As a mum of three on a single-income budget, Melissa Beeton is determined to make every household purchase count. 

“I pretty much just got sick of buying toys,” she said.

“There’s not a whole lot of disposable income for us to spend on stuff that’s not going to be used all the time.”

For the past year, Ms Beeton has been a member and volunteer at her local toy library in Townsville in north Queensland, which allows her to rent from a large collection of toys each month for a subscription fee.

“We’ll get board games, puzzles, there are some beautiful wooden toys – really expensive wooden toys – that we probably wouldn’t be able to afford to purchase normally.

“It’s made a huge difference for us … and it’s really supported a whole lifestyle shift.”

There are more than 280 not-for-profit toy libraries across the country, from major city centres to small rural towns.

The Townsville Toy Library reopened its doors on Sunday after a three-month hunt for a new space to house its growing collection.

The library has about 300 members and 2,000 toys on its shelves.

Hundreds of families attended the opening and the queue of eager borrowers stretched out the door. 

President Catherine Cipollino said she expected membership to grow significantly as families looked for solutions to alleviate soaring household costs, including groceries and fuel.

“Everything’s going up except our payslips – it is very tough at the moment,” Ms Cipollino said.

“I have a 14-year-old, and back when he was younger, I would be spending around $15 for a toy to take with him to a party.

Members can borrow up to eight toys a month, with the collection catering for babies to children aged 12.

For Townsville environmental scientist Stephanie Duce, the decision to rent toys for her young children is about sustainability as much as money-saving.

“They get sick of toys so quickly that it’s really exciting each month for them to get a new batch of toys, and also to learn that we don’t need to keep everything – we can borrow things and then give them back,” Ms Duce said.

“Waste is a huge issue at the moment, and most toys now are made of plastics and degrade and break down into microplastics that damage the environment and particularly the ocean.

“So in a small way, I guess this helps to offset that and not drive more and more demand for them.”

In just 45 minutes, Reid Harlocker and his team collected 18 pounds of trash from the northern Pacific Ocean.

“It’s awful,” he said, seated in his Hayden home Friday morning. “The pollution, it’s there.”

Harlocker returned from his ocean voyage with Pangea Exploration on March 8. He and the crew spent a month in the northern Pacific Ocean and on the remote Palmyra Atoll. They observed the horrific Great Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Gyre, which is one of Earth’s systems of circular ocean currents formed by wind and forces created by Earth’s rotation.

“I realized I didn’t know as much as I thought I did about ocean trash,” Harlocker said. “I now know the situation isn’t nearly as bad in the Atlantic as it is in the north Pacific.”

But the Atlantic Ocean is catching up, he said.

Harlocker is passionate about effecting change surrounding plastics recycling. A semi-retired communications engineer, he’s determined to learn as much as possible and spread the word about what needs to be done.

“Let’s be real honest about this. Plastics pollution starts right here,” he said. “We don’t recycle our plastics here. Our plastics are mostly ending up in that landfill up there. They’re leaching carcinogens into the water table. That’s a fact.”

He said he’s screened along the St. Joe River “and pulled up all kinds of crap that’s up there.”

“There’s plastics that people discard and they’re getting washed down the river. Ultimately they’re ending in the ocean,” he said. “This is a real problem. We have to stop.”

He said a lot of the plastics used now didn’t exist in the 1970s.

“Now it’s here,” he said. “We don’t need this s—. We really don’t. It all goes down to corporate profits and greed. The oil companies do not want to recycle plastic; they want to sell the new plastic. We’re going to have to create incentives to do this.”

Because U.S. recycling was dependent on China for so many years, America’s domestic recycling infrastructure was never developed, Harlocker said.

“There was no economically efficient way to handle recycling when the market disappeared,” he said. “Without dedicated investors, recycling infrastructure won’t be sufficient.”

A landfill is “a waste of waste,” he said. “We need to be reusing that waste.”

He shared a few stats from Columbia University.

“According to the (Environmental Protection Agency), in 2018, there were 292 million tons of municipal solid waste generated by Americans. Only 94 million tons were recycled or composted.”

He said 66% of discarded paper or cardboard was recycled, 27% of glass and only 8% plastics.

“How do we deal with this? We have to develop a domestic market in the U.S. for recycled materials,” he said. “Part of the problem is that the oil companies are fighting against it. They’re paying off our congressmen as much as they can.

“Here’s where we start to make a change — we require municipalities, institutions and the federal government to use recycled materials,” Harlocker said. “When that starts, now there’s a market.”

He said legislation could force petrol chemical companies to commit to recycled materials for recycling plant investments. Recycling should not be an expense to taxpayers or municipalities, he said.

“It should be an expense to the producers,” he said. “That is exactly what they have done in Europe.”

Harlocker’s trip wasn’t all doom and gloom. He’s now a certified open-ocean sailor. He experienced monsoon-like rain and howling winds. He witnessed a rare sighting of a melon-headed whale pod.

He also had the pleasure of meeting inquisitive booby birds.

“One night we had five of them on the bow, all looking for a place to hang out for the night, not to mention there’s a lot of flying fish going over our boat,” he said.

Harlocker will continue to educate himself and others about the issue of plastic pollution. He plans to hold presentations in the community and rally people to join the cause.

“The pollution is heartbreaking,” he said. “There are so many things to do out there. We could all concentrate on doing something that’s good.”

Contact Harlocker: reidharlocker57@gmail.com

In the fall of 2017, a resident of western Albemarle County was surprised to see a caravan of dump trucks making their way up a rural road – into the woods.

That’s where contractors for the University of Virginia dumped a mysterious green cargo – 199 tons of synthetic turf. The news alarmed a local parent, Kate Mallek. She knew that turf fields were filled with shredded tires that provide cushioning but contain potentially toxic chemicals.

