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Category Archives: Plastic Pollution Articles & News
How microplastics from cigarettes pollute our oceans
CBS 8’s Chief Meteorologist Karlene Chavis breaks down how to filter out our oceans biggest problem: cigarette butts.
SAN DIEGO — Beach cleanups are common along our coastline, and the most reported pollution problem are cigarette butt filters. They are a costly health hazard for not just us, but the environment.
Travel from storm drains to beaches
Whether the filters are put out in the sand or make the journey inland from areas like Downtown San Diego through storm drains, they will also find a way onto our beaches. I took a stroll along the sands of Ocean Beach with Mitch Silverstein. He is with the San Diego Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. It did not take long to find cigarettes butt, and I mean a lot of cigarette butt, pollution.
“How far did we walk? 100 feet and we got 50 butts. That’s crazy. It’s nuts, it’s nut balls,” said Silverstein. “The beach is not an ashtray.”
I asked Silverstein and Dr. Thomas Novotny, who was also present for this all too familiar show and tell, what do you say to people who believe “well I’m only putting out one cigarette butt, where’s the harm?”
“One, there’s six trillion cigarettes manufactured globally, you put one, the next guy puts one, the next million people put one, and what we find is that a third of all the beach litter picked up from the beaches is cigarette butts,” said Novotny.
Number 1 marine pollution
Novotny is the Professor Emeritus at the San Diego State University School of Public Health. This environmental concern is echoed by many organizations including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA, citing cigarette butts as the number one marine pollution in the world.
Novotny refers to cigarettes as a teabag of toxins citing the seven thousand chemicals found in them, including 50 of which are capable of causing cancer. And to top it off, these filters, that have all those toxins locked in, are single use plastics. Don’t let the appearance of a paper lining fool you.
“The filter, which is the most picked up item of the cigarette butts is plastic. It doesn’t bio-grade, it stays in the environment. It gets squashed, broken up into small pieces and is retained as microplastics in the environment as well. Both have a chemical and plastic pollution with cigarette butts,” said Novotny.
Microplastics
To better illustrate how microplastics get dispersed into our environment, Mitch Silverstein uses a piece of Styrofoam as an example.
“It is the most easy to see example of how one piece of plastic, this from a cooler, instantly turns into thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. It becomes indistinguishable from the sand,” said Silverstein as he breaks apart the chunk with his hand.
Once broken down, but not gone, the microplastics associated with cigarette filters become imbedded in our environment and even us.
“It’s also a sponge for toxins. So, it soaks up toxins. Fish eat it and we eat that fish, and we get those toxins, and we get that plastic. So, we’re eating it,” said Silverstein.
Taking action
When it comes to putting out this issue, Novotny advocates for an upstream way of preventing this top pollution. He wants legislation passed that would ban the sale of filter cigarettes, citing the filter itself has no health benefits.
“It is not just the environment, if we can reduce tobacco use in any way, even a small percentage we are going to improve the health of Californians, reduce the cost of healthcare, reduce the cost that is involved in cleaning up beaches and urban environments and just spoiling the natural environment that we have,” said Dr. Novotny.
Mitch Silverstein echoes this sentiment on the ban with involvement on a local and State level.
“We can try to blame litterbugs all we want, but at the end of the day, we need to hold the producers responsible and we need to prevent every single cigarette from having a plastic butt, where evidence is overwhelming that it’s hazardous waste and highly likely to end up in our environment,” said Silverstein.
Unfortunately, on a State level, a bill is introduced during every legislative session that never makes it out of the committee process. Mitch says pushing for this policy change is going to come down to the data, and we can help.
“We have a great tool, Surfrider — any individual can have an account and add to the data that we collect because we need to show policy makers the data. You know, not just come out and say, “hey, you know I feel like the ocean is being polluted”. We know it and we have the numbers to back it up.”
WATCH RELATED: Students practice conservation with Trout in the Classroom (April 2022).
[embedded content]
How microplastics from cigarettes pollute our oceans
CBS 8’s Chief Meteorologist Karlene Chavis breaks down how to filter out our oceans biggest problem: cigarette butts.
SAN DIEGO — Beach cleanups are common along our coastline, and the most reported pollution problem are cigarette butt filters. They are a costly health hazard for not just us, but the environment.
