Remote Waters Offer No Refuge from Plastic Trash

by Elizabeth Shogren

October 1, 2007

 

Elizabeth Shogren, NPR

Laysan albatross have an elaborate courtship dance that includes something biologists call a "sky moo." Many of the hundreds of thousands of Laysan albatross chicks that hatch each year on Midway Atoll don't make it, because their parents feed them plastic, thinking it is food.

 

Elizabeth Shogren, NPR

Biologist John Klavitter sorts through the contents of the stomach of a Laysan albatross chick carcass. According to Klavitter, a healthy albatross chick has one ounce of plastic in its belly, while a dead chick may have twice that much.

October 1, 2007

Midway Atoll resident biologist John Klavitter is not surprised when he finds plastic in the bellies of dead Laysan albatross chicks.
Opening one chick's stomach with a bone, Klavitter finds lots of shiny black squid beaks and plenty of plastic.
"This looks like a little toy wheel from some children's toy there," Klavitter said.
It's difficult to find a place more remote than Midway Atoll, a cluster of islands in the middle of the Pacific. But many tons of plastic make their way here every year, and they put in peril the islands' exotic and endangered animals.
Even Midways' most abundant resident, the Laysan albatross, is at risk. These birds are about the size of turkeys, with elegant six-foot wing spans and a flamboyant courtship dance.
"They go up on their tippy toes, they clap their bills back and forth faster than I can snap my hands. They lift their bills up and give this amazing sky moo. It's just beautiful," Klavitter said.
But many of the hundreds of thousands of Laysan albatross chicks that hatch here each year don't make it — so many that it's someone's job to pick up the bodies.
Klavitter says he can't say how many birds die from ingesting plastic. But on average, an Albatross chick can have one ounce of plastic in its belly and still be healthy; a dead chick generally has twice that much.
"Two ounces might not seem a lot, but plastic is very light so if you look at the volume it's really significant. Perhaps about a third of their stomach is plastic," Klavitter said. "That's 30 percent less food that the chick can have in its stomach."
That can lead to dehydration, starvation and death.

How Plastic Gets There
Cigarette lighters, bottle caps and all kinds of other plastic trash scatter the island. But the plastic in the chicks' bellies comes from hundreds of miles away, according to Klavitter
"The chicks are totally dependent on being fed by their parents. So, the parents will fly quite a distance from Midway, land on the ocean, and they float on the ocean, much like a duck, and they wait for food to come to the surface," Klavitter said.
And what they often see is plastic bobbing on the water. They grab it and they fly as much as 1,000 miles back to Midway to feed what they think is food to their chicks.
Klavitter says the plastic comes from cities and towns all around the Pacific Ocean.
"Most likely, the majority of the plastic is thrown into streets. And eventually it will go down a storm drain, it will go down into a river and finally flow out into the ocean," Klavitter says.
Circular currents, known as the North Pacific Gyre, bring plastic to Midway Atoll from all over the vast ocean. And for coral researcher Jamie Barlow, not only is it common to spot plastic bobbing in the crystal clear waters, he and a team of researchers often pull out of the ocean tangled messes of plastic, fishing line and nets.

Marine biologist Wendy Cover says fishing nets and lines that are either discarded or accidentally fall off fishing boats all around the Pacific end up in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The chain of tiny islands, which includes Midway Atoll, stretches for more than 1,000 miles northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands. 

Whirling Debris
The scads of swirling trash get caught on the shallow reefs and coral of the Northwestern Hawaiian island chain. It breaks off chunks of coral, killing it.
"This is kind of typical marine debris, too," Barlow said. "It's a bunch of gobbledygook. And as you can imagine, floating around out there, it would be great habitat for little fish. So larger things come in to eat little fish and crabs."
Hawaiian monk seals are also vulnerable. They're one of the most endangered animals on Earth, with only about 1,000 left.
They're curious by nature, and they poke their heads into the snarls of plastic and get caught in the tangle. Whales, dolphins, turtles and countless seabirds also get trapped.
The federal government is concerned about the problem. President Bush named the whole chain of islands the Papanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. He even banned fishing here, but he can't keep the plastic out.
"In the last 10 years, we've taken almost 550 tons out of the Northwestern Hawaiian islands," said Michael Tosatto, deputy regional director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Government divers recently pulled out of the Midway waters what amounted to a huge pile of ropes, netting, buckets, buoys and other assorted plastic trash.
"And this was all picked up, only from Midway, in a four-day period." Tosatto said.
The problem isn't going away. Fifty tons of plastic arrive in Midways' waters each year, according to the U.S. government.