“We don’t allow burning of tires,” she says. “We don’t allow people to simply throw tires into our environment. They have some lead. There are also some carcinogenic substances in them. It’s not something we want in our water.”

So-called crumb rubber also contains Per- and Poly-fluoroalkyl Substances or PFAS, also known as forever chemicals because they break down slowly over time. Pete Myers, founder and chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences – based in Charlottesville – says PFAS in turf could be dangerous.

“Not only are the kids getting stuff on their skin – the tire crumb is all over the, but they’re probably breathing PFAS, which is a real problem,” he concludes.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says studies show no elevated health risk from playing on recycled rubber tires – a claim echoed by the industry.

“The materials used in synthetic turf products have been thoroughly reviewed by both federal and state government agencies and are considered to be non-hazardous,” says Melanie Taylor, President and CEO of the Synthetic Turf Council, a group that represents manufacturers of artificial fields. She points to the first part of an EPA report as proof of safety, but the EPA – which reviewed scientific studies – said they were limited, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission said kids who play on surfaces made with recycled rubber should not eat or drink near the stuff and should wash hands and other exposed skin afterward.

The EPA is now at work on a second study that will assess risk, and scientists in Europe have just published their analysis of 91 samples from synthetic turf fields around the world.

“We are very worried about it,” says Jacob de Boer, a Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology at the Free University of Amsterdam. His team found all of the crumb rubber samples contained hazardous compounds – some exceeding safety standards set by the European Union for cancer-causing chemicals.

“In this crumb rubber there are also these P-FAS compounds which have an effect on your immune system, and that effect is much more sensitive than for cancer,” de Boer says.

He’s quick to add that risk is likely related to how long and how closely players are in contact with crumb rubber.

“It’s not a matter of one game or one day or a week on this crumb rubber, but if you do it regularly, training for years, and you play all your matches there, then it is a problem, so the dose is important.”

That said, Holland has now agreed to phase out crumb rubber fields by 2030. Here in the U.S., Melanie Taylor says manufacturers are looking at suitable substitutes for crumb rubber — Infills made of walnut shells or a mixture of coconut husks and cork, known as corkonut.

And she predicts continued growth of her industry with as many as 16,000 synthetic fields already installed and up to 1,500 new ones going in every year. In our next report, we’ll talk about what happens when those fields wear out, and why environmentalists want Virginia to put new regulations in place.

For more information:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969721076208?via%3Dihub

https://www.epa.gov/chemical-research/federal-research-recycled-tire-crumb-used-playing-fields

https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/rubber-and-leather-material-specific-data

PART TWO

With the return of warm weather, more student athletes will be playing outside, many of them competing on artificial turf. Manufacturers say their product – made with recycled rubber tires – is an environmentally friendly alternative to grass, but with 16-thousand synthetic turf fields already in place nationwide and as many as 15-hundred more going in each year, disposal of worn-out fields poses a problem.

A typical turf field comes with a warranty of 8-12 years. When that time is up, the field, which is made from layers of plastic and shredded tires or crumb rubber, is hauled away. Mary Lehman, a delegate from Maryland, heard from a constituent who saw rolls of used turf sitting in a vacant lot.

“The concern was that the crumb rubber infill was washing down the hill into a storm drain,” she recalls. “I think everyone can agree we don’t want that happening. We don’t want shredded tires to end up in our waterways, and in Maryland pretty much everything ends up in the Chesapeake Bay.”

Because the stuff is bulky, Lehman says landfills in her state don’t accept artificial turf.

“We really don’t know where it’s gong. It probably is mostly going out of state to Virginia where they either are land-filling or possibly incinerating the fields or the crumb rubber infill, and there are places in Virginia where they are allowed to burn rubber,” she says.

Unscrupulous contractors may even dump turf in rural areas or find property owners willing to store the stuff for less than a landfill might charge.

At Prince William County’s Solid Waste Authority, Director Scott MacDonald thinks it’s unfair that cities or counties have to deal with artificial turf and other materials that can’t be recycled.

“We didn’t buy the products. We didn’t sell the products, and we didn’t make the profits, but at the end of their life the public looks to us for a solution,” he explains.

MacDonald would like to see Virginia join 47 other states that are members of the Product Stewardship Institute, headed by Scott Cassell. He helps write laws making producers of products responsible for their disposal.

“There are 124 of these laws on the books for 15 product categories in 33 states – products like pharmaceuticals, medical sharps, mercury-containing products and Maine and Oregon just passed the first two state laws on packaging,” he says.

And Cassell claims this approach works in other countries.

“These type of systems have been in place in Europe for over 35 years on packaging, over 15 years in Canada and in other places all around the world. Companies will make changes to lower their costs, and these laws give them incentive. It’s really about making products with less material and more reusable and recyclable material.”

During the last legislative session, Virginia Delegate Betsy Carr introduced a bill to require that manufacturers accept and properly dispose of or recycle their products. It died in committee.

“Sometimes you bring up something new, it’s dismissed summarily the first time,” she observes, “but you know people begin to think about it and talk about it and maybe it takes a couple more years.”

Lawmakers did agree to form a task force that would study it.

In the meantime, Melanie Taylor with the Synthetic Turf Council notes worn-out fields can be re-used at local driving ranges, band practice fields, pet parks, bullpens and batting cages and equestrian stables.

A Danish company says it will soon open a plant in Pennsylvania to recycle synthetic turf, and for now the industry argues it is conserving billions of gallons of water each year and eliminating the need for pesticides, fertilizers and mowing to maintain grass fields.