From the Washer to the Sea: Plastic Pollution

posted Oct. 19, 2011 By LESLIE KAUFMAN in the New York Times

 

Environmental Science and TechnologySome areas where researchers found significant concentrations of microplastic.

When most people think of plastic pollution in the sea, they tend to picture bottles washing up on beaches, say, or the vast garbage patch in the Pacific.

What few may realize is that waste water from washing machines is an important source of plastic pollution in oceans, according to a recent article in Environmental Science and Technology.

Over the last decade, scientists have become increasingly alarmed about a type of pollution that cannot be seen. Micrometer-size fragments of plastics like acrylic, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyamide and polyester have contaminated the surface waters of the northeast Atlantic as well as shoreline habitats in Britain, Singapore and India, the researchers write.

 

Environmental Science and Technology

The scientists said there was evidence that the microplastics are being eaten by animals, who store them in their tissues and cells for months with probably negative consequences for their health and that of the humans who eat marine creatures.

To discover the sources of the microplastics, a team of scientists led by Mark Anthony Browne, a biologist with University College in Dublin, took samples from shore environments on six continents.

Researchers found that the proportions of synthetic fibers in marine sediments were akin to those found in artificial textiles. Examining washing-machine waste water, they found that 1,900 fibers can rinse off a single garment during a wash cycle and that those fibers look just like the microplastic debris on shorelines.
As the human population increases, they say, the problem is likely grow.

The authors suggest that clothing and washing machine designers need to be aware of the problem and to seek ways to reduce the release of fibers into waste water.

4 Innovative plans to reduce plastic pollution in oceans

posted Nov. 16th on ecofriend.com by Garima Goel

Humans have been discarding waste into the water bodies for ages. Over the years, the plastic pollution in our oceans has become one of the major environmental problems. The marine debris is not only creating the unsightly beach litter, but it also poses a serious threat to the marine life and the coastal habitation. The major problem is due to the range of plastics that does not biodegrade. Let’s take a look at some of the innovative plans that could help reduce plastic pollution in oceans.

1. Recycled island

Recycled islandThis beautiful island is a research project proposed by Dutch architect Ramon Knoester

 

This beautiful island is a research project proposed by Dutch architect Ramon Knoester. The ‘recycled island’, as it is aptly called, is situated between Hawaii and San Francisco in the Pacific Ocean. The project is aimed to create a habitable area using the oceanic debris that includes the plastic waste, cleaning the oceans vividly. Moreover, by doing this the waste plastic will be converted from rubbish to a constructing material. The Hawaii sized recycled island won’t be depending on other countries for resources needed to survive, but will have its own food and energy resources, generating power from the sun and wind. The floating island is self sufficient, non polluting and in harmony with environment and will therefore not disturb the global ecology. The sustainable island will be developed with all sorts of modern lifestyle with mingled usage of environments. The idea is purely green and ambitious, but the obstacles like time span and the cost for giving the proposal an actual shape, cannot be ruled out.

2. Eco mobile robot

Eco mobile robotThe Eco mobile robot designed by Ejiuson Ueda

 

The Eco mobile robot, designed by Ejiuson Ueda, is an advanced system created to clear up the garbage from all the oceans of the world. These floating platforms aim to acquire an international group action to be performed in case of aquaculture and also to minimize the temperature increase of the oceans, which further renders to an increase in the water level. These floating buoys might look similar to oil rigs but work in quite a dissimilar way. The eco mobile robots consist of a sensor to canvas the quality of the water and the powerful pumps that suck up the plastic dump and toxins from within the deep regions below water. Clean and non toxic saline water is released back to the ocean. The dangerous waste materials are collected in a special container and dumped in a safe and suitable place. The Eco Mobile Robot is connected to the satellites all around the world and the site that needs to be treated immediately is monitored. The innovative system will help the marine life to get a cleaner environment for survival, making the oceans non toxic.

3. Plastic harvesting ship

Plastic harvesting ship 

Plastic waste contamination is one of the major issues today. Although the waste systems clear up the apparent plastic from the ocean surface, the nurdles, often called as mermaid tears, can be found on almost every shoreline. These nurdles that resemble fish eggs are consumed by other marine creatures, which are killed due to plastic ingestion. Kieran Jones, Azusa Murakami, Alexander Groves, a graduate team of Royal College of Art, UK has come up with ‘the Sea chair project’ that turns out to resolve the marine contamination trouble. These designers propose to convert an old fishing trawler into a fully functioning chair making factory where the plastic nurdles are collected and are then separated by their size. The plastic nurdles that are found floating every square mile of an ocean, is either leaked from factory storage or spilled during transit. These small granules of virgin materials will be collected and used to make plastic sea chairs.

4. Ocean´s plastic waste collecting ships

Ocean´s plastic waste collecting ships

 

The purpose of creating these unmanned ships is to collect the plastic litter in the North Pacific Ocean. These automated ships are powered by solar and wind energy, along with the bio fuels. The ship is navigated using GPS technology. Two sets of rotating, lightweight but firm paddle wheels are designed to collect the plastic waste. While the front paddles collect the large waste, the rear one collects the smaller granules. The debris collected by the maintenance ships can be recycled on the mainland.

What's a Nurdle?

Before listening to an interview on the Diane Rehm show with Captain Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and author of the new book "Plastic Ocean", I had no idea what a nurdle was and just how much they were contributing to the ocean's plastic pollution. Here's what I found...

From Wikipedia:

A handful of nurdles, spilled from a train in Pineville, Louisiana in the United States.

Plastic particles are an increasing cause of water pollution. The particles include nurdles, microbeads from cosmetics products and the breakdown products of plastic litter. Nurdles are pre-production plastic resin pellet typically under 5 mm (0.20 in) in diameter found outside of the typical plastics manufacturing stream. Pellets are an intermediate good used to produce plastic final products.^[1] "Mermaid's tears" is a term sometimes used to describe the pollution.^[2]

Approximately 60 billion pounds (27 million tonnes) of nurdles are manufactured annually in the United States.^[3] One pound of pelletized HDPE contains approximately 25,000 nurdles (approximately 20 mg per nurdle).

Environmental impact

Nurdles are a major contributor to marine debris. During a three month study of Orange County beaches researchers found them to be the most common beach contaminant.^[4] Nurdles comprised roughly 98% of the beach debris collected in a 2001 Orange County study.^[5] Waterborne nurdles may either be a raw material of plastic production, or from larger chunks of plastic that have been ground down.^[6] A major source of plastic may be the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a growing collection of marine debris known for its high concentrations of plastic litter.

Nurdles that escape from the plastic production process into waterways or oceans have become a significant source of ocean and beach pollution. Marine life is severely threatened by these small pieces of plastic: the creatures that make up the base of the marine food chain, such as krill, are prematurely dying by choking on nurdles.^[7] Nurdles have frequently been found in the digestive tracts of various marine creatures, causing physiological damage by leaching plasticizers such as phthalates. Nurdles can carry two types of micropollutants in the marine environment: native plastic additives and hydrophobic pollutants absorbed from seawater.^{[citation needed]}

Concentrations of PCBs and DDE on nurdles collected from Japanese coastal waters were found to be up to 1 million times higher than the levels detected in surrounding seawater.^[8]
Plastic microbeads used in cosmetic exfoliating products are also found in water.


