A blog set out to explore, archive & relate plastic pollution happening world-wide, while learning about on-going efforts and solutions to help break free of our addiction to single-use plastics & sharing this awareness with a community of clean water lovers everywhere!
Scientists modified an enzyme that can break down plastic in one week to create fresh material for new products.
A group of scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have created a modified enzyme that can break down plastics that would otherwise take centuries to degrade in a matter of days.
The researchers, who published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Nature last week, used machine learning to land on mutations to create a fast-acting protein that can break down building blocks of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a synthetic resin used in fibers for clothing and plastic that, per the study, accounts for 12 percent of global waste.
It does so through a process called depolymerization, in which a catalyst separates the building blocks that make up PET into their original monomers, which can then be repolymerized—built back into virgin plastic—and converted into other products. Most impressively, the enzymes broke down the plastic in one week.
“One thing we can do is we can break this down into its initial monomers,” Hal Alper, professor in Chemical Engineering and author on the paper, told Motherboard over the phone. “And that's what the enzyme does. And then once you have your original monomer, it’s as if you're making fresh plastic from scratch, with the benefit that you don't need to use additional petroleum resources.”
“This has advantages over traditional belt recycling,” Alper added. “If you were to melt the plastic and then remold it, you'd start to lose the integrity of the plastic each round that you go through with recycling. Versus here, if you're able to depolymerize and then chemically repolymerize, you can be making virgin PET plastic each and every time.”
Their work adds to an existing line of query on plastic-eating enzymes, which were first recorded in 2005 and have since been followed by the discovery of 19 distinct enzymes, the paper notes. These are derived from naturally occurring bacteria that have been located living on plastic in the environment.
But many of these naturally-occurring enzymes are made up of permutations of proteins that function well in their specific environments, but are limited by temperature and pH conditions, and thus can’t be used in a wide range of settings, like across recycling centers, the authors argue. The enzyme Alper and his team discovered, by contrast, can break down 51 types of PET across a range of temperature and pH conditions.
The researchers named the enzyme FAST-PETase, acronymic for “functional, active, stable, and tolerant PETase,” and they landed on its exact structure using machine learning. An algorithm was fed with 19,000 protein structures and taught to predict the positions of amino acids in a structure that are not optimized for their local environments. They also used the formula to rearrange amino acids from existing types of PETase into new positions, identified improved combinations, and landed on one structure that saw 2.4 times more activity than an existing PETase enzyme at 40 degrees Celsius and 38 times more activity at 50 degrees Celsius.
It was then tested across a range of temperatures and pH conditions, and continued to outperform existing variants.
“What you see in nature is probably somewhat optimal, at least within the local environment around each and every one of those amino acids,” Alper said. “We can start looking at the protein of interest, and start going through each and every one of the amino acids in there and looking at its own microenvironment and seeing what fits and what doesn't fit.”
Alper and his team’s hope is that their enzyme will be more scalable than most, and will truly put PET-ase to the test of tackling the global plastics crisis. Already able to withstand a range of conditions, FAST-PETase must now prove that it can be both “portable and affordable at large industrial scale.”
First, Alper says, he and his team must test FAST-PETase on the wide range of different types of PET found in the waste stream, and the detritus that’s often found in plastic bottles or on top of plastic containers when it’s recycled. Should the researchers find an enzyme or group of enzymes with the robustness to be used practically, they believe it can help tackle the “billions of tons” of waste in our environment.
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The science is unsettled, but researchers say there is cause for concern.
Tiny plastic particles like these—called microplastics—are added to some exfoliating skincare gels. From there, they get into the environment and may enter our bodies.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEXANDER STEIN, JOKER/ULLSTEIN BILD/GETTY IMAGES
As plastic waste proliferates around the world, an essential question remains unanswered: What harm, if any, does it cause to human health?
A few years ago, as microplastics began turning up in the guts of fish and shellfish, the concern was focused on the safety of seafood. Shellfish were a particular worry, because in their case, unlike fish, we eat the entire animal—stomach, microplastics and all. In 2017, Belgian scientists announced that seafood lovers could consume up to 11,000 plastic particles a year by eating mussels, a favorite dish in that country.
