Plastics in the Environment

Plastic products have many uses in today's society, including some considered indispensable. However, there is a down side to plastic. Even though most plastics are technically recyclable, the recycling infrastructure for plastics is in its infancy.

The Plastic Dilemma

• One-third of all plastic is used for items with a lifespan of less than one year and very little plastic is recycled.
• Less than 3 percent of the 60 billion pounds of plastic produced nationwide every year are actually recycled.
• Plastic takes up almost 18% of California's landfill space - more than food and yard waste combined.
• This percentage is continuing to grow, and the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that a quarter of our garbage will be plastic by the turn of the century.
• Even though plastic beverage containers are easy to recycle in California, plastic trails other materials. 80% of aluminum cans are recycled, and nearly 60% of glass bottles. More than half of plastic beverage containers end up in landfills.
• Film plastic (including plastic bags) is nearly half of landfilled plastics.
• Plastic bags are the most trashed plastic from California's homes.
• Plastic is made from petrolium, a non renewable force.

Fighting Plastic Films

Efforts are underway in all parts of the world to stem the flow of plastic films, particularly in the form of plastic bags, into our landfills, waterways, and natural environments.

Checkout bag fee proposed

San Francisco's Commission on the Environment, and subsequently the Board of Supervisors, recently enacted legislation exploring ways to deal with litter and other problems associated with supermarket checkout bags. The goal of the Commission's proposal is to significantly reduce the number of grocery bags in San Francisco's waste stream. Similar measures in Ireland reduced the number of supermarket checkout bags by over 90 percent. The proposal recommends a fee to recoup the actual costs the city currently pays for bag-related problems, from litter on the streets to contamination of recyclables. According to figures developed by the Environment Department, the city pays $8.7 million annually to manage bags that were disposed of improperly &151; and divided by the estimated total number of bags distributed in the city each year, that works out to 17 cents apiece.

Greening the Emerald Isle

Ireland now levies a fee on shopping bags. According to the Irish Department of the Environment, shoppers used around 1.2 billion plastic bags per year before the fee was imposed in March 2002. Since then, the use has dropped by around 95 percent. And in return, the department has received an influx of cash to fund recycling programs from the 15-euro cents (about 17 U.S. cents) charged for every shopping bag purchased. As of July 28, the levy had raised 13.5 million euros ($15.15 million) that the department has plowed into recycling facilities around the country.

In a recent statement, Minister of State Pat "The Cope" Gallagher noted data showing that plastic bags now comprise about 0.3 percent of the nation's litter, compared with 5 percent before the levy. In Dingle's largest supermarket, the plastic bag levy has worked smoothly except for tourists who are sometimes upset at having to pay or find some other method to carry groceries, SuperValu store administrator Chris Norveil said. "Local people bring their own bags now; they use boxes, or they carry their shopping out to their cars," she said. "There wasn't very much fuss after it was presented by the government as a way of saving the environment."

Plastic Bags Banned in India

The western Indian state of Maharashtra is banning most plastic bags, blaming them for choking drains and causing floods in 2005 that left more than 1,000 people dead, most in Bombay. Businesses caught using them would be fined 5,000 rupees ($114), while individuals would have to pay 1,000 rupees (about $25). After two violations, offenders could be arrested and face a three-month jail sentence.

"Gutters choked with plastic bags caused the flooding which led to enormous losses for the state," the chief minister said in a statement. "The media and environmental and citizens' groups demanded that plastic bags be banned, so we are banning them." Bangladesh also banned plastic bags after blaming them for clogged drains and floods there, while a handful of Indian states that rely on tourism have done so to prevent littered bags becoming eyesores.

Some hope record-high crude oil prices might force manufacturers to seek alternatives to petroleum-based plastics. "Paper bags are an option, or we can go back to the cloth bags we used as kids. But when plastic bags are so cheap, no one will be encouraged to use anything else," said Chandra Bhushan at the nonprofit Center for Science and Environment. Australian scientists are considering bioplastics made of sucrose or grain, which biodegrade on compost heaps

Health Risks

Our Stolen Future is a scientific detective story that explores the emerging science of endocrine disruption: how some synthetic chemicals interfere with the ways that hormones work in humans and wildlife.

• Exposure is ubiquitous. All humans have been exposed, to varying amounts. Some have more exposure. Some have less. But no one has no exposure. No baby has been born for at least three decades without some exposure in the womb. Every person has several hundred novel chemicals in their body, chemicals not part of human body chemistry before the 20th century.
• Laboratory experiments show that exposures have impacts at levels far lower than had been considered possible in traditional toxicology. The exquisite sensitivity of natural hormonal control to interference by endocrine disruptors will force many changes in regulations, as the current system is inadequate.
• Many more hormone systems, perhaps all chemically-mediated message systems, are now known to be vulnerable to endocrine disruptors. The study of endocrine disruption began with a focus on compounds capable of mimicking or interfering with estrogen. Now science has revealed disruptors for almost every hormone system that has been studied.
• Many more compounds are now known to be powerful endocrine disruptors. This includes contemporary use pesticides and a range of chemicals in widespread use in consumer products. The biggest surprise is that certain plastics show endocrine-disrupting effects.

Wildlife Effects

Caption: Albatross chick with stomach full of plastic.

Caption: X-ray of turtles being treated at a clinic in Florida yielded contents in just one turtle that were found to be balloons and a fast-food latex glove. Source: Mindfully.org/Naples Daily News