This is the research paper I wrote last year that opened my eyes to the horrors of polymers. I had a really hard time writing this thing. It was torture. I actually cried.
Plastic is everywhere. For the last fifty years, polymers have been rapidly enshrouding the planet. A walk down even a residential street will reveal the shrapnel of disposable lifestyles. Empty cigarette lighters, brightly colored twist-off bottle caps, candy wrappers, grocery bags hanging from tree limbs (aptly named “witch’s knickers”), and other discard are common sights. So common that they are often overlooked as part of society’s landscape. However, plastic lurks in less-obvious locations. For example, turn over a bottle of body wash and look at the ingredients. If the brand advertises itself as an exfoliant, chances are good that somewhere in the long list of unpronounceables is the nefarious word: “polyethylene” (Weisman 117). University of Plymouth marine biologist Richard Thompson explains: “They’re selling plastic meant to go right down the drain, into the sewers, into the rivers, right into the ocean. Bite-sized pieces of plastic to be swallowed by little sea creatures” (qtd in Weisman 117). It doesn’t stop there. These tiny plastic particles are used with increasing frequency for near-instant disposal.
So what’s the problem with some plankton eating microscopic bits of polyethylene? Polyethylene is one type of many man-made polymers. They are unlike the polymers that have been around for millions of years in the form of spider silk, plant cellulose, rubber, cotton, and even fingernails (Weisman 118). Unlike the simple chains of molecules produced in nature, synthetic polymers have been enhanced with the addition of other elements, making them stronger and unable to be broken down naturally. Contrary to what seems evident by the sight of deteriorating grocery bags on the side of the road, or brittle, yellowed signage, plastic does not break down. It only gets smaller. Deteriorated plastic is designed to photodegrade, meaning that “ultraviolet solar radiation weakens plastic’s tensile strength by breaking its long chain-like polymer molecules into shorter segments” (Weisman 126), thus the effects of weathered patio furniture or outdoor decor. Senior research scientist at North Carolina’s Research Triangle, Dr. Anthony Andrady explains that “plastic is still plastic. The material still remains a polymer. Polyethylene is not biodegraded in any practical time scale. There is no mechanism in the marine environment to biodegrade that long a molecule.” Even further, when large items break down into smaller pieces, and then down to powder, the “residue remains in the sea, where filter feeders will find it” (qtd in Weisman 126).
These discarded plastics don’t only affect filter feeders. Besides the direct connection between marine life serving as food for human consumption, like the cartoon poster of small fish being eat by a succession of larger and larger fish, humans end up as the biggest “fish”, ingesting the accumulated chemicals in the food chain players. While this may seem an obvious conclusion, on par with the argument for eating organic and hormone-free meats and foods, deeper problems than food sources lurk. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a major component in six-billion pounds of U.S. produced plastic, annually. BPA has been used for lining cans of food, dental fillings, baby bottles, and other plastics such as polycarbonates and epoxy resins, despite being a known endocrine disrupter. When BPA photodegrades, it releases chemicals that are similar in structure and effect to estrogen, which seep into the water supply. “When combined with chlorine used to purify municipal water, harmful estrogen-mimicking organ chlorides are also formed”. BPA, along with other similar chemicals, persistently run through our drinking water (Pyhtila 46).
Dr. Jennifer Sass, senior scientist in Washington D.C. with the National Resources Defense Council states: “anyone drinking tap water in most American cities is essentially taking hormones with their glass of water” (qtd in Pyhtila 47), and not only from plastic originating hormone-clones. The Associated Press found that municipal water supplies in many major cities are laced with up to 63 different identifiable pharmaceutical drugs including sex hormones such as estrogen from birth control, hormone replacement drugs, mood stabilizers, and anti-anxiety medications. Medications and their by-products find their way into the water via disposal, and what goes down the toilet after the human body has absorbed what it can. These drugs cannot be filtered out by the water treatment facilities, so each glass of water can potentially contain mini-doses of thousands of different drugs prescribed to thousands of different people (Pyhtila 47).
Although many developed countries (including the U.S.A.) have begun to ban BPA, it is still widely used. In 2007, the California Senate banned companies from “manufacturing, processing, or distributing any plastics packaging ranging in size from 8 ounces to 5 gallons that contain styrene, vinyl chloride, bisphenol A, perflouroctanoic acid, nonylphenol or alkylphenol”. (Verespej). However, this will not go into effect until 2015 (“Environment”).
