Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts

Monday, January 7, 2019

The war on plastic is heating up

published on the Mother Nature Network, January 2, 2019 by Noel Kirkpatrick

Across the globe, we're getting serious about reducing the use of plastic bags, utensils and containers.

A woman in Monterey Park, California, carries her groceries in a plastic bag

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.).

The Taiwanese government announced plans to steadily phase out the use of plastic straws, bags, utensils, cups and containers by 2030.

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.

Lofty goals in the European Union

An elderly man holds plastic bags as he walks inside a Greek public market

A man shops in a Greek public market. The Greek government banned free plastic bags at the start of 2018. (Photo: Giannis Papanikos/Shutterstock)

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.

All these regulations may seem overly ambitious in such a short time period, but Belgian European Parliament member Frédérique Ries, who is responsible for this bill, is optimistic these goals can be accomplished.

"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.

However other states, like Florida and Arizona, have banned the ban of plastic bags, while South Carolina is close to doing the same. While that eliminates confusion for sure, it doesn't actually solve the environmental problem.

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.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Seabirds' plastic diet shows up in their feather oil

Published in ABC.net by Christopher Doyle, ABC Environment, Nov 11, 2014

A short-tailed shearwater or muttonbird — The amount of plastic a short-tailed shearwater has eaten can now be assessed by swabbing near its tail feathers. Credit: JJ Harrison (Creative commons)

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Scientists have developed a new technique to assess how much plastic a seabird has eaten. It involves a quick massage and a cotton swab.

A TEAM OF AUSTRALIAN scientists has developed a new method for assessing how much plastic debris a seabird has eaten while foraging on the open ocean, leading to a better understanding of how human rubbish is affecting other species.

The scientists, from CSIRO's Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship, say preening oil — the waxy substance used by seabirds to prevent their feathers from becoming waterlogged — can provide an indirect measure of plastic ingestion (pdf).

Plastic debris on beaches and in the ocean has increased dramatically over the last few decades due to the increased use of plastics in everyday consumer items.

Seabirds have been particularly affected by plastic pollution as they often mistake floating plastic for food.

"Seabirds earn their living out there on the oceans — they are flying, they are foraging, they are migrating, and that is where they are coming into contact with plastic," said the study's lead author, Dr Denise Hardesty.

"Often they just mistake the plastic as an appropriate prey item. They are naïve consumers, so they don't know any better."

Previous studies examining how much plastic seabirds ingest have relied upon conducting a 'lavage', a procedure where the gut is flushed repeatedly to bring out its contents. But this procedure can be stressful for the birds and often results in incomplete samples, as not all plastic fragments are dislodged from the stomach.

Another method has been to dissect dead birds that washed ashore. But this can result in biased samples as it is unknown how the birds died and if ill-health affected their plastic consumption prior to death.

The new method devised by Hardesty and her colleagues, published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, involves taking samples of preening oil from live seabirds, enabling researchers to get much larger and more random samples from healthy populations.

Preening oil is produced by the uropygial gland located near the base of a bird's tail. It can be extracted by light massaging and collected using a simple swab technique.

Some components of plastic materials accumulate in preening oil after they have been ingested and absorbed by the body.

Hardesty and her colleagues measured the level of three commonly used plasticisers, called phthalates, in the preening oil of five seabird species from off the coast of Western Australia and from populations in Port Fairy, Victoria, and Heron Island in Queensland.

The team found that the levels of phthalates in preening oil correlated well with the level of plastic pollution and the foraging strategies of each bird species.

"Plastic bottles, lids, toys, take away containers — phthalates are in so many of these end-user products. They enter the environment from these products by going down stormwater drains, being dropped at beaches, and ultimately ending up in the stomachs of seabirds," Hardesty said.

Due to the widespread use of plastics, the scientists had to take extra precautions to ensure their samples were not contaminated with plastics from other sources.

"We had to go to extraordinary lengths to make sure everything we were using was clean. We did not want to bias our results and mistakenly use sampling materials that had already come into contact with plastic," Hardesty said.

Despite this, Hardesty said the new procedure is quick and efficient, and is much less stressful for the birds.