"The time to protect the blue heart of our planet is now."

World's oceans in 'shocking' decline

20 June 2011 Last updated at 12:24 GMT 

 

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

Coral reefs are subject to "multiple stressors" that could destroy many within a human generation

 

The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists. In a new report, they warn that ocean life is "at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history".
They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.
The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.
The panel was convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), and brought together experts from different disciplines, including coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and fisheries scientists.
Its report will be formally released later this week.
"The findings are shocking," said Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University.
"As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised.
"We've sat in one forum and spoken to each other about what we're seeing, and we've ended up with a picture showing that almost right across the board we're seeing changes that are happening faster than we'd thought, or in ways that we didn't expect to see for hundreds of years."
These "accelerated" changes include melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, sea level rise, and release of methane trapped in the sea bed.
Fast changes "The rate of change is vastly exceeding what we were expecting even a couple of years ago," said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a coral specialist from the University of Queensland in Australia.

Some species are already fished way beyond their limits - and may also be affected by other threats

"So if you look at almost everything, whether it's fisheries in temperate zones or coral reefs or Arctic sea ice, all of this is undergoing changes, but at a much faster rate than we had thought."
But more worrying than this, the team noted, are the ways in which different issues act synergistically to increase threats to marine life.
Some pollutants, for example, stick to the surfaces of tiny plastic particles that are now found in the ocean bed.
This increases the amounts of these pollutants that are consumed by bottom-feeding fish.
Plastic particles also assist the transport of algae from place to place, increasing the occurrence of toxic algal blooms - which are also caused by the influx of nutrient-rich pollution from agricultural land.
In a wider sense, ocean acidification, warming, local pollution and overfishing are acting together to increase the threat to coral reefs - so much so that three-quarters of the world's reefs are at risk of severe decline.
Carbon deposits

Life on Earth has gone through five "mass extinction events" caused by events such as asteroid impacts; and it is often said that humanity's combined impact is causing a sixth such event.

The IPSO report concludes that it is too early to say definitively.
But the trends are such that it is likely to happen, they say - and far faster than any of the previous five.
"What we're seeing at the moment is unprecedented in the fossil record - the environmental changes are much more rapid," Professor Rogers told BBC News.
"We've still got most of the world's biodiversity, but the actual rate of extinction is much higher [than in past events] - and what we face is certainly a globally significant extinction event."
The report also notes that previous mass extinction events have been associated with trends being observed now - disturbances of the carbon cycle, and acidification and hypoxia (depletion of oxygen) of seawater.
Levels of CO2 being absorbed by the oceans are already far greater than during the great extinction of marine species 55 million years ago (during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum), it concludes.
Blue planet The report's conclusions will be presented at UN headquarters in New York this week, when government delegates begin discussions on reforming governance of the oceans.

In the long run, greenhouse gas emissions must be cut to conserve ocean life, the report concludes

IPSO's immediate recommendations include:

• stopping exploitative fishing now, with special emphasis on the high seas where currently there is little effective regulation
• mapping and then reducing the input of pollutants including plastics, agricultural fertilisers and human waste
• making sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon dioxide levels are now so high, it says, that ways of pulling the gas out of the atmosphere need to be researched urgently - but not using techniques, such as iron fertilisation, that lead to more CO2 entering the oceans.
"We have to bring down CO2 emissions to zero within about 20 years," Professor Hoegh-Guldberg told BBC News.
"If we don't do that, we're going to see steady acidification of the seas, heat events that are wiping out things like kelp forests and coral reefs, and we'll see a very different ocean."
Another of the report's authors, Dan Laffoley, marine chair of the World Commission on Protected Areas and an adviser to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), admitted the challenges were vast.
"But unlike previous generations, we know what now needs to happen," he said.
"The time to protect the blue heart of our planet is now."

How to Recycle Ocean Plastic Waste

 

By Judith Willson, eHow Contributor

Larger items of plastic litter are easier to identify.

The oceans are packed with plastic waste. Plastic litter does more than make beaches look messy; it kills millions of marine animals every year and releases dangerous pollutants into the seas. Beach clean-ups are a practical way for people to help with the problem. The most eco-friendly way to disposDifficulty:  Moderately Easye of the materials you collect on a beach clean-up is to recycle them, but plastics are sometimes problematic. After floating about in the sea for a few months, plastic items can become hard to identify, which makes it difficult to determine whether they are recyclable.