Travel from storm drains to beaches
Whether the filters are put out in the sand or make the journey inland from areas like Downtown San Diego through storm drains, they will also find a way onto our beaches. I took a stroll along the sands of Ocean Beach with Mitch Silverstein. He is with the San Diego Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. It did not take long to find cigarettes butt, and I mean a lot of cigarette butt, pollution.
“How far did we walk? 100 feet and we got 50 butts. That’s crazy. It’s nuts, it’s nut balls,” said Silverstein. “The beach is not an ashtray.”
I asked Silverstein and Dr. Thomas Novotny, who was also present for this all too familiar show and tell, what do you say to people who believe “well I’m only putting out one cigarette butt, where’s the harm?”
“One, there’s six trillion cigarettes manufactured globally, you put one, the next guy puts one, the next million people put one, and what we find is that a third of all the beach litter picked up from the beaches is cigarette butts,” said Novotny.
Number 1 marine pollution
Novotny is the Professor Emeritus at the San Diego State University School of Public Health. This environmental concern is echoed by many organizations including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA, citing cigarette butts as the number one marine pollution in the world.
Novotny refers to cigarettes as a teabag of toxins citing the seven thousand chemicals found in them, including 50 of which are capable of causing cancer. And to top it off, these filters, that have all those toxins locked in, are single use plastics. Don’t let the appearance of a paper lining fool you.
“The filter, which is the most picked up item of the cigarette butts is plastic. It doesn’t bio-grade, it stays in the environment. It gets squashed, broken up into small pieces and is retained as microplastics in the environment as well. Both have a chemical and plastic pollution with cigarette butts,” said Novotny.
Microplastics
To better illustrate how microplastics get dispersed into our environment, Mitch Silverstein uses a piece of Styrofoam as an example.
“It is the most easy to see example of how one piece of plastic, this from a cooler, instantly turns into thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. It becomes indistinguishable from the sand,” said Silverstein as he breaks apart the chunk with his hand.
Once broken down, but not gone, the microplastics associated with cigarette filters become imbedded in our environment and even us.
“It’s also a sponge for toxins. So, it soaks up toxins. Fish eat it and we eat that fish, and we get those toxins, and we get that plastic. So, we’re eating it,” said Silverstein.
Taking action
When it comes to putting out this issue, Novotny advocates for an upstream way of preventing this top pollution. He wants legislation passed that would ban the sale of filter cigarettes, citing the filter itself has no health benefits.
“It is not just the environment, if we can reduce tobacco use in any way, even a small percentage we are going to improve the health of Californians, reduce the cost of healthcare, reduce the cost that is involved in cleaning up beaches and urban environments and just spoiling the natural environment that we have,” said Dr. Novotny.
Mitch Silverstein echoes this sentiment on the ban with involvement on a local and State level.
“We can try to blame litterbugs all we want, but at the end of the day, we need to hold the producers responsible and we need to prevent every single cigarette from having a plastic butt, where evidence is overwhelming that it’s hazardous waste and highly likely to end up in our environment,” said Silverstein.
Unfortunately, on a State level, a bill is introduced during every legislative session that never makes it out of the committee process. Mitch says pushing for this policy change is going to come down to the data, and we can help.
“We have a great tool, Surfrider — any individual can have an account and add to the data that we collect because we need to show policy makers the data. You know, not just come out and say, “hey, you know I feel like the ocean is being polluted”. We know it and we have the numbers to back it up.”
WATCH RELATED: Students practice conservation with Trout in the Classroom (April 2022).
[embedded content]
Palau study reveals microplastics are infecting the most pristine corners of the world
Plastic pollution is so insidious that it has entered even the most sacred of places. In 2012, a seal washed ashore in Massachusetts because its stomach was inflamed by all the plastic it had swallowed; seven years later a submarine diving to the bottom of America’s deepest point, the Mariana Trench, discovered a plastic bag; and as recently as March a study revealed that three out of four people have microplastics in their blood.
RELATED: What is microplastic anyway? Inside the insidious pollution that is absolutely everywhere
Since microplastics are so small that they have entered our blood — plastic particles are by definition less than 5 millimeters in length — it stands to reason that they have contaminated the most pristine human locales on the planet. A new study published in the journal PLOS One confirms that this is indeed the case, as scientists from the Palau International Coral Reef Center studied the pristine reef area of the tiny, remote island republic, which lies east of the Philippines and north of New Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. Mixed in with the beach sand, seawater and natural sediments, the scientists found a troubling number of microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs), or plastic particles that are far tinier than 5 millimeters in length.