Recent article about nurdles posted 10-31-11 in Infrastructure Solutions.

Officials Work to Eliminate Plastic Pellets from San Francisco Bay

 written by jzagoudis

Federal, state and municipal authorities have launched a first-in-the-nation enforcement effort to eliminate the discharge of pre-production plastic into the waters of California. The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Water Board), State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have joined forces on the program.

The collaborative enforcement effort is being done under the authority of the State Water Board’s Statewide Industrial Storm Water Permit. The first environmental cleanup ordered as a result of this joint effort is underway in San Leandro.

“This collaborative effort is part of a new front in the battle against plastic debris and trash,” said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the SF Bay Regional Water Board. “Storm water runoff is becoming a large part of our enforcement focus, because it affects water quality in every part of our region, and the state.”
Pre-production plastic pellets are often called “nurdles”.

They are very small and contribute to the growing problem of plastic debris in inland and coastal waters of California and the United States. Nurdles are often discharged while being unloaded from railcars at plastic manufacturing facilities, or being handled at those operations. They then wash into storm drains and out to open water with storm runoff.

Fish, birds and other marine life eat spilled nurdles and other small pieces of plastic. The plastic does not break down quickly, displaces food in the animals’ stomach, and can lead to starvation.

"Nurdles may sound harmless, but these small plastic pellets can do great damage to water bodies like San Francisco Bay," said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA's regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest. "To protect our water resources, EPA is partnering with the state to require manufacturers to take steps to prevent pellet spills." 



Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro is the first cleanup site because of the collaborative effort between state and federal environmental agencies. Surprise inspections at four plastic manufacturers resulted in the discovery of nurdles discharges from those facilities, some of which ended up in Oyster Bay. 



The cleanup area includes habitat for both the endangered California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse. The contracted cleanup crew will therefore do its work during the lunar high tide, when the animals will have moved to higher ground and the plastic debris will float to the surface.

Tons of L.A. River trash to be captured before hitting the sea

Environmental news from California and beyond

published  in the L.A. Times

November 1, 2011 |  4:57 pm

 

Tons of trash normally swept to the ocean by the Los Angeles River should be captured by thousands of trash screens that have been installed beneath nearly every storm drain in the lower reaches of the river.

The project is believed to be the largest debris-capturing effort in the nation and marks the most aggressive attack yet on river trash in the Los Angeles region.

The project spans 16 cities and is expected to keep 840,000 pounds of debris -- the equivalent of about 450 Volkswagen Beetles -- from reaching the ocean each year, according to the Gateway Authority, a coalition of cities and public water agencies in southeastern L.A. County.

The biggest winner from the project is Long Beach, where workers routinely have to scoop floating islands of plastic bottles, grocery bags and other debris flowing from dozens of communities upstream before it litters the city’s coastline.

In August 2010, crews began installing the stainless-steel, full-capture trash devices inside nearly 12,000 catch basins.

The simple mesh contraptions sit just below the drains where water from city streets flows into the storm-water system and can catch debris as small as a cigarette butt.

Another 5,400 drains in the most-littered areas also were outfitted with street-level retractable screens as a second layer of defense.

For complete story, see LANow.

Tsunami Debris Field Floating to West Coast Landfall

by Michael van Baker on November 4, 2011 on The Sun Break.com

110313-N-5503T-176 PACIFIC OCEAN (March 13, 2011) 

An aerial view of debris from an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami 

that struck northern Japan. The debris was inspected by a helicopter-based

search and rescue team from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76).

Ships and aircraft from the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group are searching 

for survivors in the coastal waters near Sendai, Japan. 

(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Alexander Tidd/Released)

Something Sendai this way floats, and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) doesn’t want to wait until its projected 2014 arrival on West Coast shores to get ready for it. (Hawaii should see tsunami debris in 2013.)

After the 9.0 earthquake hit Japan on March 11 of this year, the ensuing tsunami swept more than 200,000 houses (not to mention boats and cars) out to sea, where oceanographers predict they will make a slow journey to the West Coast, stopping off first at the Hawaiian Islands.

110313-N-SB672-368 PACIFIC OCEAN (March 13, 2011) An aerial view of debris from an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck northern Japan. The debris was inspected by a helicopter-based search and rescue team from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). Ships and aircraft from the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group are searching for survivors in the coastal waters near Sendai, Japan. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dylan McCord/Released)

110313-N-SB672-592 PACIFIC OCEAN (March 13, 2011) An aerial view of debris from an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck northern Japan. The debris was inspected by a helicopter-based search and rescue team from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). Ships and aircraft from the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group are searching for survivors in the coastal waters near Sendai, Japan. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dylan McCord/Released)

110314-N-3997W-062 PACIFIC OCEAN (March 14, 2011) Debris float in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck the nation on March 11. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Steve White/Released)

The massive sea-going debris field is said to measure 350 miles wide by 1,300 miles long, and to travel at ten miles per day. Eventually, some part of it will reach U.S. shores, and Cantwell would like to know how we are going to deal with it before then.

This week, Cantwell “introduced and secured passage of an amendment to address the threat approaching tsunami debris poses to industries up and down Washington’s coastline,” says the press release. The Senate Commerce Committee approved the amendment at a markup hearing, along with Cantwell’s Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act. (Also this week, Cantwell and Alaskan senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich asked Senate Appropriations for funding to test for a deadly-to-salmon virus, rather than depending on Canadian test results alone.)

“We in the Washington economy depend on our waterways for a great deal of our commerce,” argued Cantwell. “We have everybody from workers at restaurants to tourist visitors that are all going to be impacted by this. We can’t wait until all of this tsunami trash washes ashore. We need to have an aggressive plan on how we’re going to deal with it.”

NOAA satellites tracked the debris field for about the first month after the tsunami, but as it dispersed in the water, they began to lose sight of it. However, the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet has caught up to a portion of it, with the largest agglomeration of debris reaching 69 miles in length.

No one really knows how much will reach the West Coast; a good deal of it is likely to join other ocean garbage, in the much larger debris field known as the”North Pacific Garbage Patch“–it’s a little sickening to note that as immense as the tsunami debris is, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to what ends up there because we have thrown it into the ocean. “Patch” is actually inaccurate two ways. It’s more of a plastic-particle soup, and so you can describe it as having various sizes depending upon what concentration of plastic particles you are comfortable with: If you are comfortable with not much at all, it’s about the size of Texas.

Plastics in Oceans: More Damaging Than Climate Change

published in Voice of America.com November 03, 2011

Zulima Palacio | Washington 

Check out the really great video that goes along with this story featuring Capt. Charles Moore =>

The United Nations estimates that each one of us uses nearly 140 kilograms of plastic each year. At least 6.4 million metric tons of that plastic has ended up in the oceans. Environmental activist Captain Charles Moore has found that in some areas, plastic outweighs zooplankton - the ocean's food base - and is entering the food chain.  Our reporter talked to Capt. Moore about his efforts to document ocean pollution.

Once upon a time, the oceans of our planet were beautifully clean.  Not any more.  Captain Charles Moore calls this 'the age of plastic.'