By then, however, scientists already understood that plastics continuously fragment in the environment, shredding over time into fibers even smaller than a strand of human hair —particles so small they easily become airborne. A team at the U.K.’s University of Plymouth decided to compare the threat from eating contaminated wild mussels in Scotland to that of breathing air in a typical home. Their conclusion: People will take in more plastic during a mussels dinner by inhaling or ingesting tiny, invisible plastic fibers floating in the air around them, fibers shed by their own clothes, carpets, and upholstery, than they will by eating the mussels.
This spring, scientists from the Netherlands and the U.K. announced they had found tiny plastic particles in living humans, in two places where they hadn’t been seen before: deep inside the lungs of surgical patients, and in the blood of anonymous donors. Neither of the two studies answered the question of possible harm. But together they signaled a shift in the focus of concern about the plastics toward the cloud of airborne dust particles we live in, some of them so small they can penetrate deep inside the body and even inside cells, in ways that larger microplastics can’t.
Dick Vethaak, a professor emeritus of ecotoxicology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and co-author of the blood study, doesn’t consider his results alarming, exactly—“but, yes, we should be concerned. Plastics should not be in your blood.”
“We live in a multi-particle world,” he adds, alluding to the dust, pollen, and soot that humans also breathe in every day. “The trick is to figure out how much plastics contribute to that particle burden and what does that mean.”
Harm is the hard part
Scientists have been studying microplastics, defined as particles measuring less than five millimeters (a fifth of an inch) across, for a quarter century. Richard Thompson, a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth, coined the term in 2004 after finding piles of rice-sized plastic bits above the tideline on an English beach. In the ensuing years, scientists located microplastics all over the globe, from the floor of the Mariana Trench to the summit of Mount Everest.
Microplastics are in salt, beer, fresh fruit and vegetables, and drinking water. Airborne particles can circle the globe in a matter of days and fall from the sky like rain. Seagoing expeditions to count microplastics in the ocean produce incomprehensible numbers, which have multiplied over time as more tonnage of plastic waste enters the oceans every year and disintegrates. A peer-reviewed count published in 2014 put the total at five trillion. In the latest tally, made last year, Japanese scientists from Kyushu University estimated 24.4 trillion microplastics in the world’s upper oceans—the equivalent of roughly 30 billion half-liter water bottles—a number in itself hard to fathom.
“When I started doing this work in 2014, the only studies being done involved looking for where they are,” says Alice Horton, a marine scientist at the UK’s National Oceanography Center who specializes in microplastic pollution. “We can stop looking now. We know wherever we look, we will find them.”
But determining if they cause harm is much harder. Plastics are made from a complex combination of chemicals, including additives that give them strength and flexibility. Both plastics and chemical additives can be toxic. The most recent analysis has identified more than 10,000 unique chemicals used in plastics, of which more than 2,400 are of potential concern, says Scott Coffin, a research scientist at the California State Water Resource Control Board. Many are “not adequately regulated” in many countries, the study says, and includes 901 chemicals that are not approved for use in food packaging in some jurisdictions.
Additives can also leach into water, and one study found that up to 88 percent could leach, depending on factors that include sunlight and length of time. The same study found up to 8,681 unique chemicals and additives associated with a single plastic product. Sorting out which particular chemical combinations are problematic, and finding the level and length of exposure that causes harm in such a convoluted brew is no easy task.
“You may find a correlation, but you would be hard pressed to find causation because of the sheer number of chemicals we’re exposed to in our daily lives,” says Denise Hardesty, a research scientist who has studied plastic waste for 15 years at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
Janice Brahney, a biochemist at Utah State University who studies how dust transports nutrients, pathogens, and contaminants, says she is concerned because plastic production continues to increase dramatically, while so much about microplastics remains unknown. In 2020, 367 million metric tons of plastics were manufactured, an amount that is forecast to triple by 2050. “It is alarming because we are far into this problem and we still don’t understand the consequences, and it is going to be very difficult to back out of it if we have to,” she says.
The American Chemical Council (ACC), an industry trade group, maintains a lengthy collection of statements on its website explaining chemical composition of various plastics and rebuttals to research claims that certain plastics are toxic.
