We’ve been living with plastics since the 1950s. Their shelf life beats that of many other materials.
Our landfills attest to that.
Our oceans do, too. The waves are awash in plastic.
Since the discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the late 1980s, we’ve learned more about the downstream effects of our plastics habit. A mass of floating plastics, chemical sludge and other debris, the patch spins loosely in an eddy in the north-central Pacific Ocean.
It catches and collects an unending daily supply of long-lasting garbage brought in on the wind, tides and currents from surrounding coastlines and passing ships. Estimates of the patch’s size frequently reference Texas.
The Pacific Ocean isn’t unique. Every ocean has its own garbage patch.
You could say they are the planet’s toilet bowls that are forever trying to flush the almost 20 million tonnes of plastics the UN estimates we dump into the sea every year.
Birds, seals and other marine animals have washed up with plastic soda-can holders or fishing line looped around their necks, feet or flippers. Researchers have found ocean animals whose guts are filled with plastic.
And that’s the big stuff, the plastic we can see — the bits and pieces, bags and bottles, jugs and jars, toys and tackle.
Then there’s the small stuff. Measuring smaller than one-10th of a millimetre up to five millimetres in diameter, microplastics pass right through sewage filters into watersheds and on into the oceans.
Tiny plastic particles are found in fish and shellfish. It’s even in table salt. Researchers looked at 16 brands of sea salt, which is made by evaporating sea water. In 15 brands, they found one to 10 particles per kilogram. Pass the salt … and the plastic.
Late last year, the federal government banned plastic microbeads used in, for example, cosmetics and toothpastes, beginning in 2018. Canada is, to date, one of four countries to take this step.
Microbeads, however, are only a small part of the ocean’s tiny-plastic problem. Every time we wash a fleece jacket or blanket, fibres break off and wash down the drain. Fleece is made from polyethylene terephthalate, a kind of polyester also used to make soda bottles.
Patagonia, the outdoor-clothing company, admits its products might add to the ocean-plastics problem. Its research indicates machine washing causes fleece-clothing fibres to break, and is the microfibre’s entry point into watersheds. Preliminary results suggest front-loading washing machines, which tumble clothes, are gentler on fleece and the environment than top-loading machines, which mechanically stir clothes.
Regular garbage serves as another source of tiny plastics. Plastic doesn’t decompose, but some plastics can crumble or disintegrate after exposure to heat, sunlight or time. (Think of the elastic in the waistband of an aging pair of underpants. One day, it’s serviceable and faithfully doing its job; the next day, old faithful is slipping down your backside.)
Biodegradable plastic is designed to do this. The biodegradable grocery bag you keep in your car to hold garbage will suddenly disintegrate into dime-sized flakes and deposit months of crusty tissues and candy wrappers into the passenger-side footwell.
However, United Nations researchers recently reported that biodegradable plastics require industrial composters and prolonged exposure to temperatures about 50 C to break down. Quite apart from what that says about my car, this means these plastics rarely disintegrate in cold ocean waters. And if and when they eventually do, they don’t solve the problem — they just add to the oceans’ synthetic soup.
Efforts and research are underway to clean up ocean garbage. A Norwegian oil billionaire recently announced he will underwrite a garbage-collecting research ship, and a Dutch startup is investigating how to collect the waste from ocean currents passively. Given the extent of the oceans and the extent of the problem, a few lonely ships and ocean-filter networks seem, well, insufficient.
Especially if we fail to deal with plastic at its source — which is us. Butchart Gardens has stopped selling bottled water. Victoria is again considering banning single-use plastic shopping bags.
We all have to look at our plastic use, in all of its forms.