“Between 250 and 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year," said Capt. Moore. "To get that into terms you can understand, every two years we make enough plastic to be the equivalent of the weight of the 7 billion people on earth.”

In his new book, Plastic Ocean, Moore says less than five percent of all plastic is recycled and nearly three percent of world production is dumped into the ocean. That debris kills millions of sea creatures every year.

“We know over 100,000 albatross chicks are dying every year with their stomachs full of plastic; we have evidence that about 100,000 marine mammals die every year being tangled in plastic," he said.

Moore has spent his life on the ocean, and witnessed its transformation. In his book he tells about his 1997 voyage, discovering tons of plastic, floating in an endless spiral. In what is now known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, plastic outweighs plankton, by a factor of six to one. 

Moore created the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, and began to collect samples from the world's oceans.  He says plastic waste flows into oceans from rivers, beaches... and ships.

“Not only all the navies of the world but all the merchant vessels of the world, until the 1980s were routinely dumping all their garbage at sea," said Moore.

Moore says today ships of all flags and functions continue to ignore international agreements, dumping their trash into the ocean - synthetic chemicals, pesticides, nuclear waste, nerve and mustard agents.

He says he is upset by the destruction of his own habitat.

”Whether I am surfing, whether I am sailing, whether I am swimming, I am touching, seeing, running into persistent waste that will be there longer than any of our children, any of our grand children.  It will be there for centuries, it doesn’t go away, we are adding to it," said Capt. Moore.

The pollution expert carries with him a bag of sand, collected from a beach in Hawaii. He had it analyzed.  It is more than 90 percent plastic.

Captain Moore has worked with environmental filmmaker Bill Macdonald to document the plastic takeover of the oceans.  Macdonald provided most of the video in this story, including this octopus living in a plastic shower head

“There is not a lot of beauty in a river full of trash, I see herons that are frightened by Styrofoam floating around them," said Macdonald. "I see sea gulls trying to eat rubber gloves and all sorts of animals foraging around in what used to be natural debris is now contaminated with synthetics.”

And so the campaign continues. In Plastic Ocean, Captain Charles Moore calls plastic pollution more damaging than climate change, and issues a call to protect the oceans - where life began - for future generations.

Related Items:

• Diane Rehm interviews Charles Moore

• Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans 
• 
• Algalita Marine Research Foundation

Making a Plastic Bottle into a Light Source!

The Plastic Bag Wars

posted in the Rolling Stone July 25th by Kitt Doucette

The world consumes 1 million plastic shopping bags every minute - and the industry is fighting hard to keep it that way

Comment 27

Sea of Waste: A massive landfill in Shanghai overflows with single-use bags.

Alessandro Digaetano/Polaris

 

–American shoppers use an estimated 102 billion plastic shopping bags each year — more than 500 per consumer. Named by Guinness World Records as "the most ubiquitous consumer item in the world," the ultrathin bags have become a leading source of pollution worldwide. They litter the world's beaches, clog city sewers, contribute to floods in developing countries and fuel a massive flow of plastic waste that is killing wildlife from sea turtles to camels. "The plastic bag has come to represent the collective sins of the age of plastic," says Susan Freinkel, author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story.

Many countries have instituted tough new rules to curb the use of plastic bags. Some, like China, have issued outright bans. Others, including many European nations, have imposed stiff fees to pay for the mess created by all the plastic trash. "There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere," the United Nations Environment Programme recently declared. But in the United States, the plastics industry has launched a concerted campaign to derail and defeat anti-bag measures nationwide.

The effort includes well-placed political donations, intensive lobbying at both the state and national levels, and a pervasive PR campaign designed to shift the focus away from plastic bags to the supposed threat of canvas and paper bags — including misleading claims that reusable bags "could" contain bacteria and unsafe levels of lead.

"It's just like Big Tobacco," says Amy Westervelt, founding editor of Plastic Free Times, a website sponsored by the nonprofit Plastic Pollution Coalition. "They're using the same underhanded tactics — and even using the same lobbying firm that Philip Morris started and bankrolled in the Nineties. Their sole aim is to maintain the status quo and protect their profits. They will stop at nothing to suppress or discredit science that clearly links chemicals in plastic to negative impacts on human, animal and environmental health."

Made from high-density polyethylene — a byproduct of oil and natural gas — the single-use shopping bag was invented by a Swedish company in the mid-Sixties and brought to the U.S. by ExxonMobil. Introduced to grocery-store checkout lines in 1976, the "T-shirt bag," as it is known in the industry, can now be found literally every­where on the planet, from the bottom of the ocean to the peaks of Mount Everest. The bags are durable, waterproof, cheaper to produce than paper bags and able to carry 1,000 times their own weight.

They are also a nightmare to recycle: The flimsy bags, many thinner than a strand of human hair, gum up the sorting equipment used by most recycling facilities. "Plastic bags and other thin-film plastic is the number-one enemy of the equipment we use," says Jeff Murray, vice president of Far West Fibers, the largest recycler in Oregon. "More than 300,000 plastic bags are removed from our machines every day — and since most of the removal has to be done by hand, that means more than 25 percent of our labor costs involves plastic-bag removal."

The initial resistance to plastic bags came from manufacturers of paper bags, who saw them as a major threat. Environmentalists took up the cause of eliminating single-use bags in the 1990s, but they made little headway until a sailor and researcher named Charles Moore passed through the North Pacific Gyre in 1997 and drew international attention to the vast flood of plastic trash polluting the world's oceans.

The first nationwide ban was enacted a decade ago in Bangladesh, after plastic bags clogged storm drains and caused massive floods. China issued a top-down order banning plastic bags in June 2008 — just two months before it hosted the Olympics — in an effort to reduce the amount of "white pollution." Even though the ban is openly flouted by street vendors, it has still made a tremendous impact: In the first year alone, China decreased its use of plastic bags by two-thirds, eliminating some 40 billion bags — a move that saved the energy equivalent of 11.7 million barrels of oil.

The Indian city of Delhi boasts some of the world's most aggressive legislation on plastic bags, not only fining individual users and businesses that hand out the bags but also threatening jail time for offenders and plastic-bag manufacturers. This year, Italy became the first European country to issue a nationwide ban on plastic bags, while Ireland places a 15-cent fee on every bag — a move that reduced usage by 90 percent in the first three months. All told, 25 percent of the world's population now lives in areas with bans or fees on plastic bags.

While other nations have effectively cracked down on plastic bags, the U.S. government has left local communities to fend for themselves. In 2007, San Francisco became the first American city to ban plastic bags, and Washington, D.C., has imposed a five-cent fee per bag, cutting monthly use from 22.5 million bags to barely 3 million.

Unlike attacks on plastic products such as Styrofoam, which were orchestrated by well-known environmental groups, the fight against plastic bags has been led for the most part by community organizers and concerned citizens who put pressure on their local businesses and governments. In recent years, a growing number of U.S. communities — from 30 townships in Alaska to the Outer Banks of North Carolina — have introduced some 200 anti-bag measures.

The widespread mobilization against plastic bags has sparked a counterattack by the plastics industry, which was slow to react to the rising tide of negative sentiment among consumers. Leading the charge to protect the plastic bag is the American Chemistry Council, an industry group whose members include petro-chemical giants like ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical.