“No, microplastics are not the ‘New Acid Rain.’ Not even close,” the council said in response to media coverage of Brahney’s 2020 paper, published in Science, which estimated that 11 billion metric tons of plastic will accumulate in the environment by 2025. (Brahney calculated that just in the western U.S., more than 1,000 metric tons of tiny particles are carried by the wind and fall out of the air every year.)
The ACC also criticized that finding, saying, “The amount of microplastics in the environment represents only 4 percent of particles collected on average… The other 96 percent is comprised of natural materials like minerals, dirt and sand, insect parts, pollen and more.”
Meanwhile, the ACC said through a spokesman it has launched a research program to help answer outstanding questions of microplastics, including those surrounding household dust, and help establish a global exchange of microplastics research between universities, research institutions, and industry. The work envisioned will include examining the environmental fate and potential routes of exposure of microplastics, identifying potential hazards, and developing a framework to assess risk. Findings will be published over the next few years.
The topic is so complicated and controversial, Hardesty says, that even the definition of harm comes up for debate at times. Should we only worry about the effects of microplastics on human health? What about the harm they might do to animals and ecosystems?
Plastics in animals
The search for potential harm from plastics actually began with animal studies some 40 years ago, when marine biologists studying the diets of seabirds began finding plastic in their stomachs. As more marine wildlife began to be affected by plastics, either by entanglement or ingestion, studies expanded beyond birds to other marine species, as well as to rats and mice.
In 2012, the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal declared that all seven sea turtle species, 45 percent of marine mammal species, and 21 percent of seabird species were affected by eating or becoming entangled in plastic. The same year 10 scientists unsuccessfully called on the world’s nations to officially classify the most harmful plastic as hazardous, which would give their regulatory agencies “the power to restore affected habitats.”
In the decade since, the numbers and risks to animals have worsened. More than 700 species are affected by plastics. It is probable that hundreds of millions of wild birds have consumed plastic, scientists say, and by mid-century, all seabird species on the planet are predicted to be eating it. Certain bird populations are already thought to be threatened by widespread exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals contained in plastics. Laboratory studies of fish have found plastics can cause harm to reproductive systems and stress the liver.
Animal studies have shown the ubiquity of plastic waste and helped inform research into its potential physiological and toxicological effects in humans.
For example, although toxins from plastics can cause adverse health effects in birds, an Australian study in 2019, in which Japanese quail chicks were deliberately fed such toxins, found the opposite: The chicks suffered minor delays in growth and maturation, but weren’t more likely than unexposed chicks to get sick, die, or have trouble reproducing. The findings surprised the scientists, who called them the “first experimental evidence” that the toxicological and endocrine effects “may not be as severe as feared for the millions of birds” carrying small loads of plastics in their stomachs.
Hardesty, one of the co-authors, says the quail study serves as a cautionary reminder that assessing the threat posed by exposure to microplastics is “not that simple.” In particular, she says, the difficulty finding clear evidence of harm in quails “really highlights that we are still not able to answer the question of what the impact of eating plastic is for humans in a definitive way.”
Plastics in humans
Measuring possible adverse effects of plastics on humans is far more difficult than on animals—unlike quail and fish, human subjects can’t intentionally be fed a diet of plastics. In laboratory tests, microplastics have been shown to cause damage to human cells, including both allergic reactions and cell death. But so far there have been no epidemiologic studies documenting, in a large group of people, a connection between exposure to microplastics and impacts on health.
Instead, research has involved small groups of people—a factor that limits conclusions that can be drawn beyond identifying the presence of microplastics in different parts of the body. A 2018 study found microplastics in the feces of eight people. Another study documented the presence of microplastics in the placentas of unborn babies.
The recent study by Vethaak and his colleagues found plastics in the blood of 17 of 22 healthy blood donors; the lung study found microplastics in 11 of 13 lung samples taken from 11 patients. Virtually nothing is known about either group that would help inform the level and length of exposure—two essential attributes to determine harm.