She is hopeful the technique can be used for other wildlife, including turtles and dugongs, which are also at risk of ingesting plastic debris.

While these animals do not produce preening oil, Hardesty said the levels of plasticisers in these species can potentially be measured in fatty tissue taken using small biopsies.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Study: 75 percent of Australia's ocean debris is plastic

Published Sept. 18, 2014 by Steve Toloken in PlasticNews.com

Image By: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Denise Hardesty collects marine debris as part of the study for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

About 75 percent of the trash found in the waters off Australia’s beaches is plastic, with most of that coming from local sources rather than sea-borne debris drifting in, according to a Sept. 15 study from scientists and the social investment arm of energy company Shell Australia.

The study, part of a three-year Australian government research project, said that about 40 percent of seabird species now ingest plastic, but predicated that could increase to 95 percent of species by 2050, given rising levels of plastic production.

“We found about three-quarters of the rubbish along the coast is plastic,’’ said Denise Hardesty, study director for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia’s national science agency. “Most is from Australian sources, not the high-seas, with debris concentrated near cities.”

The study said debris can trap animals or they can mistake it for food and eat it.

The 364-page analysis estimated that between 5,000 and 15,000 turtles in the Gulf of Carpentaria, off Australia’s northern coast, have been killed after getting ensnared in derelict fishing nets.

It said the Tasman Sea south of Australia is a “global hotspot” for seabird impacts

‘’We also carried out a global risk analysis of seabirds and marine debris ingestion for nearly 200 species and found that 43 percent of seabirds and 65 percent of individuals within a species have plastic in their gut,” the study said,

“Globally, nearly half of all seabird species are likely to ingest debris, eating everything from balloons to glow sticks, industrial plastic pellets, rubber, foam and string,” Hardesty said, in a press release.

The study said that with rising levels of plastic production, more seabird species will ingest plastic.
“Our analyses predict that plastics ingestion in seabirds may reach 95 percent of all species by 2050, given the steady increase of plastics production,” it said.

“Approximately one third of marine turtles around the world have likely ingested debris, and this has increased since plastic production began in the 1950s,” Hardesty said. “By garnering the information needed to identify sources and hotspots of debris, we can better develop effective solutions.”

The CSIRO team said it surveyed sites about every 100 kilometers along Australia’s coastline. Besides Shell and CSIRO, South Melbourne-based Earthwatch Australia also participated in the work.

Hardesty said personal responsibility is part of the solution, and she advocated things like re-usable shopping bags and disposing of waste properly.

But she also said that government programs like container deposits, which industry often opposes, can help reduce marine litter.

“It’s not practical to clean up the ocean’s garbage patches, but we can stop rubbish from getting in there in the first place,” she said. “We know that incentives such as container deposit schemes are effective, and we can also choose products that don’t use plastic microbeads.”

The study said it’s the world’s largest collection of information about marine debris. It estimated that the concentration of plastic in Australian waters ranged from a few thousand pieces per square kilometer to more than 40,000 pieces.

The Australian results mirror those of a July study by several environmental groups in the Philippines, which found that 60 percent of the waste in Manila Bay was plastic, with plastic bags making up 23 percent of the total, news reports said.

That study was done as part of a bay cleanup for International Plastic Bag Free Day on July 3.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Marine microbes 'eat' plastic pollution

Published June 30, 2014 in the Herald Sun by

COLONIES of microbes seem to be "eating" plastic pollution floating on the surface of the ocean, according to researchers from the University of Western Australia.
Microbes.

Plastic eating marine microbes could provide better solutions for waste disposal practices on land.

THE research by PhD candidate Julia Reisser and colleagues was the first to document biological communities living on sand-sized pieces of plastic in Australian waters. It has been published in the international science journal PLOS One.

Using a scanning electron microscope, researchers examined the samples - tiny broken down discarded items such as food packaging and fishing gear - and could see microbes "eating" the plastic.

"The good news is that some of the plastic inhabitants may decrease plastic pollution at the sea surface, where major environmental impacts occur," the university said in a statement.