With 125 employees and more than $120 million in annual revenues, the ACC and its members are using their deep pockets and extensive political connections to overturn bans on plastic bags, cast doubt on legitimate scientific studies and even file lawsuits against anti-bag activists.

The council, which spent $8 million on lobbying alone last year, has also put together a front group called the Progressive Bag Affiliates, made up of top bag manufacturers like Hilex Poly, Superbag and Unistar Plastics.

Polar set to fight bottle bill expansion

posted August 20, 2011 in the TELEGRAM & GAZETTE By John J. Monahan

Polar set to fight bottle bill expansion

BOTTLER FEARS INCREASED COSTS

With the advent of curbside recycling in many communities and other public recycling programs for home waste available in almost every city and town, the deposit return system has become an inefficient collection system by comparison, Mr. Crowley said.

WORCESTER —  Polar Beverages, the local bottling company that prides itself on environmental responsibility, has found itself lined up against environmental groups from across the state as those groups try to bring the long-running debate over an expanded bottle bill into the voting booth.

The nation's largest independent soft drink bottler, Polar, which produces up to 80 million cases of soda, seltzer, juice, teas and other drinks each year, has joined up with a large group of bottlers, retailers, labor unions and other businesses to stop the effort.

At stake is the inclusion of water and juice bottles in the state's 5-cent return deposit program, a proposal that for more than a decade has been unable to draw majority support in the Legislature but has been revived year after year for reconsideration.

Critics point out the water bottles, juice bottles and other containers that would be added represent a minuscule percentage of the state's solid waste stream, as little as 0.12 percent. But where industry sees a waste stream molehill, environmentalists, adding up the 1 billion water and juice bottles used in the state each year, see a mountain of recycling potential.

Advocates, who include almost every environmental group in the state, more than 50 lawmakers and the governor, say the expanded deposit system will increase bottle recycling rates, provide millions in new revenue for local recycling and trash reduction programs, and reduce litter in parks, sport fields, streets and sidewalks around the state.

Earlier this month, groups backing the bottle bill expansion filed a petition with the attorney general's office to put the issue on the 2012 ballot. They would rather see the Legislature adopt the bill by May, but unless that body acts, the groups intend to press on with the ballot question, assuming they can get 69,811 signatures for the measure by mid-November.

Among the 16 people signing the initial petition notice was Fitchburg Mayor Lisa A. Wong, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and former Gov. Michael Dukakis.

To Polar Executive Vice President Christopher J. Crowley, the proposal, which opponents say will increase costs for bottling companies and boost the price of soft drinks, would compound an already inefficient recycling system.

Back when there was no recycling in the state, he said, the current bottle bill, adopted 30 years ago after a fierce battle in the Legislature, made more sense. “It did a decent job, because there was no recycling then,” he said. “It's a good anti-litter bill, but it's not efficient.”

With the advent of curbside recycling in many communities and other public recycling programs for home waste available in almost every city and town, he said, the deposit return system has become an inefficient collection system by comparison. “It's been a pain in the neck and an expense all along,” Mr. Crowley said of the system, as he warned that expansion would increase costs and inefficiencies that would add to consumer drink prices.

“It costs about $50 a ton to pick up curbside,” he said, compared to the more than $500 per ton being spent collecting and processing bottles and cans. Distributors like Polar are required to cover the cost, which includes paying retailers a handling fee of 2.25 cents per container. Mr. Crowley said most of the Polar bottles end up being recycled in Michigan for materials used in making new bottles.

“There is a tremendous amount of energy involved in picking up all those empties,” he said. “It (the bottle bill expansion) would raise the price of all soft drinks and water.”

Under the bill, the handling fee paid to retailers would go up 1 cent to 3.25 cents per container.

Kenneth L. Kimmell, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, is citing a recent state survey that disputes the cost and efficiency criticisms.

That survey, he said, indicated that the expansion would not require retailers to buy more machines for returns, as the machines are used only at 10 percent capacity.

Moreover, he said, expanding the bottle bill would cut down on water bottle litter, save cities and towns up to $7 million in reduced trash collection costs and increase recycling of water and juice containers, many of which are now dumped in trash for disposal.

Mr. Kimmell said the survey found no discernable higher costs for beverages in New York, Connecticut and Maine, states that include juice and water bottles in their deposit programs. He estimated the expanded bottle bill would capture about 750 million of the 1 billion containers that otherwise may end up in landfills and incinerators in the state each year.

In addition, annual unclaimed deposit money that reverts to the state would increase from $10 million to $15 million, which under the bill would be used on trash reduction and recycling programs.

Mr. Crowley said if the Legislature fails to act, and the environmental groups put the measure before voters, the coalition of opponents is ready to fight it.

“We almost have to defend ourselves because it is going to cost us so much more. From a cost-benefit analysis, it is worth fighting against,” he said.

He said he is hoping for better choices to meet the need for increased recycling of containers that people throwaway.

“Hopefully we can come up with real solutions to the problems of solid waste, not just window dressing,” Mr. Crowley said.

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Beach report: Human health linked to oceans

posted August 11, 2011 By Gail Johnson, on Straight.com

Ocean Gybe’s Ryan Robertson, Hugh Patterson, and Bryson Robertson (from left) document waves of seaborne garbage.

Having grown up in the seaside town of Gonubie, South Africa, brothers Bryson and Ryan Robertson were self-described beach bums by the time they hit grade school. So after their family moved to North Vancouver when the boys were in their teens, the avid surfers weren’t about to settle for just any nearby waves.

Tofino-area beaches were fine, but on weekends and summer holidays, the two would travel by boat and hike for hours in knee-deep mud up and down Vancouver Island’s west coast in search of hard-core crests. What they ended up finding on so many remote beaches astounded them.

“Every single beach, no matter how far away it was, no matter how perfect or desolate, had garbage on it,” Bryson, 29, tells the Georgia Straight by phone. “In 2004, we started to explore the north end of Vancouver Island. Every beach was covered in trash. It was incredible. About 50 to 70 percent of it was from the opposite side of the Pacific: Japan, China, the Philippines.

“It struck me. I thought: ”˜We’ve got all of their garbage; I wonder where our garbage is going and whose life I’m impacting that I’m not even aware of.” I’d be very surprised if someone could find a beach anywhere in the world that does not have plastic on it.”


Along with pal Hugh Patterson, a native Vancouverite, the Robertson brothers were determined to combine their passion for the ocean and quest for adventure with their desire to learn more about the state of the planet’s beaches. The three decided to sail the world and document what they discovered on coastlines along the way. They called their three-year expedition Ocean Gybe.

On Nicaragua’s La Flor Beach—a nature reserve protected for turtle rehabilitation—the team found 354 pop bottles, 162 plastic bags, 32 oil containers, and one car battery, among other debris.

In Barbados, at Long Pond Beach, the three found, among other items, 15 pieces of Styrofoam, 85 bottle caps, 37 plastic bottles, 59 pieces of fishing line and rope, and a toilet seat.

Besides Styrofoam, fishing nets, bottle caps, and rubber sandals, the three found nearly 100 pieces of assorted plastic on Indonesia’s Savu Island beaches. The list goes on.