In both studies the plastic particles found were primarily nanoplastics, which are smaller than one micrometer. The ones found in the blood study were small enough to have been inhaled—though Vethaak says it’s also possible they were ingested. Whether such particles can pass from the blood into other organs, especially into the brain, which is protected by a unique, dense network of cells that form a barrier, isn’t clear.
The lung study, done at University of Hull in the U.K., showed just how intrusive airborne particles can be. While the scientists expected to find plastic fibers in the lungs of surgical patients—earlier research had documented them in cadavers—they were stunned to find the highest number, of various shapes and sizes, embedded deep in the lower lung lobe. One of the fibers was two millimeters long.
“You would not expect to find microplastics in the smallest parts of the lung with the smallest diameter,” says Hull environmental ecologist Jeannette Rotchell. The study, she says, enables her team to move to the next level of questions and conduct lab studies using cells or tissue cultures of lung cells to discover the effects of the microplastics they found.
“There are many more questions,” she says. “I would like to know what levels are we exposed to in the course of our lives. What microplastics are we breathing in every day, whether working at home, going to the office, outdoors, cycling, running, in different environments. There’s a big knowledge gap.”
The question of harm
Scientists aren’t entirely fumbling around in the dark. There is extensive research on toxins found in plastics, as well as on lung diseases, from asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to cancer, which kill millions of people every year and have been linked to exposure to other pollutants. The American Lung Association, in its latest report, declared COPD, which results from chronic inflammation, to be the fourth leading cause of death in the United States.
Humans inhale a variety of foreign particles every day and have been since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The body’s first response is to find a way to expel them. Large particles in airways are typically coughed out. Mucus forms around particles further down the respiratory tract, creating a mucus “elevator” that propels them back up to the upper airway to be expelled. Immune cells surround those that remain to isolate them.
Over time, those particles could cause irritation that leads to a cascading range of symptoms from inflammation to infection to cancer. Or, they could remain as an inert presence and do nothing.
“We know this already from other published articles,” she says. “It takes one minute of breathing in polyurethane and you could start wheezing.”
What scientists don’t know is if the plastic particles in the lung would meet the level and length of exposure to cross the threshold of harm.
Whether such particles “directly caused asthma for someone’s whole life, that would be hard to prove,” she says. “I am not saying we should be afraid of these things. I am saying we should be cautious. We need to understand these things that are getting into our body and possibly staying there for years.”
Albert Rizzo, the American Lung Association’s chief medical officer, says the science is too unclear to draw conclusions. “Are the plastics just simply there and inert or are they going to lead to an immune response by the body that will lead to scarring, fibrosis, or cancer? We know these microplastics are all over the place. We don’t know whether the presence in the body leads to a problem. Duration is very important. How long you are exposed matters.”
He says the most relevant analogy may be the decades-long effort to convince the government that smoking causes cancer. “By the time we got enough evidence to lead to policy change, the cat was out of the bag,” he says. “I can see plastics being the same thing. Will we find out in 40 years that microplastics in the lungs led to premature aging of the lung or to emphysema? We don’t know that. In the meantime, can we make plastics safer?”
Dozens of U.S. cities made 2018 the year of the plastic straw ban. But if we really want to reduce the plastic pollution rapidly amassing in our oceans, 2019 must be the year we challenge the fossil fuel industry’s plan to aggressively expand plastic production.
Yes, those straw bans help. Straws contribute to ocean plastic pollution that’s expected to outweigh all the fish in the sea by 2050. Those who pushed the anti-straw #StopSucking campaign — and journalists who gave high-profile coverage to the plastic-pollution crisis — deserve tremendous credit for the quick adoption of plastic straw bans over the past year. Along with earlier plastic-bag bans and restrictions on Styrofoam packaging, these actions can significantly reduce the flow of plastic into our oceans.
But it’s not enough. These gains could easily be wiped out by dozens of new plastic-production plants being built along the Gulf Coast and in the Rust Belt. They’re part of the fossil fuel industry’s stated goal of increasing plastic production by 40 percent over the next decade.