Study co-author Jeremy Shaw said large numbers of silica-forming algae weighed down their plastic host, potentially causing tiny pieces to sink to the bottom of the ocean. "Plastic biodegredation seems to happen at sea," Ms Reisser said.

"I am excited about this because the `plastic eating' microbes could provide better solutions for waste disposal practices on land." Originally published as Marine microbes 'eat' plastic pollution

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Seabirds Continue to Warn about Plastic Pollution in the Oceans

Published by June 6, 2014 in the Earth Island Journal by Elizabeth Claire Alberts

Plight of the flesh-footed shearwater in Australia illustrates how widespread the problem is

A special report ahead of World Oceans Day

It’s a late May night on Lord Howe Island, and the moon gleams across the volcanic mountains and white sand beaches of this six-mile long isle off the east coast of Australia. While most people are tucked inside their houses or hotels, conservation biologist Dr. Jennifer Lavers and her colleague, naturalist Ian Hutton, don headlamps and bike to the flesh-footed shearwater colony on the northeast side of the island. Lord Howe Island is one of the two main breeding areas for this seabird in the southwest Pacific Ocean (the other is in northern New Zealand). Tonight the colony bustles with 90-day-old chicks flapping their wings as they prepare for their first 6,500-mile flight north to the Bering Sea.

photo of a draggled, dead bird on a beach

Silke Stuckenbrock / Two Hands Project Even though many seabirds are affected by plastic pollution, the plight flesh-footed shearwater illustrates how widespread the problem is.

Lavers and Hutton set up a makeshift research station in the colony, and handpick chicks to weigh, measure, and take feather samples. They also undertake a lavage process, guiding a tube down each bird’s throat to flush out its stomach contents. This part may seem gruesome, but the lavage provides important information about shearwater diet and nutrition. If a fledgling’s parents fed it well, it will regurgitate natural food sources like squid and fish. But more often than not, chicks will cough up something that does not belong in their stomachs – plastic.

Seabirds ingesting plastic debris that they mistake for food isn’t exactly breaking news. Scientists first discovered plastic debris in the Laysan Albatross in the 1960s. By the mid-1990s, over 111 seabird species were reported to have plastic in their stomachs, pointing to an escalating problem of plastic pollution in our oceans. “Seventy years on, these birds are still saying the same thing,” Lavers says. “They’re telling us that ocean condition is deteriorating, and we need to act now to improve manufacturing processes and management.”

Even though many seabirds are affected by plastic pollution, the flesh-footed shearwater illustrates how widespread the problem is. The species has been listed as “near threatened” in Australia and “nationally vulnerable” in New Zealand.

photo of two people doing a medical procedure on a bird

Silke Stuckenbrock / Two Hands ProjectJennifer Lavers and Paul Sharp of the Two Hands Project guide a tube down a shearwater chick’s throat to flush out its stomach contents. More often than not, chicks will cough up something that does not belong in their stomachs – plastic.

For years, scientists believed the majority of plastic congregated in the North Pacific gyre, commonly known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” However, there are actually five main gyres that circulate plastic across the oceans. “A large percentage of the plastic that arrives on Lord Howe Island comes from Australia and New Zealand,” Hutton reports, “But plastic also comes from the Northern Hemisphere. We pick up a lot with Asian writing.”

Both shearwater adults and fledglings ingest plastic, but Lavers and Hutton surmise that adults have the instinct to cough it up. However, when the parents forage for their chicks plastic is inadvertently served for supper. “Fledglings sit in their burrows for about 90 days, getting fed food and plastic,” Hutton explains. “They tend not to cough up in the burrow, so the chicks retain that plastic for the entire 90 days.”

Plastic can puncture a chick’s stomach, leading to ulcerations, infection, and death. Lavers and Hutton also recently discovered that shearwaters are suffering from significant heavy metal contamination, most likely because of their plastic-rich diet. Plastic leaches toxic chemicals like chromium and cadmium into a bird’s bloodstream, causing permanent physiological and neurological damage. “Having just one piece of plastic in a seabird can potentially be detrimental,” Lavers says. “There is no safe threshold.”

