Plastic Stuff

No longer consider “kooks,” the ranks of people concerned about the environmental effects of living a comfortable and convenient life in industrialized nations have swelled to become the mainstream.

What are they concerned about? Global warming, tons of trash in the ground and the oceans, the deleterious health effects of radiation in the atmosphere and chemicals in food and water, loss of ecosystems and diversity of life, extinction of species, dwindling natural resources, permanent scarring of the landscape due to mining, the violence of war as the struggle over oil reserves grows more dangerous and desperate, ever-more invasive methods of retrieval as we turn to more difficult-to-reach reserves, and an impending shortage as reserves are depleted.

When I was a child, the world population was four billion. Thirty-five years later, the world population is six billion. Nearly 50 percent of those people are living in poverty.1 Can we, as conscientious human beings, expect them to continue living in poverty? What happens as they achieve a higher standard of living? Will they consume as Americans do? Will they generate the mounds of trash and the pounds of carbon emissions that Americans do in the process?

The New York Times reports that brown plumes of pollution, the result of industrialization, blot out the sun in large parts of Asia.2 Unless we can change the impact of development and higher standards of living, our environment will continue to sag and even collapse under the weight of trash and carbon emissions.

How can we enjoy a high standard of living without using up resources and killing the planet in the process, especially as poverty is reduced and standards of living are raised in the developing world?

We must develop a new model for living a comfortable, convenient and healthy life. Those of us who have enjoyed a life of modern convenience and technology for nearly a century must not expect to continue consuming as irresponsibly as we have up to now. We must consider the impact of what we buy and consume, and seek alternatives. Just as we led the way in developing machines and technology, so must we lead the way in reducing our footprint on the earth.

What do we do that poses a problem? Wow! Big question. The most obvious and immediate in terms of trash and consumption of irreplaceable resources is the use of oil for “disposable” products and for transportation. We drive gas guzzlers and we use plastic!

We all know about the problems emissions from inefficient gasoline engines cause. But how much do we know about the problems associated with the use of plastic?

Jay Sinha, of lifewithoutplastic.com, says, “Most plastics are made from petroleum, a nonrenewable resource extracted and processed using energy-intensive techniques that destroy fragile ecosystems. Plastic packaging, especially the ubiquitous plastic bag, is an enormous source of landfill waste and is regularly eaten by numerous marine and land animals, to fatal consequences.”3

Scientists are finding health risks associated with the manufacture and use of plastic, as well. Again, Jay Sinha tells us,

“In terms of health risks, the evidence is growing that chemicals leached from plastics used in cooking and food/drink storage are harmful to human health. The most disturbing of these are hormone (endocrine) disrupters, such as bisphenol A (BPA), which can stimulate the growth of cancer cells. . . . The manufacture of plastic, as well as its destruction by incineration, pollutes air, land and water and exposes workers to toxic chemicals, including carcinogens. The evidence of health risks from certain plastics is increasingly appearing in established, peer-reviewed scientific journals.”4

Plastic doesn’t degrade for hundreds of years. Juliet Lapidos says, in Slate magazine,

News reports have cited a statistic that the ubiquitous receptacles [plastic bags] take 500 years to break down in landfills. How do we know? To make long-term estimates of this sort, scientists often use respirometry tests. The experimenters place a solid waste sample—like a newspaper, banana peel or plastic bag—in a vessel containing microbe-rich compost, then aerate the mixture. Over the course of several days, microorganisms assimilate the sample bit by bit and produce carbon dioxide; the resultant CO2 level serves as an indicator of degradation. Newspapers take two to five months to biodegrade in a compost heap; banana peels take several days. But when scientists test generic plastic bags, nothing happens—there's no CO2 production and no decomposition. Why? The most common type of plastic shopping bag—the kind you get at supermarkets—is made of polyethylene, a man-made polymer that microorganisms don't recognize as food.

So, where does the 500-year statistic come from? Although standard polyethylene bags don't biodegrade, they do photodegrade. When exposed to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, polyethylene's polymer chains become brittle and start to crack. This suggests that plastic bags will eventually fragment into microscopic granules. As of yet, however, scientists aren't sure how many centuries it takes for the sun to work its magic. . . . According to some plastics experts, all these figures are just another way of saying ‘a really, really long time.’”5

Plastic bottles, too, are a mountainous problem. “Why Recycle Plastic?” on www.professorshouse.com puts it this way:

When was the last time you bought a drink in a plastic bottle at the gas station? Chances are, you threw out that bottle when you were done—without a second thought. That’s what most of us do, even though all plastics can be recycled—and there are serious environmental consequences for throwing them away. Here are a few reasons you should recycle that plastic drink bottle next time, instead of tossing it in the trash.

People in the U.S. throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles an hour. Plastic is one of the most 'disposable' materials in U.S. culture. We throw away our milk bottles, soda bottles, water bottles, trash bags, grocery bags, product packaging and more every day without giving it a second thought. . . . Plastic is rapidly filling our landfills.

Making new plastic requires significant amounts of fossil fuels. Studies suggest that between 7 percent and 8 percent of the world’s fossil fuels are used in producing new plastics. This doesn’t sound like a great amount, but it accounts for millions of tons of fuels per year. Recycling could preserve these fuels—even reuse them in other markets.

Plastic is easy to recycle—although few people do it. All plastic can be recycled. But it’s not being recycled as much as it should be. Some studies show that only 10 percent of plastic bottles created are recycled, leaving that extra 90 percent to take up space in landfills and kill life in the oceans.