Even though we’re already dumping about 8 million tons of plastic into our oceans each year — which chokes marine life, absorbs toxins, travels throughout the ocean food web and doesn’t break down for decades — Big Oil wants to make more plastic. These ethane “cracker” plants would use our oversupply of cheap, fracked natural gas to create plastic pellets, the basic building blocks of cheap plastic packaging and products.
Most of that plastic will end up in our oceans, landscapes and landfills. Almost 80 percent of the plastic we produce ends up in our landfills and the natural environment, a figure that could rise now that China has stopped accepting our plastic recycling.
Yet, ExxonMobil, Shell, Dow, Formosa Plastics and other companies are planning to spend $180 billion on increased plastic production in the coming years.
For example, ExxonMobil is now trying to build the world’s largest plastics plant in Texas, in partnership with Saudi Arabia thanks to a deal cut by President Trump, using about $1 billion in subsidies from Texas taxpayers. That means this project is paying a murderous regime and highly profitable oil company to create pollution we’ll all pay for later.
Another massive plastic plant is slated for the banks of the Mississippi River, transforming an agricultural and wetland habitat into a dirty petrochemical plant. People nearby in the community of St. James Parish, Louisiana — in a predominantly African American district already known as Cancer Alley because of the toxins spewed by local petrochemical plants — are fighting the plastics plant proposed by the Taiwanese company Formosa Plastics.
This is a company that has been heavily fined for spilling plastic pellets into Texas waterways, polluting the air in Louisiana, and a 2004 explosion and fire at its plant in Illinois. The fire killed five workers and forced the evacuation of a nearby town.
So even if it doesn’t explode or sicken its impoverished neighbors, even if its industrial runoff doesn’t contaminate the region’s vital seafood industry, even in the best-case scenario where nothing goes terribly wrong, we still end up with a bunch of cheap plastic we don’t want or need.
This plastic buildout is being repeated in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Mississippi and the other states now processing applications for plastic plants and the pipelines that feed them with fracked natural gas. Each project spews pollution into our air and water as it produces endless amounts of plastic.
Now, 2019 will be a critical year in deciding whether we slow down this plastic-pollution juggernaut or simply let the problem get worse and pass it on to the next generations. As National Geographic put it in a special issue this year, it’s time to choose between “plastic or planet.” Let’s choose the planet. Steven T. Jones is a media specialist with the Center for Biological Diversity. Jones was previously editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He worked as a journalist for 24 years, including covering coastal and environmental issues for seven different newspapers.
Plastic bags may be convenient for us, but they're not terribly convenient for the environment. (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
Plastic bags are just about everywhere, but their days seem to be increasingly numbered.
As awareness of the dangers of plastic bags continues to rise — from the threat to wildlife to the fact that they aren't biodegradable — more groups are taking actions to limit their presence.
The media is also taking notice. National Geographic's magazine cover shocked many readers.
The company also launched a campaign called #PlanetorPlastic to raise awareness of plastic pollution and will stop wrapping its magazines in plastic.
Of course, the war on plastic bags isn't new by any stretch. In 2002, Bangladesh became the first country to ban the use of thin plastic bags after it was discovered that a build up of the bags choked the country's drainage systems during flooding. In the almost 20 years since then, more countries and individual cities have taken action, including taxing the use of the bags or following Bangladesh's lead and outright banning them.
And the scope of the war is expanding beyond bags. Plastic straws, bottles, utensils and food containers are all fronts in this ongoing battle, as the convenience and low monetary cost of single-use plastic items is outweighed by a desire for a sustainable lifestyle.
South Korea and Taiwan leading the way in Asia
Beginning in 2019, grocery stores and supermarkets in South Korea can no longer provide single-use plastic bags to shopper except to hold "wet" food like fish and meat. Instead, they will be required by law to provide cloth or paper bags that can be either recycled or reused. The penalty for violating this law is a fine up to 3 million won (about $2,700 U.S.).
By 2019, fast-food chains will no longer be allowed to supply plastic straws for in-store use, meaning no plastic straws for someone having a meal inside the restaurant. By 2020, free plastic straws will be banned from all eating and drinking establishments. By 2025, the public will have to pay for to-go straws, and by 2030, there'll be a blanket ban on the use of plastic straws entirely.