“Plastic is literally everywhere — it is not just in the streets and oceans; it is in the food that we eat, the water we drink, and the very air that we breathe.”
“This study shows that plastic pollution must be considered in environmental studies even in the most pristine locations,” the authors explain in their abstract. “It also shows that NPs pollution is related to the amount of MPs found at the sites. To understand the effects of this plastic pollution, it is necessary that the next toxicological studies take into account the effects of this fraction that makes up the NPs.” In fact, the authors zeroed in on the threat posed by nanoplastics as one of the chief takeaways from their research.
Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.
“They are more dangerous because of their size and concentration,” Christine Ferrier-Pages from the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, and one of the co-authors of the study, told Salon by email. “It is estimated that NPs are 100 times more abundant than MPs and in addition, due to their small size, they can enter the cells and provoke quite a lot of damages.”
Ferrier-Pages added, “Plastics, especially microplastics and even more nanoplastics, enter the marine food web at each level of the food web and accumulate in the higher trophic levels, i.e. fish and other commercial organisms. Nowadays, it has been shown that many commercial fish are contaminated, and by eating these fish, plastics are also transferred to humans. The problem with plastics is that there are hundreds of tons of plastics entering the sea each year, and for the moment, there is no good tool to get rid of these plastics.”
John Hocevar, a marine biologist and director of Greenpeace’s oceans campaign, echoed this chief concern when speaking to Salon by email — namely, that plastic pollution appears to last forever.
“Plastic doesn’t go away, it just breaks down into smaller fragments and disperses,” Hocevar explained. “In many ways, this means that plastic gets more dangerous over time. The throwaway packaging we use today adds to the plastic bottles and bags we used decades ago. Today, plastic particles pervade the atmosphere, raining down on even the most remote mountains and islands. Microplastics are also now saturating our oceans, where they are often eaten by marine life or washed ashore.”
Hocevar praised the new study for reinforcing this point, since “much of the plastic washing up in Palau was produced, used, and discarded thousands of miles away.”
Christopher Chin, Executive Director of The Center for Oceanic Awareness, Research, and Education (COARE), also praised the study, observing that it confirms “not only the ubiquity of plastic pollution, but also its inequity; ocean states [like Palau] and those in the global south face a disproportionate impact from plastic pollution.”
“The public should not only be more aware about microplastics and nanoplastics, we should all be alarmed,” Chin told Salon. “Plastic is literally everywhere — it is not just in the streets and oceans; it is in the food that we eat, the water we drink, and the very air that we breathe.” He drew attention to a study which found that humans typically eat roughly one credit card’s worth of plastic every week.
Given how humans are chomping down plastic without even realizing it, perhaps it is hardly surprising that the reef organisms of Palau aren’t doing much better.
“On the reef organisms, we have performed some studies on corals, which have been published previously in different journals,” Ferrier-Pages explained. “We have shown for example that nanoplastics induce coral bleaching, the loss of the symbiotic algae by corals. As the symbionts provide corals with most of their food requirements, bleached corals enter into starvation. We have also demonstrated that microplastics can reduce coral calcification — the deposition of their hard skeleton.”
For more Salon articles about plastic pollution:
Palau study reveals microplastics are infecting the most pristine corners of the world
Plastic pollution is so insidious that it has entered even the most sacred of places. In 2012, a seal washed ashore in Massachusetts because its stomach was inflamed by all the plastic it had swallowed; seven years later a submarine diving to the bottom of America’s deepest point, the Mariana Trench, discovered a plastic bag; and as recently as March a study revealed that three out of four people have microplastics in their blood.
RELATED: What is microplastic anyway? Inside the insidious pollution that is absolutely everywhere
Since microplastics are so small that they have entered our blood — plastic particles are by definition less than 5 millimeters in length — it stands to reason that they have contaminated the most pristine human locales on the planet. A new study published in the journal PLOS One confirms that this is indeed the case, as scientists from the Palau International Coral Reef Center studied the pristine reef area of the tiny, remote island republic, which lies east of the Philippines and north of New Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. Mixed in with the beach sand, seawater and natural sediments, the scientists found a troubling number of microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs), or plastic particles that are far tinier than 5 millimeters in length.
“Plastic is literally everywhere — it is not just in the streets and oceans; it is in the food that we eat, the water we drink, and the very air that we breathe.”
