Plastic
has taken its lumps of late. Plastic bags are being chased from store
checkouts around the world. Bisphenol A, or BPA, in plastic containers
has been linked to a Pandora’s box of hormonal and genetic problems. And
the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans each have
a gigantic soupy concoction of plastic waste at their centers—the Pacific and Atlantic have one such patch in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Despite this, the world’s general attitude to plastic has been pretty
cavalier. And since we’re not sweating the advent of peak oil as much,
at least not in North America, that plastics are made from
petrochemicals doesn’t seem so problematic. In fact, if current trends
continue, the 280 million tons of plastic produced in 2012 will grow to
33 billion tons in 2050.
How cavalier would we be if plastics, always assumed to be chemically inert, were a hazardous waste?
A group of researchers led by
ecologists Chelsea M. Rochman and
Mark Anthony Browne,
commenting in the journal Nature,
call for governments around the world to classify some plastics, such
as PVC, polystyrene, polyurethane, and polycarbonate, as hazardous
waste. Such a move, if undertaken by major producers like the U.S.,
China and the European Union, would—in the researchers’ view—foster a
virtuous circle of less waste, resulting in less potentially toxic
material that ends up in oceans or leaches harmful chemicals from
landfills, and could even create new jobs as industry sought safer
replacement materials.
Neither Rochman or Browne are anti-plastic. There’s a time and place
for the petrochemical-based product, they explained recently over hot
drinks at a Starbucks. (The toll? Two throwaway cups, one plastic and
unused takeaway lid, and one battered plastic travel mug.) But the
present overreliance on plastic, from food containers to fleece clothing
to cheap housewares and electronics, is a concern.
Browne points to an increase in plastic milk containers in Britain as
a prime example of plastic’s overreach.
For a century milk had been
delivered in re-usable glass containers, which were chemically inert,
sustainable and fostered local production. To use some jargon, it was a
“closed-loop system.” Then plastic swept in. It was cheap and weighed
less, making it easier to move longer distances, which tended both to
erase the smaller carbon footprint gains from its lightness and allow
dairies to be further and further from their customers. Then, of course,
once the plastic jug was empty, it either had to be broken down for
recycling or just trashed.
In the United States, the EPA estimates
45 percent of plastics
were used as containers or for packaging, and just 12 percent of that
gets recycled. In New York City, it’s estimated the average citizen
tosses out 107 pounds of different kinds of plastic waste each year, and
only 17 pounds of that was
even designed for recycling, much less was recycled. “We create things just so we can throw them away,” Browne laments.
But while recycling is a positive outcome, declaring some plastics as
hazardous waste isn’t an end run, the ecologists say, but a necessary
step based on reality. Many plastics can be toxic in themselves in some
contexts, or can absorb a surprising array of pollutants. “Yet,” reads
the commentary in
Nature, “in the United States, Europe,
Australia and Japan, plastics are qualified as solid waste—so are
treated the same way as food scraps or glass clippings.”
And, both Browne and Rochman aver, no way is plastic that innocent,
even as they admit they’re still trying to get a grip on both the size
of the issue and plastic’s ecological impacts.
For example, some plastics that are seen as benign in their consumer
forms can have nasty attributes when they break down. Rochman, has
studied how
different kinds of plastic absorb pollutants in the oceans—she
calls plastic-filled seas “cocktails of contaminants.” The kinds of
plastic used in detergent bottles and shopping bags, for example, after
breaking down into water-borne pellets, can continue to suck up
pollutants for months and even years. The
Nature piece points to
an unpublished analysis that found that at least 71 percent of priority
pollutants listed by the EPA and 61 percent listed by European Union are
associated with plastic debris.
These poisonous pellets can then bob around in the water or settle
and concentrate in the sediment; or they can get eaten by animals or
microorganisms and enter the food web.
Rochman’s work shows that not all plastics are equal. Those used in
water bottles, or PVC, used in clear-food packaging, aren’t as powerful
at absorbing pollutants. On the other hand, vinyl chloride, a component
in polyvinyl chloride (PVC), has been identified as carcinogenic.
In fact, while many plastics in their final form are considered safe,
many of the chemicals used to make them are known to be hazardous to
health, or conversely, individual chemical compounds may have received a
green light for safety but haven’t been tested as they interact with
other compounds. Plus, as plastics degrade into smaller pieces, their
properties can change. The particles that come from polyester or acrylic
clothing—think of that warm fleece jacket made out of recycled
two-liter soda bottles—can be ingested or inhaled with malign effects at
the cellular level.
Again, says Browne, a lack of research has hampered the ability to
make definitive statements, but not, he hopes, from invoking the
precautionary principle. He and his co-authors would like producers and
packagers to have to show that their products are safe.
“Our goal is to provide information. We’re not telling people what to
do but allowing them to make choices. But they should know that plastic
is not an inert material.”
While government and industry haven’t necessarily embraced the idea
of declaring plastic waste as hazardous, in some cases they’ve supported
basic research—one of Rochman’s experiments had funding from the
American Chemistry Council—or started phasing out the most likely
serious offenders.
There are laws from the local to international level that could help. In the European Union, regulations (
described as the most complex sets of rules in the EU’s history) are in place to test out the
hazards of chemicals in everyday use,
although the effects of these findings aren’t expected to hit industry
and consumers for years. And even longstanding rules may not effectively
address longstanding problems. For example, the
International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships
has banned disposing of plastic at sea since 1988, but since then
things like the so-called “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” have gotten
worse.
But there are stronger efforts afoot. The Center for Biological Diversity, for example, has
petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop rules, using the Clean Water Act, to reverse the tide of plastic pollution in the oceans.
“We hope to be able to use existing laws—which industry wants us to
do—to foster closed-loop systems,” Browne says. That still leaves the
door open to some plastics, especially those that can easily be reused
and recycled, and to other materials that are benign by design.