Other plastic goods, including plastic bags, utensils and food containers will face a similar phase-out process. If a retail company files invoices for uniforms, which many do, according to the Hong Kong Free Press, then that company will no longer be allowed to offer free versions of those products after 2020. While that might seem like a loophole of sorts — "Our employees will no longer have to buy or wear uniforms we provide so we can continue to offer plastic items." — it's one that will close by 2030 when another blanket ban on those products will be introduced.
The minister who oversees this program, Lai Ying-ying, emphasized that this is more than just a job for the Taiwanese Environmental Protection Agency; the entire country, he said, needs to rally behind it if it's to be successful. It's a daunting challenge as the Taiwanese EPA estimates that a single Taiwanese person uses around an average of 700 plastic bags a year.
The European Union is following a similar path for its 28 member states in an effort to curb the use of plastics that "take five seconds to produce, you use it for five minutes and it takes 500 years to break down again," Frans Timmermans, the first vice president of the European Commission, the body responsible for managing the EU's day-to-operations, told the Guardian in January 2018.
Plenty of countries within the EU have their own plans in place to reduce plastic consumption, but the EU aims to have all packaging on the continent be reusable or recyclable by 2030. But first, they have to decide the best course of action to achieve that end.
The first step is an "impact assessment" to determine the best way to tax the use of single-use plastics. The EU also wants its member states to reduce the use of bags per person from 90 a year to 40 by 2026, to promote easy access to tap water on the streets to reduce the demand for bottled water and to improve states' ability to "monitor and reduce their maritime litter."
In October 2018, the EU voted overwhelmingly to ban a wide range of single-use plastics in every member state. The European Parliament voted 571-53 to forbid the use of plastics such as plates, cutlery, straws, cotton buds and even "products made of oxo-degradable plastics, such as bags or packaging and fast-food containers made of expanded polystyrene."
For other disposable items that don't have an alternative replacement, the EU ruled that member states have to reduce consumption by at least 25 percent by 2025. "This includes single-use burger boxes, sandwich boxes or food containers for fruits, vegetables, desserts or ice creams. Member states will draft national plans to encourage the use of products suitable for multiple use, as well as re-using and recycling.
Other plastic items like beverage bottles will have to be recycled by 90 percent by 2025 as well. Another goal is to reduce cigarette filters that contain plastic by 50 percent by 2025 and 80 percent by 2030. The EU also wants member states to ensure that ghost nets and other fishing gear are recycled by at least 15 percent by 2025.
"We have adopted the most ambitious legislation against single-use plastics. It is up to us now to stay the course in the upcoming negotiations with the Council, due to start as early as November. Today’s vote paves the way to a forthcoming and ambitious directive," wrote Ries. "It is essential in order to protect the marine environment and reduce the costs of environmental damage attributed to plastic pollution in Europe, estimated at 22 billion euros by 2030."
The United Kingdom, which is still in the process of Brexiting from the EU, likely won't be subject to these regulations. However, as MNN's Matt Hickman reports, there's a sizable effort underway to reduce it use of plastic.
Other nations following suit
In August 2018, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the country would phase out plastic bags within a year.
"We’re phasing out single-use plastic bags so we can better look after our environment and safeguard New Zealand’s clean, green reputation," Ardern told The Guardian. "Every year in New Zealand we use hundreds of millions of single-use plastic bags. A mountain of bags, many of which end up polluting our precious coastal and marine environments and cause serious harm to all kinds of marine life, and all of this when there are viable alternatives for consumers and business."
Businesses will have six months to stop distributing plastic bags or face fines up to NZ $100,000. Many supermarket chains and major retailers have already committed to stop using plastic bags by the end of the year.
Ardern said many Kiwis welcome the ban and cited a petition signed by more than 65,000 citizens calling for it. However, the same reaction can't be said for its neighboring country, Australia.
Most territories and states in Australia have banned single-use, lightweight plastic bags except for New South Wales and Victoria — home to the country's largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne.