Things You'll Need:

• Refuse sacks
• Cleaning brush
• Tub
• Work gloves
• Litter gripper

 

Instructions

Difficulty:  Moderately Easy

1. Contact a local recycling center and ask what kind of plastics it accepts and how it wants them prepared. Use this as a guide during the cleanup. Putting a whole load of mixed plastics into a recycling receptacle meant for just one type, such as vinyl, would be counter-productive.
2. Sort the plastics as you work according to the guidelines you received. Put recyclables, such as plastic bottles, into one refuse sack. Put anything the center will not take, you cannot identify or is contaminated into another sack. You will need to take the second sack to a landfill.
3. Clean and sort the recyclable plastics, if the center requires this. Brush off sand, rinse in a tub of water outside if necessary and divide by type. If you need to identify what kind of plastic a bottle or container is made from, look at the bottom or sides. There will be a raised number in a triangle with letters underneath identifying the material. The numeral 1 and the letters PET, for example, indicate Polyethylene terephthalate, which is a common material for soda bottles. These codes are international.

 

Tips & Warnings

• Always wear work gloves when doing a beach clean-up, supervise children and use tools for picking up anything sharp.

Seven Misconceptions about Plastic and Plastic Recycling

Misconception # 1: Plastics that go into a curbside recycling bin get recycled. Not necessarily. Collecting plastic containers at curbside fosters the belief that, like aluminum and glass, the recovered material is converted into new containers. In fact, none of the recovered plastic containers from Berkeley are being made into containers again but into new secondary products such as textiles, parking lot bumpers, or plastic lumber – all unrecyclable products. This does not reduce the use of virgin materials in plastic packaging. "Recycled" in this case merely means "collected," not reprocessed or converted into useful products.

Misconception # 2: Curbside collection will reduce the amount of plastic landfilled. Not necessarily. If establishing collection makes plastic packages seem more environmentally friendly, people may feel comfortable buying more. Curbside plastic collection programs, intended to reduce municipal plastic waste, might backfire if total use rises faster than collection. Since only a fraction of certain types of plastic could realistically be captured by a curbside program, the net impact of initiating curbside collection could be an increase in the amount of plastic landfilled. The Berkeley pilot program showed no reduction of plastic being sent to the landfill in the areas where the curbside collection was in operation. Furthermore, since most plastic reprocessing leads to secondary products that are not themselves recycled, this material is only temporarily diverted from landfills.

Misconception # 3: A chasing arrows symbol means a plastic container is recyclable. The arrows are meaningless. Every plastic container is marked with the chasing arrows symbol. The only information in the symbol is the number inside the arrows, which indicates the general class of resin used to make the container. The attorneys general of 11 states objected to false and misleading claims about plastic recyclability. The recent settlement that they reached with the American Plastics Council paves the way for a first-ever definition of what claims can or cannot be made about plastic recycling and recyclability.

Misconception # 4: Packaging resins are made from petroleum refineries’ waste. Plastic resins are made from non-renewable natural resources that could be used for a variety of other applications or conserved. Most packaging plastics are made from the same natural gas used in homes to heat water and cook.

Misconception # 5: Plastics recyclers pay to promote plastics’ recyclability. No; virgin resin producers pay for the bulk of these ads. Most such ads are placed by virgin plastic manufacturers whose goal is to promote plastic sales. These advertisements are aimed at removing or diminishing virgin plastic’s greatest challenge to market expansion: negative public conception of plastic as unrecyclable, environmentally harmful, and a major component of wastes that must be landfilled or burned.

Misconception # 6: Using plastic containers conserves energy. When the equation includes the energy used to synthesize the plastic resin, making plastic containers uses as much energy as making glass containers from virgin materials, and much more than making glass containers from recycled materials. Using refillables is the most energy conservative.