Plastic bottles take up space in landfills. Our country’s landfills are closing at a rate of around two per day. The landfill-space crisis is especially problematic in cities, where inner-city trash dumps are often filled to capacity, and surrounding communities are unwilling to allow new landfills to come to their neighborhoods. Many coastal cities use the ocean as a dumping ground, resulting in depleted fish stock, polluted beaches, and other health issues for the inhabitants. Plastic bottles make up approximately 11 percent of the contents of landfills.

Incinerating plastic contributes to greenhouse gases. To save space at landfills, plastics are often burned in incinerators. When this is done, chemicals . . . are released into the atmosphere, adding to greenhouse gas emissions.

Plastic in the oceans is responsible for the deaths of millions of sea animals. Plastic bottles floating on the surface of the oceans can look like food to larger sea life—often with fatal consequences. Fish, sea birds and other ocean creatures often get caught in plastic rings that strangle them or constrict their throats so that they cannot swallow.

Plastic takes a long time to degrade. Nobody is quite sure how long it takes for plastic to biodegrade—it hasn’t been around long enough, and the first plastics made are still around today. Scientists believe, however, that plastics will take hundreds of years to degrade fully—if not longer. Plastics as we know them have only been around a hundred years, and they are already a problem. Imagine five hundred years’ worth of plastics in our landfills.

Plastics contain harmful chemicals. These include cadmium, lead, PVC and other pollutants in the form of artificial coloring, plasticizers and stabilizers. Some of these have been discovered to be harmful and are not in currently-manufactured plastics, but the older, more toxic plastics are still filling our landfills and floating around in our oceans, releasing pollutants into the environment.

Recycling plastic saves energy. Studies show that the energy saved by recycling a single plastic bottle—as compared to producing a new one from scratch—is enough to power a single 60-watt bulb for six hours. Think of those 2.5 million bottles thrown away per hour in the U.S.—we could power our homes on the energy savings we’d gain by recycling every one of those plastic bottles.

Recycled plastic is useful. Recycled plastic is found in many unexpected places—including carpeting, the fuzz on tennis balls, scouring pads, paintbrushes, clothes, industrial strapping, shower stalls, drain pipes, flower pots and lumber. It also contains oils that could be recycled and reused as fossil fuels.

The bottom line is this: recycling plastic is a good idea. It’s good for the environment, good for energy savings, and good for the health of wildlife and humans. So the next time you buy a bottle of soda or water, don’t just throw it in the trash. Recycle it—and do one small thing for the environment. If you do this every time you buy a bottled drink, your small contributions will definitely add up to a big difference."

We’ve looked at plastic bags and plastic bottles. What about plastic cutlery? And plastic plates used in fastfood restaurants? And plastic cups used at sporting events, outdoor festivals and parties?

You can imagine that if 2.5 million plastic bottles are thrown away every hour in the United States, how many plastic forks, knives, plates and cups are thrown out! The prospect is mind-boggling. It gives rise to a sick, panicky feeling if we think about how rapidly we are piling up mounds of plastic trash that will take 500–1000 years to degrade. Yes, some is recycled, but plastic cutlery is usually polystyrene (type 6 plastic) and that is not so easy to recycle.

Obviously, it is incumbent upon concerned citizens to eliminate our use of plastic as much as possible. And it our responsibility to humanity to keep things working as long as possible and to dispose of them properly.5

Here are some suggestions:

• Reuse the plastic bags you cannot avoid taking.
• Refuse plastic bags when you can.
• Carry reusable bags.
• Wash and reuse plastic cutlery.
• Avoid frequenting restaurants that use plasticware.
• Lobby your lawmakers to pass legislation outlawing “disposable” plastic items.
• Wash and reuse plastic water bottles that you already have.
• Stop buying water in plastic bottles.
• Become conscious of how much plastic packaging consumer items are wrapped in.
• Pressure local governments to institute recycling programs, if they haven’t already.
• Buy biodegradable trash bags, if you must use plastic.
• Lobby fastfood chains and local restaurants to use biodegradable containers and flatware, available from www.trellisearth.com, among others.
• Read www.fakeplasticfish.com for one woman’s efforts to live plastic-free.
• Finally, view “The Story of Stuff,” on www.storyofstuff.com. This is a brilliant summary of the fallacy of a consumer economy.

Notes

1. “The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US $1.25 (PPP) per day, and moderate poverty as less than $2 a day, estimating that ‘in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day.’1 The proportion of the developing world's population living in extreme economic poverty fell from 28 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2001. Looking at the period 1981–2001, the percentage of the world's population living on less than $1 per day has halved. Most of this improvement has occurred in East and South Asia. In East Asia, the World Bank reported that ‘The poverty headcount rate at the $2-a-day level is estimated to have fallen to about 27 percent [in 2007], down from 29.5 percent in 2006 and 69 percent in 1990.’” Note that Asia has undergone a massive industrialization over the last 50 years, perhaps explaining the drop in poverty. At the same time, there has been a rise in pollution in Asia.

2. “A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations. . . . Climate scientists say that similar plumes from industrialization of wealthy countries after World War II probably blunted global warming through the 1970s. Pollution laws largely removed that pall.”

3. Jay Sinha, “Why Is Plastic a Problem?”, www.lifewithoutplastic.com; accessed July 20, 2009;

4. ibid. For example, a study published in the September 17, 2008 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association found that adults with the highest levels of BPA in their urine were more than twice as likely to report having diabetes or heart disease—compared with adults with the lowest levels of the chemical in their urine. See http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/300.11.1353.

5. Juliet Lapidos, “Will My Plastic Bag Still Be Here in 2507?”, www.slate.com, June 27, 2007

6. “Why Recycle Plastic?”, www.professorshouse.com

7. “How You Can Save the Planet,” www.fixit.com/Guide/Info/environment#Section_How_you_can_save_the_planet.