolution and find a replacement for hospital plastics that is somehow recyclable.