Misconception # 7: Our choice is limited to recycling or wasting. Source reduction is preferable for many types of plastic and isn’t difficult. Opportunities include using refillable containers, buying in bulk, buying things that don’t need much packaging, and buying things in recyclable and recycled packages
Plastic packaging has economic, health, and environmental costs and benefits. While offering advantages such as flexibility and light weight, it creates problems including: consumption of fossil resources; pollution; high energy use in manufacturing; accumulation of wasted plastic in the environment; and migration of polymers and additives into foods.
Plastic container producers do not use any recycled plastic in their packaging. Recycled content laws could reduce the use of virgin resin for packaging. Unfortunately, the virgin plastics industry has resisted such cooperation by strongly opposing recycled -content legislation, and has defeated or weakened consumer efforts to institute stronger laws. Plastic manufacturers recently decided that they will not add post consumer materials to their resins used in the USA.
There is a likelihood that establishing plastics collection might increase consumption by making plastic appear more ecologically friendly both to consumers and retailers. Collecting plastics at curbside could legitimize the production and marketing of packaging made from virgin plastic. Studies of garbage truck loads during the recent plastic pick-up pilot program showed no reduction of "recyclable" plastic containers being thrown away in the pilot areas (in fact, there was a slight increase). Due in part to increased plastic use, glass container plants around the country have been closing, including Anchor Glass Container Corporation in Antioch, putting 300 people out of work
Plastic recycling costs much and does little to achieve recycling goals. Our cost/benefit analysis for implementing curbside plastics collection in Berkeley shows that curbside collection of discarded plastics: involves expensive processing; has limited benefits in reducing environmental impacts; and has limited benefits in diverting resources from waste.
Processing used plastics often costs more than virgin plastic. As plastic producers increase production and reduce prices on virgin plastics, the markets for used plastic are diminishing. PET recyclers cannot compete with the virgin resin flooding the market.
Increasing the capture rates of glass, paper or yard debris in Berkeley could divert more resources from landfills than collecting plastics at curbside. The "recyclable" plastic to be collected in Berkeley at most would only amount to 0.3% of the waste stream.


Five Strategies to Reduce the Environmental Impact of Plastics

1. Reduce the use
Source reduction Retailers and consumers can select products that use little or no packaging. Select packaging materials that are recycled into new packaging - such as glass and paper. If people refuse plastic as a packaging material, the industry will decrease production for that purpose, and the associated problems such as energy use, pollution, and adverse health effects will diminish.

2. Reuse containers
Since refillable plastic containers can be reused about 25 times, container reuse can lead to a substantial reduction in the demand for disposable plastic, and reduced use of materials and energy, with the consequent reduced environmental impacts. Container designers will take into account the fate of the container beyond the point of sale and consider the service the container provides. "Design for service" differs sharply from "design for disposal".

3. Require producers to take back resins
Get plastic manufacturers directly involved with plastic disposal and closing the material loop, which can stimulate them to consider the product’s life cycle from cradle to grave. Make reprocessing easier by limiting the number of container types and shapes, using only one type of resin in each container, making collapsible containers, eliminating pigments, using water-dispersible adhesives for labels, and phasing out associated metals such as aluminum seals. Container and resin makers can help develop the reprocessing infrastructure by taking back plastic from consumers.

4. Legislatively require recycled content
Requiring that all containers be composed of a percentage of post-consumer material reduces the amount of virgin material consumed.

5. Standardize labeling and inform the public
The chasing arrows symbol on plastics is an example of an ambiguous and misleading label. Significantly different standardized labels for "recycled," "recyclable," and "made of plastic type X" must be developed.

Ecology Center, Berkeley, California
http://www.ecologycenter.org/ptf/misconceptions.html

Do plastics degrade in the environment?

Do plastics degrade in the environment?

In general, yes*; however there are many things to note.
A few points to consider (Singh and Sharma, 2008):

There are MANY types of plastic, and thus many different chemical compositions
Degradation rates depend on chemical composition, molecular weight, additives, environmental conditions, etc.

Based on research to date, most commonly used plastics do not ever fully “go away,”** but rather break down into smaller and smaller pieces (A. Andrady, pers. comm.). Also keep in mind that many of the bio-based and truly biodegradable plastics break down in a compost pile or landfill, but not necessarily in the ocean.

* Degradation here is defined as a process leading to deterioration of the physical properties of a plastic polymer (Bovey and Winslow, 1979).
** Here, “go away” refers to a process called mineralization, or the full conversion of all breakdown products into carbon dioxide, water, and small inorganic molecules (Andrady, 2003).This is a very good question and the answer you get depends on who you ask and their definition of the term "degrade."
Degradation depends on:

• Density of the plastic – density will affect sunlight availability and whether the piece floats or sinks
• Temperature of water – if the water is warmer there will likely be greater degradation
• Type of plastic – the structure of the plastic affects degradation
• How the plastic is compounded – for example, what types of additives are included in the plastic (e.g., light stabilizers, anti-oxidants)?