The Ocean Protection Council (a state commission responsible for protecting California’s oceans) claims that sixty to eighty percent of all marine debris and ninety percent of floating marine debris is composed of plastic (Verespej). Although the majority of debris in landfills is composed of construction waste and paper products (Weisman 119), plastic is now the most common feature on the ocean’s surface. (And what happens when all of this plastic eventually sinks, and the ocean floor is covered in an impenetrable layer that will never break down?) Some researchers estimate that eight million items of garbage enter the ocean every single day, and most of them are plastic (“Debris”). In fact, there is now six times more plastic by weight than plankton in the upper part of the sea. If it seems paradoxical that there is more plastic in the ocean than on land, it is because eighty percent of plastic is originally discarded on land. “The world’s landfills [aren’t] overflowing with plastic…because most of it ends up in an ocean-fill”. It blows out of garbage trucks or railroad shipping containers, drifts out of landfills, and flows down storm drains into rivers that flow to the sea. (Weisman 123)
Plastic that ends up in the ocean is promptly ingested by marine life. Many people cut soda can rings so fish and birds won’t strangle on them like an unyielding noose. However, cut into strips, they highly resemble drifting jellyfish. So do plastic bags, which Kenya alone produces 4,000 tons of each month (Weisman 123). Plastic in a raw state (before being rendered into bottles, bags, or packaging) consists of tiny pellets in various colors. These pellets, called “nurdles” also look like tasty bites to many creatures. 5.5 quadrillion nurdles (or 250 billion pounds) are manufactured every year (Weisman 123-124). Since plastic cannot even be broken down on a molecular level, it also remains intact in animal stomachs. An estimated one million birds, and one hundred thousand marine mammals and turtles die from this cause every year. One turtle was found recently with over one thousand pieces of plastic in its stomach (“trash vortex”). Sea birds eat an alarming amount of plastic debris, and since it cannot pass through their delicate systems, a belly-full starves them to death by blocking their digestive tract. Even baby birds die of too much plastic in their systems because the parents regurgitate into their throats. They perish before they even learn to fly. Some birds wash up on shore laden with an incredible variety of plastic scraps within their small stomachs. “If they were human-sized, they’d have an average of more than 4 pounds of plastic in their bellies” (“Debris”).
Fortunately, there have been some optimistic scientific experiments dealing with the breakdown of plastics in the last few years, and most deal with bacteria. Bacteria are the most prevalent life form on earth. They constitute almost ninety percent of the planet’s biomass and are more diverse than any other living thing. Although extremely simple in structure, all life is thought to have formed from these unicellular blobs. It is almost poetic that science is now turning to bacteria to solve one of the most critical and complex environmental crises of our time. One of the most notable and promising experiments comes from seventeen-year-old Daniel Burd, a high school student in Ontario, Canada. Burd mixed dirt from a landfill with yeast and tap water, and added ground up polythene bags. After tweaking temperature and other variants, he managed to decompose the plastic by 43% in six weeks, and projected that an entire bag could be eaten in three months. The bacteria, Pseudomonas and Sphingomonas work in tandem with only a small amount of heat and carbon dioxide generated as waste. Since his results can be easily instituted in any home, Burd believes that it would be simple to duplicate the experiment on an industrial scale (Wylie). Although Burd won first place in the science fair, the world has yet to see any benefits from his discovery. For now, “no plastic has died a natural death yet”, and no single bacteria can digest plastic so far, because “50 years is too short a time for evolution to develop the necessary biochemistry” (Weisman 127). It is also debatable that plastic-eating bacteria would be beneficial at all, since most plastic is produced to protect food from harmful bacteria in the first place.
We live in a world created almost entirely in the last fifty years. Within that short time, two massive “garbage islands” have formed in the Atlantic and Pacific gyres. They cannot be viewed from satellite imagery because the accumulation is loose and floating at various levels in the water, and most of the bits of plastic have been broken down into small pieces by waves and friction. This is also the reason why it is so hard to clean up. When scientists use nets to trawl these areas, the water resembles a colorful, chunky soup, instead of clear water with the occasional krill or seaweed. Under the microscope, even more plastic can be seen. This is only the plastic that floats. About seventy percent of plastic that ends up in the ocean sinks to the bottom, and this is true for every sea. The North Sea alone contains an estimated 600,000 tons of litter (“trash vortex”).
With the world and its creatures weighed down with complex man-made molecules, it’s curious to think that millions of years from now, pressed next to the fossilized remains of delicate ferns and bony fish, will be the skeletons of cell phones, tubes of makeup, yogurt cups, and a myriad of complex supplies created for our disposable culture. If items such as papyrus paper can survive thousands of years, what chance does the planet have of sloughing off its polymer coat? Will some distant version of human beings still be able to rebuild our plastic society? Will they be astounded at the permanence of what has been created, or horrified that the label on a container of Gatorade is still flawlessly readable?
Works Cited
"Debris endangering birds." Plastics News 17.30 (2005). MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Asheville-Buncombe Tech Comm College Holly Lib. 23 Nov. 2008 <http://search.ebscohost.co
"Environment." California State Senate. 2007. 23 Nov. 2008 <http://www.sen.ca.gov/sfa/
Pyhtila, Holly. "Pink Water: Plastics, Pesticides, and Pills Are Contaminating Out Drinking Supply." Earth Island Journal 23.3 (2008): 45-48. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Asheville-Buncombe Tech Comm College Holly Lib., Asheville, NC. 14 Nov. 2008 <http://search.ebscohost.co
"The trash vortex." Greenpeace. 23 Nov. 2008 <http://www.greenpeace.org/
Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us. New York: St. Martin's Press-Thomas Dunne, 2007.
Wylie, Anton. "Dissolving the plastic bag problem: The Phage Factor." The Register. 11 June 2008. 23 Nov. 2008 <http://www.theregister.co.
So, can our constantly evolving technology save us from our constantly evolving technology? If only every company that makes plastics (and various other products) had to participate in real, third-party verification of the potentially harmful externalities that cause these types of problems. Our economy desperately needs to adopt a systems/true-cost approach to manufacturing, and stop focusing on the dangerously short-sighted raw material + energy = product + profit.
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