Although Patterson and the Robertsons completed their circumnavigation of the globe last fall, they’ve since gone on to document the pollution at beaches closer to home, such as those on the Hesquiat Peninsula, north of Tofino. (There, they came across everything from Japanese fishing floats to various pieces of plastic and metal to a backpack.)

Their mission is ongoing: to promote the protection and conservation of the world’s oceans. They do this mainly by sharing their story and the results of their “garbage studies” with school and youth groups.

“We want people to understand their interconnectedness with the world’s oceans,” Bryson says. “The most obvious impact is garbage on our beaches. But all that garbage in the ocean releases endocrine disruptors, PCBs, and other toxins that enter our food chain.” We’re polluting, and we’re also the ones getting polluted.”


In recent years more research has focused on the link between ocean health and human health. “Alarms have been sounding about the health of the oceans for some time, but most of the discussion has been limited to marine organisms themselves, as if people were somehow divorced from the ecosystems upon which they depend for their health and well-being,” writes Nancy Knowlton, director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, in an editorial in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. “Sadly, it is no longer possible to ignore the fact that corals and fishes are not the only things suffering from our poor stewardship of the sea around us.”

According to SeaWeb, an international nonprofit organization that advocates for sustainable seafood and ocean conservation, land-based pollutants such as plastics and electronics account for 80 percent of all marine debris. Then there are the countless pounds of pharmaceuticals that are flushed down the drain every year, not to mention oil spills.

But back to that plastic. If it doesn’t wash up on some distant shore, ocean currents carry it to one of the globe’s “gyres”, slowly rotating monster whirlpools where trash accumulates.

The North Pacific Gyre is about twice the size of the United States. Plastic debris will remain there for decades or more, being pushed in a gentle, clockwise spiral toward the centre, according to 5 Gyres, a global organization dedicated to researching and eliminating plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.

“It’s basically a huge, floating garbage patch,” Bryson says of the North Pacific Gyre.

There are simple steps people can take to help minimize the amount of plastic that ends up in the sea and that ultimately threatens environmental and human health, Bryson says.


For starters, there’s the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, which takes place September 17 to 25 at various locations, including lake, inlet, and ocean beaches. (Volunteers can sign up at Shorelinecleanup.ca.) Last year, the most common types of litter picked up included cigarettes, food wrappers, plastic bags, and beverage bottles.

Then there’s changing our mindset.

“We live in a disposable culture,” Bryson says. “We need to become more aware of how we consume and look at things like plastics, water bottles, packaging.” A single-use plastic water bottle is used on average for about 12 minutes. But we don’t even know how long it lasts in the environment. We can learn how to consume more carefully. It is possible for us to change this; we can do it.

“Dozens of cities have banned plastic bags,” he adds. “Vancouver hasn’t yet, but I hope it’s coming.”

Documenting the Decline

posted August 10th, 2011 in the Juneau Empire By DIXIE BELCHER

My turn: Plastic shopping bags endanger our planet’s future

Six years ago I was invited to attend an international environmental conference in Anchorage — I was not an environmental activist and knew almost nothing about the state of the world’s oceans.

Scientists there discussed acidification — oceans absorbing millions of tons of carbon dioxide that, when mixed with water becomes carbonic acid that destroys reefs and prevents tiny shellfish at the bottom of the food chain — including the salmon food chain — from making shells. They talked about “dead zones” — oxygen — free areas often found at urban river deltas where nothing can live — spanning hundreds and sometimes thousands of square miles.

They described hundreds of thousands of tons of poisonous chemicals and garbage continuously dumped into the ocean. And they talked about the impact of plastics — including layers of plastic bags so thick that scientists sometimes couldn’t reach the ocean floor with their instruments — and birds, sea mammals and fish ingesting plastics that clog their digestive systems — their bodies biodegrading but the plastic remaining intact to be ingested by other animals. Plastic does not biodegrade. It is here forever.

They described their work as “documenting the decline.” If the degradation continued, they estimated 2050 as the ocean’s probable death.

In June of this year, international scientists met and were alarmed at the “exponential” increase of this decline. In a report to the United Nations, Alex Rogers, scientific director of the International Program on the State of the Ocean stated “The findings are shocking. ... We now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation,” (Reuters–June 21, 2011.)

Their report to the U.N. was in newspapers across the nation, including the Anchorage Daily News. It was not mentioned in the Juneau Empire.

As a direct result of this conference, Turning the Tides was formed to help raise awareness about the state of the ocean and what ordinary people can do. We believed that, once aware, most people would want to know what they could do to help reverse the ocean’s degradation. We picked plastic bags because it is a problem that everyone can easily help to solve. The world uses about one million a minute and — figuring 400 bags a family, Juneau’s 13,000 families use over five million a year. Because of their horrible impact on ocean life, they have been taxed in cities and countries around the world and banned in over a quarter of the planet.
Taxes on plastic bags are shown to lower use by an average of 95 percent.

We are not suggesting paper over plastic. We believe that Juneauites, like people everywhere, can form the habit of using reusable bags. Until recently, most of the world didn’t have a “paper or plastic” option. People carried their own.

Humans cannot live without the oceans. In addition to supplying food and medicine, they provide at least half of the world’s oxygen.

Our future quality of life does not bode well if we can’t bring ourselves to contemplate changing even one small habit.

This is not an effort to increase Juneau’s Assembly coffers but a small attempt to add to efforts around the world to bequeath a livable planet to our children and grandchildren.

• Belcher is a Juneau resident and the founder of Turning the Tides.

Bag It

posted on KPBS.org Airs Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 9 p.m. on KPBS TV

 Is your life too plastic? In this touching and often flat-out-funny film, we follow "everyman" Jeb Berrier as he embarks on a global tour to unravel the complexities of our plastic world.

Credit: Courtesy of Reel Thing Productions

Above: Title graphic for "Bag It"

August 8, 2011

Americans use 60,000 plastic bags every five minutes, disposable bags that they throw away without much thought. But where is “away?” Where do the bags and other plastics end up, and at what cost to the environment, marine life and human health?

"Bag It" follows “everyman” Jeb Berrier as he navigates our plastic world. Jeb is not a radical environmentalist, but an average American who decides to take a closer look at our cultural love affair with plastics. Jeb’s journey in this documentary film starts with simple questions: Are plastic bags really necessary? What are plastic bags made from? What happens to plastic bags after they are discarded? What he learns quickly grows far beyond plastic bags.

Enlarge this image

Credit: Courtesy of Suzan Beraza

Above: A plastic bag stuck in a tree by the ocean as featured in "Bag It."

What he discovers is shocking:
• The average American uses about 500 plastic bags each year, for an average of 12 minutes before they are discarded.

• Two million plastic bottles are consumed in the U.S. every five minutes, less then 25% are recycled.

• The average American contributes 800 pounds of packaging waste to landfills per year.

• 14 million pounds of trash end up in the ocean each year.

• The floating “island” of plastic and other debris swirling around in the North Pacific Gyre is more than twice the size of Texas.

• Plastic debris resembles plankton—fish food—and there is 40 times more plastic than plankton in some parts of the ocean. In this way plastic enters our food chain.