Photodegradation: Most plastics photodegrade in the marine environment, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces due to exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation. When in water, plastic may not get direct sunlight exposure; therefore breakdown happens much more slowly in the aquatic environment.
Thermal (thermo-) degradation: This type of degradation, caused by increased temperatures, leads mainly to the loss in extensibility (i.e., "stretchiness") of most plastics, except polystyrene.
Biodegradation & bio-based plastics: There are some bio-based (e.g., corn, wheat, tapioca, algae) and biodegradable plastics on the market and in development. There are also products that call themselves "biodegradable," but simply break down into smaller pieces faster, so be careful! Remember that biodegradability still depends on numerous factors, including the environment that the plastic is in. Many of the bio-based and truly biodegradable plastics were created to biodegrade in a compost pile and will not biodegrade in the ocean.


marinedebris.noaa.gov

What Products Do You Get Out of A Barrel of Crude Oil?

Every 42-gallon (159-liter) barrel of oil can be refined into

• 19.4 gallons (73 liters) of gas,
  
• 10.5 gallons (40 liters) of diesel, and
  
• 4.1 gallons (16 liters) of jet fuel, not to mention lots of other marketable stuff.

---

Every 42-US-gallon barrel of crude provides a little more than 44 gallons of petroleum products. This is gained due to processing of crude. From one barrel we get (in gallons):

• 7.27 gallons (27.5 liters): Other products (feedstocks for petrochemical plants, asphalt, bitumen, tar, etc.)
• 1.72 gallons (6.5 liters): Liquefied Petroleum Gases (LPG)
• 3.82 gallons (14.5 liters): Jet Fuel
• 1.76 gallons (6.6 liters): Heavy Fuel Oil (Residual)
• 1.75 gallons (6.6 liters): Other Distillates (Heating Oil)
• 9.21 gallons (35 liters): Diesel
• 19.15 gallons (72.5 liters): Gasoline

From petrochemical feedstocks many everyday-life products are then obtained. Some examples are:

• fertilizers for agriculture
• plastic toys and gadgets (bags, computer cases, etc.)
• bubble gums
• car tires
• perfumes
• petroleum jelly
• ammonia
• washing liquids

http://wiki.answers.com

Petrochemicals

Petrochemicals are chemical products derived from petroleum. Two petrochemical classes are olefins including ethylene and propylene, and aromatics including benzene, toluene and  xylene isomers. Oil refineries produce olefins and aromatics by fluid catalytic cracking of petroleum fractions. Chemical plants produce olefins by steam cracking of natural gas liquids like ethane and propane. Aromatics are produced by catalytic reforming of naphtha. Olefins and aromatics are the building blocks for a wide range of materials such as solvents, detergents, and adhesives. Olefins are the basis for polymers and oligomers used in plastics, resins, fibers, elastomers, lubricants, and gels.

How Oil Was Formed

Oil was formed from the remains of animals and plants (diatoms) that lived millions of years ago in a marine (water) environment before the dinosaurs. Over millions of years, the remains of these animals and plants were covered by layers of sand and silt. Heat and pressure from these layers helped the remains turn into what we today call crude oil. The word "petroleum" means "rock oil" or "oil from the earth."

Click to enlarge »
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (Public Domain)
Crude oil is a smelly, yellow-to-black liquid and is usually found in underground areas called reservoirs. Scientists and engineers explore a chosen area by studying rock samples from the earth. Measurements are taken, and, if the site seems promising, drilling begins. Above the hole, a structure called a 'derrick' is built to house the tools and pipes going into the well. When finished, the drilled well will bring a steady flow of oil to the surface.

Plastics In Everyday Life

Plastics are used in almost every aspect of our lives. Beverage containers, toys, and furniture. Plastics make up more than 12 percent of the municipal solid waste stream, having increased sharply from 1960, when plastics amounted to just one percent of the waste stream.
The largest category of plastics are found in containers and packaging (e.g., soft drink bottles, lids, shampoo bottles), but they also are found in durable (e.g., appliances, furniture) and nondurable goods (e.g., diapers, trash bags, cups and utensils, medical devices). The recycling rate for different types of plastic varies greatly, resulting in an overall plastics recycling rate of only 7 percent, or 2.1 million tons in 2009. However, the recycling rate for some plastics is much higher, for example in 2009, 28 percent of PET bottles and jars and 29 percent of HDPE bottles were recycled.

Just the Facts

• 30 million tons of plastic waste were generated in 2009.
• In 2009, the United States generated 13 million tons of plastics as containers and packaging, almost 11 million tons as durable goods, such as appliances, and almost 7 million tons as nondurable goods, for example plates and cups.
• Only 7 percent of the total plastic waste generated in 2009 was recycled.
• In 2009, plastic  bags, sacks, and wraps were recycled at 9 percent.
• Plastics also are found in automobiles, but recycling of these materials is counted separately.

statistics referenced from the United States Environmental Protection Agency