A sign, seen in a Coles supermarket, advises its customers of its plastic bag free in Sydney on July 2, 2018. (Photo: PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)
However, there was an uproar after Woolworth's and Coles, two large retail chains, tried to implement a ban on plastic bags. Many customers protested and after just several weeks Coles decided to sell reusable plastic bags for a small fee in lieu of the lightweight bags. "Some customers told us they needed more time to make the transition to re-usable bags," a Coles spokesperson told CNN.
Local Australian news outlets reported that some customers accused Coles of a marketing ploy by charging for reusable bags. The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association also reported in July that a Woolsworth employee was attacked by a customer who was upset over the ban. The organization surveyed 120 employees and found that 50 reported being harassed by customers.
Australia isn't the only the continent to experience various reactions to plastic bags. Africa has its own mix of success.
African countries have seen mixed success
Plenty of African nations have engaged in curbing the use of plastic bags over the years. Some countries, including Gambia, Senegal and Morocco, have banned plastic bags, while others, like Botswana and South Africa, have instituted levies on plastic bags.
The success of these efforts vary from country to country; in fact, there's a black market for plastic bags in a few of them. The levy on thicker plastic bags in South Africa, for instance, has been a partial failure, according to a University of Cape Town 2010 study [PDF], due to the levy simply not being high enough, so consumers incorporate the cost into their purchases. Meanwhile, Rwanda saw an uptick in black market sales and smuggling of plastic bags following a 2008 ban. Police have set up checkpoints at various border crossings to search people for the contraband.
In perhaps the continent's longest-running plastic bag struggle, Kenya instituted the world's toughest ban on plastic bags in August 2017, with punishment ranging from steep fines to prison sentences. This represented the country's most severe attempt to ban the use of plastic bags over a 10-year effort. Even this, however, hasn't stopped the production of plastic bags, and night raids have been considered to disrupt the illegal manufacturing of plastic bags.
Banning plastics is tricky to navigate in the U.S.
A few U.S. cities are making efforts to reduce the use of plastic utensils and straws. (Photo: Kent Sievers/Shutterstock)
This might not surprise you, but plastic bag politics in the U.S. are decidedly scattershot. Cities and their respective counties may end up with different policies in place, with cities acting ahead of their counties, which can cause confusion if you need to go shopping in one city on your way home to another city but you don't have any reusable bags with you. While a city may pass an ordinance banning plastic bags, the state could effectively overturn that ruling, which is what happened in Texas.
The city of Laredo banned plastic bags several years ago, but the Laredo Merchants Association challenged that decision in 2015 saying the state's law, the Texas Solid Waste Disposal Act, protected a business' right to use plastic bags. The city argued that the statute fell under an anti-littering ordinance, and the case was taken up by the Texas Supreme Court this year. The court voted unanimously that the city law was invalid because the state's law usurps the city. The court's ruling could ultimately affect other Texas cities that have also sought to ban plastic bags.
Even when a state ban is in effect, that may not be the end-all, be-all answer. California as a state banned the use of plastic bags in grocery stories, retail stores with a pharmacy, food marts and liquor stores in 2016, but local municipalities that had bans in effect prior to Jan. 1, 2015, have beeen allowed to operate under their laws, essentially superseding the state ban. The differences largely come down to the price for a paper bag, however. (The state ban requires a 10-cent charge for a paper bag.)
One company is even jumping on the bandwagon. Kroger announced in August 2018 that it would stop using plastic bags by 2025.
Banning other plastic items, like straws and utensils, is gaining some steam, but only at the local level. For instance, Seattle's ban on plastic straws and utensils goes into effect on July 1 in all places that serve food and drinks (plastic bags have been banned in the city since 2011). Some establishments around the city cut out straws in September 2017, when the ban was announced, while other venues, like CenturyLink Field, SafeCo Field, made the switch to compostable straws and utensils before the city's ban. Indeed, SafeCo recycles or composts 96 percent of its waste.
Restaurants in other cities, including San Diego; Huntington Beach, California; Asbury Park, New Jersey; New York City; Miami; Bradenton, Florida, have pledged to either ban straws entirely, or simply not provide them unless a customer asks for them, according to a June 2017 article in the Washington Post.
As you can see, it's a patchwork approach to a global problem.
Editor's note: This article has been updated since it was originally published in March 2018.