• It is estimated that 100,000 marine mammals and sea birds die each year from becoming entangled in or ingesting plastic debris.

• Plastic bags are made of fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas, which are non-renewable resources.

• The U.S. was once the largest exporter of oil in the world. Now, it is the largest importer.

• Ireland reduced its plastic bag use by 90% after instituting a fee on single-use disposable plastic bags.

• China banned “ultra thin” plastic bags in 2008. They reduced their use by 40 billion bags in the first year.

“A powerful and deceptively simple movie that is sure to change the way you look at everday objects. I didn’t expect a movie about plastic bags to change my life in such a deep and profound way. Gripping, funny, intelligent and sure to change your life.” -Louie Psihoyos, Director of "The Cove"

"Bag It" is on Facebook. Visit the "Bag It" blog for more information and resources.

When Jeb finds out he and his partner are expecting a child, his plastic odyssey becomes a truly personal one. How can they protect their baby from plastic’s pervasive health effects? Jeb looks beyond plastic bags and discovers that virtually everything in modern society – from baby bottles, to sports equipment, to dental sealants, to personal care products – is made with plastic or contains potentially harmful chemical additives used in the plastic-making process.

Two of the most common of these additives, “endocrine disruptors” Bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates, show links to cancer, diabetes, autism, attention deficit disorder, obesity, infertility and even smaller penis size.

As adults, we make all kinds of choices of convenience: single-serve bottles, small units of food, household items, and bath and beauty products. These products are both made with and come packaged in plastic. As a consequence of our modern day culture, we have become addicted to plastics, and they have quietly in- filtrated every aspect of our lives. Even our children (especially during in utero development) have unwittingly and alarmingly become our modern day lab rats.

"Bag It" makes it clear that it is time for a paradigm shift. Join Jeb as he meets with people who fought the American Chemistry Council lobby that spent more than a million dollars fighting the Seattle bag fee; as he interviews a man sailing the Pacific in a boat made of plastic to raise awareness about our ocean’s health; as he gets tested to determine the levels of chemicals in his own body; and as he welcomes his baby into the world, a world he hopes we can leave with a little less plastic and in a little better shape for the next generation.

Trailer: Bag It

Bag It Intro from Suzan Beraza on Vimeo.

Alliance for a Living Ocean installs first of three 'hydration stations' in Long Beach Township

published August 5th, 2011 in pressofAtlanticCity.com

By Donna Weaver, Staff Writer


Through an anonymous donation, the Alliance for a Living Ocean will be able to fund tankless water coolers, called hydration stations, across Long Beach Island.

The yearlong project came to fruition last week when the first of the organization's three stations was installed at the 68th Street beach entrance in the Brant Beach section of Long Beach Township.

The public can use the hydration stations to fill their reusable water bottles with cold, filtered, remineralized municipal water.

Kristin Stahler, executive director of the alliance, said in a news release Wednesday that the stations will help promote the use of reusable water bottles and reduce the need for plastic bottles.

"Plastic can be extremely detrimental to our environment and, when not recycled, it often ends up in the ocean. There it breaks into billions of pieces that look like food to marine life. Tens of thousands of creatures die every year from ingesting plastics," Stahler said.

The alliance says that by refilling one reusable bottle, 167 single-use bottles are stopped from entering the environment.

Although problems with discarded plastic originate on land as litter, they eventually end up in the water, Stahler said.

The alliance slogan that accompanies the hydration stations is "Put Water in Your Bottle, not Your Bottle in the Water."

Angela Andersen, Long Beach Township's recycling coordinator, said plastic litter is a problem on the township's beaches and in local waterways, but through projects such as this one, reusing water bottles will combat the problem.

Two more hydration stations will be installed, at Bayview Park in Brant Beach and in the parking lot of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in the Holgate section of the township.

Representatives from the alliance and Long Beach Township said they are planning to present the concept of hydration stations to the remaining five municipalities on Long Beach Island.

Contact Donna Weaver:
609-226-9198
DWeaver@pressofac.com

Learn more
For more on Alliance for a Living Ocean, visit www.livingocean.org or email alolbi@verizon.net

Disturbing drift on a duck trail

published July 30th by Judith Ireland in the Canberra Times

Dangerous: Little ducks like this one look super cute, but they can be ingested by marine animals - and then, possibly, by all of us. 

 

In January 1992 in a part of the North Pacific Ocean known as the Graveyard of the Pacific, a Greek-owned, Taiwanese-operated ship hit rough weather. Exactly how rough is not known. But what we do know is that the wind and waves were wild enough to free two columns of containers from the decks of the Ever Laurel and send them crashing into the ocean below.

Among the liberated cargo were 28,800 Chinese-made plastic bath toys, destined for the United States: 7200 red beavers, 7200 green frogs, 7200 blue turtles and 7200 yellow ducks.

No one was supposed to know, but 10 months later, Alaskan beachcombers discovered several dozen of the plastic toys washed up along Chichagof Island. Then, in 1993, a local journalist placed a few phone calls put two and 28,800 together.

As New York author Donovan Hohn writes in his new book, Moby-Duck, this is where the story of the toys should have ended. The case was closed. ''But then something else unexpected happened. The story kept going.''

The ducks kept showing up on north American beaches and people (mostly beachcombers) kept finding them. Like the mysterious travelling ducks, the story also travelled through the pages and airwaves of the world's media.

They leapt into popular culture as children's author Eric Carle published a book Ten Little Rubber Ducks about toy ducks who go missing at sea and the ducks (by now the toys had morphed into one creature) were used in a high-profile advertising campaign for a mobile phone.

Hohn then a high school teacher first heard of the ducks in 2005, when one of his students wrote an essay about their supposed journey as far as the Arctic. Also a writer in his spare time, Hohn wondered what had happened to the toys. What was their journey like? Where were they now?

As soon as he started thinking about the runaway ducks, he realised how ubiquitous toy ducks are in modern culture. They adorn people's bathrooms and work cubicles. And you can't move in a children's ware shop without seeing them on pyjamas, clothing, towels and toys.

''The more I thought about its golden, graven image, the more it seemed to me a kind of animistic god but of what?'' he writes.

Initially, Hohn thought he'd interview a few oceanographers and beachcombers and just write a feature for a magazine. But after he received a map from a Seattle oceanographer, outlining the likely route the ducks had taken, Hohn realised he might have enough for a book. ''That map seemed to me almost like a kind of trail,'' Hohn recalls.

His magazine article turned into a five-year odyssey, which saw him quit his job and leave his pregnant wife (and what then turned into his young family) for weeks at a time, while he chased the ducks around the northern hemisphere.

He talked to beachcombers who collected the ducks and environmentalists who went on crazy coastal clean-up missions. He interviewed oceanographers about the power and whimsy of currents and Chinese manufacturers about cheap, soulless plastic toy production.

The author also spent hours reading textbooks and cornering scientists for ad-hoc tutorials. ''I feel like I completed a degree in oceanography even if I don't have a piece of paper to prove it,'' he says.

Hohn was joyously able to find a duck in the Alaskan wilds, but sadly, didn't find any duck evidence in the Arctic. But as he tracked the toys from their beginnings in a Chinese factory in Dongguan to their possible end point somewhere in the Canadian Arctic, Moby-Duck became as much a story of environmental degradation and plastic waste, as childhood fantasy.