Lavers studies seabirds around the world, but some of her most shocking finds have been with flesh-footed shearwaters. She once dissected a shearwater chick that contained 276 pieces of plastic, which was 14 percent of the bird’s body weight. While this case was extreme, the quantity of plastic found in shearwaters has increased nearly every year. In 2011, Lavers and Hutton found plastic in 96 percent of the flesh-footed shearwaters they studied. In 2012, 100 percent of the chicks contained plastic.

Despite this linear trend, 2014 is proving to be an anomalous year. The chicks seem to have less plastic inside them, but more pumice. As Lavers explains, the increase in pumice is probably due to the Kermadec Volcano eruption in 2012, which littered the Tasman Sea with volcanic rock. “It’s sad to say that plastic is the norm now,” Lavers says, “but I have to say that plastic is the norm. And yet we’re seeing a significant reduction in the proportion of birds containing plastic, and also the total number of pieces in each individual bird has gone down.” While this development could be viewed as a positive shift for the species, Lavers notes that most of the shearwater chicks were severely underweight this year, which points to a larger problem.

“It’s important to do studies over many years,” Hutton explains. “If someone had come in this year, and said, ‘okay, let’s see how the birds are being impacted by plastic,’ they might not think it’s a problem.” Lavers and Hutton have yet to publish their latest findings, but their next paper will examine the patterns and trends in flesh-footed shearwaters over the past 15 years, which could provide valuable information about ocean health. (Long-term studies like the one Lavers and Hutton are conducting are rare and underfunded. They rely on private donors, crowd-funding, and spend a lot of personal money to fund their research)

In the meantime, we need to listen more carefully to what flesh-footed shearwaters – and other seabird sentinels – are telling us. Hutton stresses the importance of public education, and the need for governments to work with corporations to reduce plastic waste. Lavers also believes that plastic pollution needs to be struck at the roots, placing responsibility with the industries that produce it. “Ocean plastic is the modern day Trojan horse, little toxic bullets in sheep’s clothing,” she says, “Exposing the enemy is a monumental task, but we may solve the problem if we find a way to prevent plastic from reaching the ocean in the first place.”

Help fund Lavers and Hutton’s research by donating here.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Toxic Effects of Ocean Plastic Far Greater Than Previously Thought

Plastic Toxicity Working by Stealth in Oceans

By Shar Adams, Epoch Times | May 28, 2014

SYDNEY – When dead seabirds washed up in their thousands along the eastern and southern seaboards of Australia last year, biologist Dr Jennifer Lavers became worried, very worried.

A research fellow at the Institute for Marine & Antarctic Studies in Hobart, Dr Lavers had been studying flesh-footed shearwaters, also known as mutton birds, for nearly a decade.

She knew that mass deaths, known as “wrecks”, were not uncommon for the migratory shearwaters which travel huge distances from the Bering Sea to Australia every year.

Wrecks of seabirds traditionally occur every ten years or so as a result of large storms or lack of food. They begin in September as the birds arrive exhausted from their travels and usually last a couple of weeks.

But the wreck last year continued for an unprecedented four months, and dead birds appeared in the tens of thousands on beaches from Mackay in Queensland to Albany in Western Australia.

“It was quite unusual, to have birds washing up dead in January, which is when their chicks should be hatching,” Dr Lavers said in a phone interview.

Wrecks are becoming more common with seven events since 2007. Dr Lavers believes they signal a much wider problem.

She has been studying the effects of plastic on shearwaters and says that while there are many contributing factors to wrecks, recent research indicates plastic is having a far more toxic effect on seabirds than first understood.

For one, the amount of plastic seabirds are ingesting has increased. Around 79 per cent of seabirds studied contained plastic in 2007 but that has now jumped to 100 per cent. Seabirds now contain “copious” amounts of plastic, she said. On average, around 17 pieces of plastic are found in a flesh-footed shearwater, but Dr Lavers says many contain much more.

“It is not unusual in fleshfoots to find more than 100, or more than 200, pieces of plastic in a single bird. They are very heavily impacted,” she said.

Toxicity of plastic

The amount of plastic in the ocean is well documented – the North Pacific Geyre near Hawaii is just one of six eddies known to trap oceanic garbage in patches of plastic and junk that extend over millions of square kilometres.

