By Henrylito D. Tacio
“Through its longevity (some products are estimated to retain their original recognizable form 400 years after discharge into the ocean), its ubiquitousness, and sheer volume, plastic debris is emerging as a new, truly global challenge.” — From the Foreword of Stemming the Tide: Land-based Strategies for a Plastic-free Ocean
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In the award-winning 1967 movie The Graduate, the character portrayed by then newcomer Dustin Hoffman (who earned a well-deserving Oscar nomination for his performance) asks some advice on career direction. “Plastics, my boy. Plastics,” he was told.
Businesses all over the world are heeding the advice. The Washington-based Worldwatch Institute reports: “Worldwide plastic production has been growing as the durable, primarily petroleum-based material gradually replaces materials like glass and metal.”
These days, an average person living in Western Europe or North America consumes 100 kilograms of plastic each year, mostly in the form of packaging. Asia uses just 20 kilograms per person, but this figure is expected to grow rapidly as the region’s economies expand.
It’s not surprising at all that wherever you go, you see plastics around. Unfortunately, most of these plastics end up in the oceans. A recent study conservatively estimated that 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing a total of 268,940 tons are currently floating in the world’s oceans. This debris results in an estimated US$13 billion a year in losses from damage to marine ecosystems, including financial losses to fisheries and tourism as well as time spent cleaning beaches.
The future seems to be bleak. “Growth in the volume of plastic used in the global economy is projected to increase significantly over the next 10 years, especially in markets where waste management is only emerging,” says a newly-released study, Stemming the Tide: Land-based Strategies for a Plastic-free Ocean.
“Unchecked, there will be 1 ton of plastic in the ocean for every 3 tons of fish in the ocean by 2025 – an unthinkable outcome,” says the study published by the international group Ocean Conservancy and McKinsey Center for Business and Environment
Over 80% of ocean plastics come from the land, the report says. These are discarded and not well-managed, thus leaking into the ocean. Only 20% is thrown directly or purposefully into the ocean from ships and drilling rigs, among others.
Most of the land-based leakage originates in five countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. “As rapidly developing economies, these countries are now passing through a typical stage of economic growth as consumer demand for disposable products grows more rapidly than the waste management infrastructure,” the report says. “We find that 75% of leakage comes from waste that is uncollected by waste management systems, while 25% of leakage happens from within the system itself.”
A recent study, “Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean,” which was published in the journal Science, listed the Philippines as the third highest producer of plastic wastes thrown into the ocean — after China and Indonesia.
“Almost 15 years of poor implementation of the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act (RA 9003) and unheeded calls for a national ban on the undoubtedly problematic and persistent plastic bags apparently helped a lot in putting the country at third place in the study’s embarrassing list,” said Aileen Lucero, national coordinator of the EcoWaste Coalition.
Yet, according to the new study, the Philippines has remarkably high collection with an aggregate rate of 84% all over the country, ranging from near 90% in some dense urban areas and 80% or lower in more widely dispersed population centers.
So why is there a discrepancy?
The study found that 74% of the plastics leaking into the ocean from the Philippines (about 386,000 tons of plastic trash) comes from garbage that has already been collected by haulers and garbage trucks. Only 26% (135,000 tons) of plastics in the open seas actually originates from garbage that is not collected.
“As an archipelago, the Philippines is not only surrounded by water but also has an extensive network of rivers and tributaries,” the study observes. “As such, there is a high likelihood of mismanaged waste entering waterways.”
To illustrate, the study cites a bottom-up comparison of the locations of a subset of open dump sites. It found out that over 50% of dump sites in the country were located within a distance of 100 kilometers to waterways.
“This also has implications for the leakage rate of waste that exits the system through illegal dumping by transporters,” the study says. “Our estimates suggested that 70-90% of the waste that fails to reach dump sites due to these practices actually ends up in waterways.”
Although the lay person tends to think of plastic as a single material having numerous applications, more than 46 different polymers (chains of hydrogen and carbon molecules) are actually in common use. A squeezable ketchup bottle, for example, is made of six layers of plastics, each engineered to do a different job, such as to give the bottle shape, strength, flexibility and impermeability.
The typical plastic bag that weighs just a few grams and is a few millimeters thick might seem thoroughly innocuous were it not for the sheer volume of global production: 500 billion to one trillion a year.
The Worldwatch Institute says about 4% of the petroleum consumed worldwide each year is used to make plastic, and another 4% is used to power plastic manufacturing processes.
While plastics are boon to the industry, they are blight in the oceans. A survey conducted by the EcoWaste Coalition and Greenpeace Philippines in 2006 discovered plastic bags and other synthetic packaging materials to comprise 76% of garbage retrieved from Manila Bay. In Laguna de Bay, plastic bags make up 25% of the solid waste that is polluting the lake.
“Plastic bags end up as litter as it makes its way to landfills, drainages and bodies of water, taking decades to decompose and damaging marine life when dumped into the sea,” said Senator Loren Legarda in a statement.
Because they are usually buoyant, plastics are widely distributed by ocean currents and wind. “Discarded plastic bands encircle mammals, fish, and birds and tighten as their bodies grow,” said the Washington, D.C.-based World Resources Institute. “Turtles, whales, and other marine mammals have died after eating plastic sheeting.”
In the United States, plastic gears, six-pack yokes, sandwich bags and Styrofoam cups are so abundant in the ocean that they kill up to one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals each year.
Not only that. Plastics are hazardous to your health as well. “Many of the chemicals used in the production and processing of plastic are highly toxic, resulting in hazardous wastes, toxic air emissions and discharges of toxic effluents into waterways,” said a study which appeared in the Environmental Action.
The study further stated: “People don’t think plastic products are toxic because by the time they get to supermarket shelves, they’re not. But ingredients in plastic production have dangerous properties for those who work with them or live near plastic factories.”
Environmentalists caution against burning those plastics to get rid of them completely. Scientists say that chlorine-based plastics, when incinerated, contribute to the formation of dioxins, a poisonous waste that forms when chlorine is exposed to extreme heat.
“Dioxins are considered highly toxic and are implicated in weakening the immune system, affecting fetal development and causing a skin disorder called chloracne,” wrote Chynthia P. Shea, a former staff member of the Worldwatch Institute.
Just some thought about Styrofoam. It is made from the plastic polystyrene, which is based on building blocks called styrene monomers. When you drink your steaming cup of coffee or spoon your chicken noodle soup out of a Styrofoam cup, you also take in small doses of chemicals that leach from it.
“Trace amounts of styrene as well as various chemical additives in polystyrene migrate into food – particularly when liquids are hot,” explains Dr. Olga Naidenko, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group. However, the US Department of Health and Human Services says that the levels released from food containers are very low.