Even though it is illegal in most of the developed world, dumping rubbish in the sea is still a widespread practice in parts of the developing world, he says. And while hard figures don't exist (blame the secrecy of the shipping industry) Hohn says that cargo falls off the back of ships ''all the time''.

The little ducks look super cute, but at a time when we know plastic pollutes our oceans, is ingested by marine animals and then possibly by us, Hohn reasons, they should be handled with care.

Off the coast of Hawaii, the author travelled with renowned oceanographer Charles Moore, who discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 1997 a gyre (system of rotating currents) of marine rubbish in the North Pacific Ocean, spread out across millions of kilometres. While the extent of the Garbage Patch is contested, Hohn writes, ''on one thing scientists, plastics executives, and environmentalists agree: the amount of plastic in the ocean is increasing.''

As Susan Freinkel notes in her recent book Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, the Garbage Patch is one of at least five gyres around the world. While no one knows how much plastic is in the ocean, estimates range from between 1300 to 3.5million pieces per square kilometre.

''Before the age of plastics, the trash consisted of materials that marine microorganisms could quickly break down. Now the gyres are swirling with stuff that, at best, breaks up into small morsels that are too tough for nature to chew,'' Freinkel writes.

Hohn acknowledges that plastic waste in the ocean is not the most serious environmental problem facing the world today or even the most serious environmental issue facing our oceans.

Climate change, industrial and agricultural waste and overfishing arguably pose more dire threats. But, he says, these serious problems can be difficult to detect without sophisticated equipment and tests. ''I feel like one of the themes through much for the book is about trying to see what's invisible,'' he says. Stories of great, toxic, unsightly amounts of plastic waste circulating in our oceans or washing up on beaches is something that everyone can understand and relate to. ''There is evidence you can see with the naked eye,'' Hohn says.

In turn, getting people enthused about rubbish, or a lack of it, in our oceans, may be a means to get them interested in more complex issues, such as consumption. Although, Hohn notes there's no easy solution to the health of our oceans. ''The sources of the pollution are so numerous,'' he says.

As all good marine lawyers will tell you, it's almost impossible to make individuals, businesses or countries accountable for the middle of the ocean. ''We treat the atmosphere and the ocean as a sort of a global commons,'' Hohn says.

Despite having started work on a new, land-based book, Hohn still thinks about the ducks that first captured his imagination in 2005 and about the thousands that have never been found. ''I suspect that by now most of them have begun to disintegrate,'' he says.

But for him, the ducks have always only been part fact. ''I had this idea that I was chasing both the actual toys that fell off the ship and the mythic duck,'' he says. Ultimately, the author was most enchanted by the incongruity of the childlike duckies lost on the big bad sea. ''It's about as far from a bathtub as you could get.''

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them. By Donovan Hohn. Scribe. Published August 1, 2011. $35.

Judith Ireland is a staff reporter

Running The Numbers: Oceanographic Visualization

published May 6, 2009 by Maria Popova on brainpickings.org

What 20,500 tuna have to do with your old toothbrush, or how a plastic comb ended up on top of Japan’s most iconic volcano.

We love TED. We love data visualization. We hate environmental demise.

Naturally, we love artist Chris Jordan‘s (remember him?) response to the overlooked but tremendously concerning issue exposed by legendary ocean researcher Sylvia Earle in her TED Prize wish — overfishing and the rapid decline of oceans’ natural vitality.



In Running The Numbers II, the second installment of his Portraits of Global Mass Culture series, Jordan looks at mass phenomena on a global scale. Again, each image portrays concrete data about a specific issue.

Depicts 270,000 fossilized shark teeth, equal to the estimated number of sharks of all species killed around the world every day for their fins.

Partial zoom

Further zoom

Detail at actual print size

Finding meaning in global mass phenomena can be difficult because the phenomena themselves are invisible, spread across the earth in millions of separate places. There is no Mount Everest of waste that we can make a pilgrimage to and behold the sobering aggregate of our discarded stuff, seeing and feeling it viscerally with our senses.

Depicts 2.4 million pieces of plastic, equal to the estimated number of pounds of plastic pollution that enter the world's oceans every hour.

Partial zoom

Detail of the top of Mt. Fuji

Detail at actual print size

Jordan’s work is both a reminder of and an antidote to our individual sense of insignificance as we face these disturbing global issues with an increasing sense of urgency — we love the idea of juxtaposing the effect of our collective actions with the tiny individual contributions that make them up. It’s a new kind of call for personal responsibility — could that be your old toothbrush at the foot of Mt. Fuji?

We are stuck with trying to comprehend the gravity of these phenomena through the anaesthetizing and emotionally barren language of statistics. Sociologists tell us that the human mind cannot meaningfully grasp numbers higher than a few thousand; yet every day we read of mass phenomena characterized by numbers in the millions, billions, even trillions.

Depicts 20,500 tuna, the average number of tuna fished from the world

Partial zoom

Detail at actual print size

For a deeper look at our collective individualism in its cultural context, be sure to check out Jordan’s absolutely brilliant book, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait — it comes with our highest stamp of recommendation.

via @TEDchris

Manufacturers face cost dilemma in going green

posted July 27th in GMA News

Manufacturers wanting to make their products more environment-friendly are slowly coming to terms with the high cost of recycled materials and its patent inflexibility, leaving them no choice but to pass on the burden to consumers.

Such is the case for appliance manufacturer Electrolux, which launched late Tuesday a campaign that aims to raise awareness about plastic debris ending up in the world's oceans.

Terry Sales, Electrolux Philippines Inc. marketing manager, told GMA News Online that one challenge that besets the company in its green efforts is the difficulty of sourcing recycled plastic.

"As a manufacturer [of appliances], we use a lot of plastics," Sales said. "But right now, there are not enough supply of recycled plastic available to manufacturers like us."

Sales explained that despite the huge volume of plastic being produced, used and disposed around the world — 300 million metric tons in 2010, according to a report by the Royal Society in UK — plastic that can be used for manufactured products are still a scarce resource.

"Plastic still needs to be reprocessed. You can't just pick up plastic garbage and turn it into another plastic product. Unfortunately, there are not enough suppliers in the world who would like to invest in reprocessing plastics," Sales emphasized.

Virgin vs recycled plastic

This is the reason why the company's recently launched product in its green range, the UltraOne vacuum cleaner, is a little bit more expensive than its other products, Sales said.

UltraOne is made from 70 percent recycled plastic and uses up to 50 percent less energy than the regular vacuum cleaner.

"Recycled plastic is more expensive than virgin plastic, which is why it is more convenient for manufacturers to use [the latter]," he added.

Product design is also compromised when firms use recycled plastic. "You can only make products in black, since that's the only color available for recycled plastics," Sales said.

But Sales pointed out that cost of raw materials is not the only factor that leads to more expensive green products.

"There aren't a lot of green products available in the market today. As such, there is not much demand for it yet," he stressed.

Still, Sales said it is the goal of Electrolux to have 15 percent of all its product ranges as green products, and to have products made from 100 percent recycled plastic.