But an understanding of the way plastic is impacting our world has taken an alarming turn. In a new area of study, Dr Lavers joined forces with neurologist Professor Richard Banati from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).

Professor Banati had refined a technique called the tracer principle, which involves using slightly radioactive tracers to study and track materials at the molecular level. At ANSTO he has been working on detection of contaminants in a wide range of ecosystems.

It appears that plastic, no matter how small or in what quantities, increases in toxicity the longer it floats in the ocean, the process releasing more and, at the same time, attracting more toxins.

“As the plastic floats in the ocean for weeks, months, decades, it acts like a sponge or magnet. It takes all of the contaminants in the ocean water that are diluted into low concentration, absorbs it, sucks it up and concentrates it on the surface,” said Dr Lavers.

“The concentration of the heavy metals on the plastic can be more than one thousand times the concentration of that same contaminant in the ocean water.”

Those contaminants include heavy metals like lead, mercury and cadmium, known to affect the liver, kidneys, respiratory and neurological systems in animals and humans.

The two researchers discovered heavy metals in the feathers and wings of sea birds, suggesting that those contaminants were being absorbed into animal tissue. They found that plastic was acting as a facilitator or conduit of contaminants into the animals system.

“Regardless of the size…any plastic can act as a vector,” she said. “Hands down, across the board, we now know this without a doubt.”

Dr Lavers also found a correlation between the birds’ condition and the amount of plastic in the bird – the higher the amount of plastic, the higher the level of heavy metals and the poorer the body condition, including emaciation and dangerously short wing spans. The results are ringing alarm bells.

“Seabirds are highly respected as indicators of the health of the marine environment,” she said.

Dr Lavers believes her discovery is ground breaking because environmental scientists have traditionally focused on quantifying the physical effects of plastics on sea life, like throat or intestinal blockages and plastic bags wrapped around the head. A molecular pathway of toxicity is a whole other level.

“What is happening we can’t see and that is far more widespread than anyone understands,” she said.

Rethinking plastic

While many people may be aware of the toxic nature of some plastics, particularly Bisphenol A (BPA), vinyl chloride (PVC) and polystyrene, the study highlights the dangers of any plastic including biodegradables.

A combination of starches and plastic in the form of polychromes, biodegradables can be broken down in industrial facilities using specials conditions like extreme heat and other processes, but they do not break down by floating around in cold ocean water.

“Plastic does not biodegrade, polymer chains do not biodegrade, that is the definition of their chemical structure, they do not break down, they truly last forever,” said Dr Lavers.
As a result of his molecular line of research, Dr Banati says the pervasive nature of plastic requires a rethink.

“A traditional approach to environment management has been ‘the solution to pollution is dilution’. However researchers are becoming concerned about this approach,” he said in a statement.

“Specifically we are finding that mass plastic consumption, together with increased degradability of plastics, may actually lead to a steady increase of hazardous contaminants in the environment which would be difficult to reverse.”

Dr Banati says showing the traceablity of plastics allows a more comprehensive analysis of the lifecycle of plastic well beyond what can be seen with the naked eye.

The results indicate clear environmental, biological and social concerns and raise questions about industry standards for reusable or biodegradable plastics and for their collection.

“These are interesting questions and, if anything, what research at the atomic scale shows is that they are at least worth putting out there and discussing,” Dr Banati said.

Monday, June 2, 2014

Oceans of Plastic: Melbourne Filmmaker Sees Firsthand the Effects of Plastic on Marine Health

Published in the Epoch Times by Philippa Rayment, May 28, 2014

Melbourne-based filmmaker Michael J. Lutman has made two documentaries, 'Plasticized' and the newly-released 'Baykeepers', about plastic pollution in the world's oceans and on local Australian shores. (Michael J. Lutman/Facebook)

When Melbourne-based filmmaker Michael J. Lutman agreed to film a scientific expedition examining water quality in a section of the Atlantic Ocean in 2010, little did he realise how much it would change his life.

Mr Lutman, 33, says he knew nothing about boats, had never been out to sea before, and was not a conservationist. Yet in 2010 he joined the research vessel Seadragon on the very first scientific expedition to document plastic waste in the South Atlantic Gyre.

“Somehow, after a couple of drinks in San Francisco with a very passionate friend, I found myself in a port in Brazil about to sail for South Africa,” Mr Lutman recalled.

Essentially a landlubber at heart, Mr Lutman defied seasickness to film this research expedition. It involved four weeks at sea in a yacht in all weathers, trawling the surface of the ocean. His intention was just to film and remain neutral in his thinking. But the expedition had a profound effect on him, leading him to reflect on his own lifestyle and consuming habits.

Leading the expedition was Dr Marcus Ericsson, co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, a California-based organisation focused on raising awareness of the impact of plastic waste on the world’s oceans and in particular in all of the gyres.

The gyres are whirlpools where the currents of the oceans meet. Above Australia and lying between California and Hawaii is the North Pacific Gyre, commonly called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Below this and relatively close to Australia is the South Pacific Gyre.

In gyres, plastic pollution accumulates to such an extent that they have become vast floating garbage patches. Sea vessels tend to avoid travelling through gyres, so the effects of plastic pollution in these areas was not well-known.

Mr Lutman says the scientists were expecting to find plastic. “But unfortunately,” said Mr Lutman “we found plastic in every single sample that was pulled in.

By the time we got to the very centre of what is known as a gyre, the samples were becoming more like handfuls of plastic particulate, almost like if you put your hand in pebbles and picked them up.”

He recalls the crew hardly saw any marine life on their voyage even though they were at sea for 33 days. Sometimes fish could be seen around larger chunks of plastic and nibbling at it.

But most disturbing for him was seeing one whale travelling alongside the yacht, all the while like a giant sieve drawing into its stomach the small particles of plastic, just as the research team was doing the same with their own trawling sieve.

“I never was an environmentalist before, it was just an interesting topic for a film maker. Now I realise how big of a problem it is,” Mr Lutman said.

“It has altered my shopping habits and I am also telling my friends about it.

“They see me as being kind of a bit eccentric so to speak – not buying a tomato sauce that comes in a plastic bottle, I’ll buy the ones that come in glass. I won’t take the store’s bag, I’ll bring my own.

Mr Lutman’s resulting documentary, Plasticized, calls attention to the toxic soup that has resulted from decades of dumping used plastic into the ocean. He says that the biggest shock for the crew was that it wasn’t a plastic island that you can go out and walk on.

“There weren’t the bigger chunks. But when you looked a little bit closer, there were little bits of plastic in every single square kilometre of that ocean,” he said.

He says studies of blood samples have revealed the transference of these chemicals into our body and into our blood streams. “We are at the top of the food chain, so that pollutant builds up in our fatty tissue and ultimately affects our health.”

At a screening of Plasticized in Melbourne earlier this year, one viewer said she found it fascinating and very disturbing at the same time.

“It is just absolutely mind boggling the amount of plastic that there is getting into our system,” said Ms McWilliams. “We are all consuming things from the ocean in some way, shape or form. So we are throwing this rubbish away, but it is actually coming back into us at some point. It was mind blowing.

“I do have a recycled coffee cup that I use every morning. But I am sure there is a lot more that I will be thinking about after this.”

Awareness comes with being able to see what is happening, and as a documentary producer, Mr Lutman says it is the magic of film that inspires him.

“It is a great tool to show the beauty of the ocean and talk about something that is really important. It allows people to go on the journey that I went on, and to feel the same way as I do from having that experience,” he said.

Now four years on from the Seadragon research expedition, Mr Lutman says some progress has been made to stop the overflow of plastics into the ocean. A few months after a screening of Plasticized in Fremantle, WA, and a chat with the Mayor, the city put forth legislation to ban single-use plastic bags.

“I feel like there is hope despite the pessimistic outlook,” Mr Lutman said.

After screening Plasticized at the Eco Centre in St Kilda, Mr Lutman was commissioned to make another film, called Baykeepers, into the investigation of plastic pollution on a local Australian level. He’s been busy filming seals entangled, dead birds with bellies full of plastic, and even a dolphin that had ingested plastic bags.