Debris from oceans

To address the dilemma, the company said it has started research into how they can use plastic debris recovered from the ocean as potential source of raw material.

"Right now, only post-consumer plastic on land meets our commercial safety and quality standards," the company said. "However, [we are exploring] how the ocean plastic may be used in the future, and one such step is to make a single concept vacuum that we can auction out."

Electrolux's "Vac from the Sea" campaign collated plastic garbage that drifted to several of the world's oceans, and processed them to create three different concept vacuum cleaners.

The green process

For greater impact toward saving the environment, activist group Greenpeace said manufacturers should look more into how their production processes are affecting nature.

While not discounting the efforts of companies to make their products more energy-efficient, for example, Greenpeace said the initiatives shouldn't end there.

"Hindi naman namin dinidiscount 'yung (efforts nila), but it shouldn't end there. We're telling companies to minimize their carbon footprint, and it helps, but they should also go for clean production cycles and zero toxic waste discharge," JP Agcaoili, the group's media officer, told GMA News Online in a phone interview.

Agcaoili cited the example of manufacturing firms who make efforts to establish wastewater treatment facilities when the more acceptable approach is to eliminate wastewater production entirely.

The Greenpeace official also cautioned against what pundits call "greenwashing," or the use of public relations and marketing practices that mislead the public into thinking the company's products are environmentally friendly.

"Companies have to make sure that when they do their green initiatives, they do not divert the attention from the real issues at hand," Agcaoili stressed.

"For example, some companies with high carbon footprint simply cannot eliminate or reduce it by just planting trees," he added.

Instead of doing these corporate social responsibility efforts, Agcaoili said firms should invest and focus on doing things properly with their processes.

"Being what it is, it's really an investment. But their investments will come back to them. If, for example, the world's waterways are clean, companies will benefit from that also," he said. — VS, GMA News

Plastic {Infographic}

posted July 27, 2011 by Zachary Shahan on Planet Save.com

Plastic — it is everywhere. While it has helped humanity in some important ways, it is also wreaking havoc on ecosystems and organisms around the world (including humans). Here’s an interesting infographic with some stunning and disturbing information on: how much plastic we use, what problems it’s linked to, plastic in the ocean, BPA, plastic’s ridiculously long lifespan, and how we can cut plastic out of our lives (OK, maybe not how we can do so completely, but how we can do so to a large degree).

The most interesting line of the infographic, in my opinion, is this one: “every piece of plastic made still exists today.” But, really, there’s a ton of interesting info here.

The infographic also does a good job of pointing out the key steps we can take to body-slam our plastic problem:

Use reusable bags
Cut the bottled water out of your life
Say no to single-serve plastic packaging
Use sandwich boxes instead of sandwich bags (cooler anyway!)
Use silverware (.. which actually results in a little more pleasant of an eating experience)
Go digital (forget the old-school plastic CDs & cases)
Use a refillable dispenser
Bring your “to-go” mug with you
Avoid plastic you can’t easily (and probably won’t) recycle
Try to find products not made of plastic (when you have to buy something, that is)

Anyway, here’s the infographic:  (CLICK GRAPHIC TO ENLARGE)

Plastic Bags - Oceans Report

posted on www.EnvironmentCalifornia.org on July 19, 2011

Leading the Way Toward A Clean Ocean: Communities Around the World Take Action Against Plastic Bags 2011-07-19 Leading_the_Way_Toward_a_Clean_Ocean_final.July.2011.pdf

Executive Summary

On July 14th 2011, The California Supreme Court ruled that the city of Manhattan Beach can enforce a local ordinance banning plastic bags. The policy had been held up by a lawsuit brought by the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition. Manhattan Beach can now move forward on their bag ban, bringing the total number of California cities and counties that have successfully taken action against plastic bag pollution to 12.
[1] http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S180720.PDF

Our oceans are polluted with millions of tons of plastic trash. In the Pacific Ocean, plastic debris churns in a soup called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – an area twice the size of Texas where plastic bits outweigh plankton. Plastic pollution persists for hundreds of years, and can kill turtles, seabirds and other marine animals.

Throw-away plastic bags are a significant part of the problem. To reduce ocean pollution and protect the environment, more than 80 national and local governments across the planet have taken official action to ban throw-away plastic bags or to establish fees or taxes on such bags.

State, county, and city governments in California should follow their lead and ban the use of plastic grocery bags.

Plastic bags contribute to the pollution of California’s ocean and beaches.

• Californians use approximately 16 billion plastic bags per year—more than 400 annually per person.
• Less than 5 percent of plastic bags are recycled. Instead, they end up sitting in landfills, littering streets, clogging streams, fouling beaches, or floating out to sea.
• Plastic trash threatens ocean ecosystems. Sea turtles and other marine animals often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and eat them, causing injury or death. In parts of the Pacific Ocean, including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, plastic outweighs plankton by up to six times.
• The city of San Francisco estimated that the taxpayer cost to subsidize the recycling, collection, and disposal of plastic and paper bags amounts to as much as 17 cents per bag. Applied to California as a whole, that adds up to more than $1 billion per year.

More than 80 national and local governments around the world have taken action to protect the ocean by reducing the use of plastic bags.

• At least 20 nations and 47 local governments have passed bans on distributing specific kinds of throw-away plastic bags, including the nations of Italy, Kenya, Mongolia, Macedonia, and Bangladesh; the states of Maharashtra, India and Buenos Aires, Argentina; and the cities of Karachi, Pakistan and Telluride, Colorado.
• Approximately 26 nations and local communities have established fee programs to reduce plastic bag use and/or increase the use of reusable alternatives, including Botswana, China, Hong Kong, Wales, Ireland, Israel, Canada’s Northwest Territories, Toronto, Mexico City, and Washington, D.C.

Bans and meaningful fee programs effectively reduce plastic bag pollution.

• Bans and fee programs quickly reduce plastic bag distribution. Ireland, which in 2002 established a fee roughly equivalent to 28 U.S. cents per bag, saw plastic bag use drop by 90 percent within the first year. After Washington, D.C., implemented a much smaller 5 cent tax on plastic bags, the number of bags distributed by food retailers fell from 22.5 million per month to 3.3 million per month. And the year after banning plastic bags at pharmacies and supermarkets in 2007, San Francisco businesses distributed 127 million fewer plastic bags, and cut overall bag waste reaching the city landfill by up to 10 percent.

Eleven city and county governments in California have taken successful action to reduce plastic bag pollution.

• Eleven California cities and counties have bans on plastic bags in effect, including Long Beach, Santa Monica, San Jose, San Francisco, and unincorporated Marin and unincorporated Los Angeles counties. Five of these communities, including Marin County and San Jose, have also authorized mandatory charges on paper bags to encourage citizens to use reusable bags.
• Two additional communities, Oakland and Manhattan Beach, passed bans that were later struck down after legal challenges by plastic bag manufacturers.

Much more progress can be made to reduce plastic pollution in the ocean and transform our throw-away culture.

• Education and recycling cannot keep pace with the generation of plastic bag pollution. Despite a 2006 law requiring retailers to place bag recycling bins in front of their stores, less than 5 percent of bags are recycled.
• To make a real impact, all California cities and counties should restrict the use of plastic bags, and advocate for similar action at the state level.