“It was all quite startling,” Mr Lutman said, “but essential to show in my new film, as it shows this plastic pollution problem is happening everywhere, including Melbourne, Australia.”

A free screening of Michael Lutman’s new documentary Baykeepers will be held at the Royal Yacht Club in Williamstown, Melbourne on May 31.

To learn more about Plasticized, visit www.plasticizedthemovie.com.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

New study shows plastic pollution much worse than accepted

published in Sail World on Sun 22 Dec 2013 by Jeni Bone

Plastic pollution is likely to be much worse than officially recognised, posing a threat to Australian species and ecology, according to the latest study published in journal PLOS ONE.

Each square kilometre of Australian sea surface water is contaminated by around 4,000 pieces of tiny plastics, according to researchers, Julia Reisser, Oceanographer and PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia and Charitha Pattiaratchi, Winthrop Professor of Coastal Oceanography at UWA.

These small plastic fragments, mostly less than 5mm across, are loaded with pollutants that can negatively affect several marine species, from tiny fish and zooplankton to large turtles and whales.

Plastics can be transported from populated areas to the marine environment by rivers, wind, tides, rainwater, storm drains, sewage disposal, and flooding, or can directly reach the sea from boats and offshore installations.

Throughout their marine journey, plastics break down into increasingly smaller pieces mostly due to the effect of sunlight and heat. These plastic fragments, commonly called microplastics when smaller than 5mm, represent the vast majority of human-made debris present at beaches, seafloor, and in the water column.

Gyre ocean rubbish - .. .

The effects of plastics on food webs and ecosystems have become focus of concern over the last decade. It is now known that over half of our plastic objects contain at least one ingredient classified as hazardous.

To make matters worse, plastics that enter the oceans become increasingly toxic by adsorbing oily pollutants on their surface.

When plastic is ingested, these concentrated toxins can be delivered to animals and transferred up their food chains.

This biomagnification of toxins is more likely to occur when plastics are small enough to be ingested by low trophic fauna, such as small fish and zooplankton.

These tiny ocean plastics may affect the health of entire food webs, which include humans. For instance, little plastic pieces were found in the stomach of some Southern Bluefin tuna captured off Tasmania and destined for human consumption.

Until now, plastic contamination in Australian waters was mostly inferred from beach clean-up reports. There was no at-sea survey focused on sampling plastic debris in waters around this country.

Researchers used a net called Manta Net to catch floating plastics at the ocean surface. Small fragments of hard plastic were the most common type, but soft plastics, such as fragments of wrappers, and strings (mostly fishing lines) were also common.

Oceanic gyres - .. .

Size and types of marine plastics collected around Australia. Examples of each plastic type are shown in the photos.

These plastics were mostly made of polyolefins (polyethylene and polypropylene). These polymers account for 52% of our plastic production and are typically used to make throwaway packaging. They are also used for manufacturing fishing equipment such as crates, nets, ropes, and lines.

Our overall mean sea surface plastic concentration was 4,256.4 plastic pieces per km2. This mean value is higher than those reported for other regions, such as the Caribbean Sea (1,414 pieces per km2) and Gulf of Maine (1,534 pieces per km2).

However, in the subtropical gyres, plastics tend to accumulate due to converging ocean currents, and mean plastic concentrations are higher: from 20,328 pieces per km2 in the North Atlantic Gyre, to 334,271 pieces per km2 in the North Pacific Gyre. The Mediterranean Sea is also a global hotspot for plastics: it has around 116,000 plastics per km2.

Researchers observed higher plastic concentrations close to major Australian cities (Sydney, Brisbane) and industrial centres (Karratha) as well as in remote areas where ocean currents converged (such as south-west Tasmania).

These observations, along with our ocean current modelling results, indicate that marine plastics reach Australian waters from multiple sources: domestic and international populated areas, as well as maritime operations.

Plastics, made mostly of oil and gas, are cheaper than the natural materials they replace for the manufacture of many objects, such as packaging and fishing gear.

As a result, incentives to re-use or recycle every-day items have decreased over the last few decades. Meanwhile plastic production has increased from 1,700,00 tonnes in 1950 to 280,000,000 tonnes in 2011.

In Australia, 1,476,690 tonnes of plastics were used in 2011-2012, of which just 20.5% was recycled. Most of these plastics (around 37%) were used for manufacturing single-use disposable packaging, including plastic bottles, cups, and bags.

Marine plastic pollution is a global issue caused by our massive production of plastic waste. The solution for this recent environmental problem is not simple.

Authors of the report believe there are three important steps. First, decrease plastic waste: this could be achieved by reducing production of single-use plastic packaging. Second, improve our plastic disposal practices on land at an international level. And last, better enforce the laws prohibiting dumping of plastics at sea.

More at www.plosone.org

by Jeni Bone

Related Stories:

"Plastics highly concentrated in Australian waters" - Phys.org

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Great ocean garbage patches 'share' plastic waste — with VIDEO

Posted in environmentalresearchweb.org by Liz Kalaugher on January 30, 2013

Plastic waste entering the ocean can make its way to any of the world's "great ocean garbage patches" and even move between them. That is according to researchers from the University of New South Wales, Australia.

"The patches are an international problem," said researcher Erik van Sebille in a video abstract for Environmental Research Letters (ERL). "It is not that plastic from one country ends up in one particular patch. Quite the contrary, all of the plastic ends up in all of the patches, and the patches are interconnected in a way that we didn't know before."

Van Sebille and colleagues' model of plastic dispersion is the first to include seasonal variations in ocean currents and to vary the amount of plastic entering the ocean according to the number of people living near each coast.

There are currently five garbage patches, formed at a gyre – a system of rotating ocean currents – in each of the world's subtropical ocean basins. A garbage patch is also likely to form in the Barents Sea in the Arctic within the next 50 years or so, the team's model revealed.

Over 10 years or so, the researchers found, the rubbish in one patch can actually move to another patch, assisted by oceanic eddies up to 50 km across. After thousands of years, a large amount of debris released outside the North Atlantic is likely to have moved to the North Pacific garbage patch.

"If we want to prevent, reduce or clean up the patches, we really need to have an international collaboration," said van Sebille.

To achieve their results, the researchers used data from surface drifter buoys, which float around the ocean and relay regular updates on their position. The Global Drifter Program has introduced such buoys into the ocean since the early 1980s. The team used this information to model the motion of plastic rubbish for the next 1100 years using a particle-trajectory tracer approach.

"The garbage starts at the coasts around the ocean where the people live, and within a few months the currents move it into the open ocean and there it forms the great garbage patches, which are a bit like vacuum cleaners of the ocean," said van Sebille.

The action of the sun and the ocean degrades the plastic into small pellets just millimetres across that float in the upper ocean in a "kind of soup structure". According to van Sebille, "plankton grows on the pellets, birds eat them, fish eat them and because these pellets and the plastics can contain quite a lot of toxins, that becomes part of the food chain."

The effect on the ecosystem is unclear and it is also hard to gauge the weight of plastic in the ocean. "What we do know is that in some regions of the North Pacific there is more weight in plastic than there is in life," said van Sebille. "If you go out fishing, you find more plastics in your nets than you do fish or even plankton."
The plastic is likely to stay in place for at least 1000 years – van Sebille said there is really no solution for getting it out of the ocean. "It is too small, it is too diverse, the soup is too thin to get out there with a ship and pick it up," he said. "Of course, the way to go would be to make plastics that do break down. Plastics that even if they get into the ocean don't really have the time to accumulate in garbage patches because they will just disintegrate and will be gone from the food chain."

Now the team plans to study what happens to plastics closer to the coast. "Clearly, by the amount of plastic found on beaches not all of it ends up in the gyres to form garbage patches in the deep ocean," said van Sebille. "We need to find out what happens to the plastics closer to land, where most fishing occurs, and what effect that has on the environment around our coasts."

Van Sebille and colleagues reported their work in Environmental Research Letters (ERL).

About the author

Liz Kalaugher is editor of environmentalresearchweb.