“This study shows that plastic pollution must be considered in environmental studies even in the most pristine locations,” the authors explain in their abstract. “It also shows that NPs pollution is related to the amount of MPs found at the sites. To understand the effects of this plastic pollution, it is necessary that the next toxicological studies take into account the effects of this fraction that makes up the NPs.” In fact, the authors zeroed in on the threat posed by nanoplastics as one of the chief takeaways from their research.
Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.
“They are more dangerous because of their size and concentration,” Christine Ferrier-Pages from the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, and one of the co-authors of the study, told Salon by email. “It is estimated that NPs are 100 times more abundant than MPs and in addition, due to their small size, they can enter the cells and provoke quite a lot of damages.”
Ferrier-Pages added, “Plastics, especially microplastics and even more nanoplastics, enter the marine food web at each level of the food web and accumulate in the higher trophic levels, i.e. fish and other commercial organisms. Nowadays, it has been shown that many commercial fish are contaminated, and by eating these fish, plastics are also transferred to humans. The problem with plastics is that there are hundreds of tons of plastics entering the sea each year, and for the moment, there is no good tool to get rid of these plastics.”
John Hocevar, a marine biologist and director of Greenpeace’s oceans campaign, echoed this chief concern when speaking to Salon by email — namely, that plastic pollution appears to last forever.
“Plastic doesn’t go away, it just breaks down into smaller fragments and disperses,” Hocevar explained. “In many ways, this means that plastic gets more dangerous over time. The throwaway packaging we use today adds to the plastic bottles and bags we used decades ago. Today, plastic particles pervade the atmosphere, raining down on even the most remote mountains and islands. Microplastics are also now saturating our oceans, where they are often eaten by marine life or washed ashore.”
Hocevar praised the new study for reinforcing this point, since “much of the plastic washing up in Palau was produced, used, and discarded thousands of miles away.”
Christopher Chin, Executive Director of The Center for Oceanic Awareness, Research, and Education (COARE), also praised the study, observing that it confirms “not only the ubiquity of plastic pollution, but also its inequity; ocean states [like Palau] and those in the global south face a disproportionate impact from plastic pollution.”
“The public should not only be more aware about microplastics and nanoplastics, we should all be alarmed,” Chin told Salon. “Plastic is literally everywhere — it is not just in the streets and oceans; it is in the food that we eat, the water we drink, and the very air that we breathe.” He drew attention to a study which found that humans typically eat roughly one credit card’s worth of plastic every week.
Given how humans are chomping down plastic without even realizing it, perhaps it is hardly surprising that the reef organisms of Palau aren’t doing much better.
“On the reef organisms, we have performed some studies on corals, which have been published previously in different journals,” Ferrier-Pages explained. “We have shown for example that nanoplastics induce coral bleaching, the loss of the symbiotic algae by corals. As the symbionts provide corals with most of their food requirements, bleached corals enter into starvation. We have also demonstrated that microplastics can reduce coral calcification — the deposition of their hard skeleton.”
For more Salon articles about plastic pollution:
Costa Rica is helping to solve plastic pollution problem
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and several Costa Rican entities will remove approximately 200 thousand tons of non-recyclable plastics that are not correctly disposed of and do not reach sanitary landfills.
UNDP launched the joint Plastic-Free Landscapes Project, through which they will coordinate efforts to eliminate tons of harmful plastics from terrestrial and marine ecosystems by 2030.
The presentation of the project was made in San José, where it was explained that the processing plant in Pedregal, Heredia province, will receive most of the non-recoverable plastics to transform them into raw material for construction using CRDC technology.
In addition, they indicated that barriers would be installed in rivers to collect plastics and accelerate the cleaning process. They urged recycling companies, the private sector, organizations, and citizens to join in recovering non-valuable plastic so it can be used in construction materials.
UNDP also revealed that plastic pollution is one of humanity’s greatest environmental challenges and represents a significant threat to vulnerable populations living near rivers or dependent on coastal or marine ecosystems in Costa Rica.
Moreover, according to the Ministry of Health, more than 40 tons of plastic waste are not recovered or captured by the collection and recycling systems every day, which means that 314 thousand tons of plastic waste have escaped into the environment so far this century.
The UNDP resident representative in Costa Rica, José Vicente Troya, stated that his vision is to make Costa Rica the first country in the world to solve the plastic problem.
“We have formidable allies, and we want to organize a national campaign in which no one is left behind by participating in a historical solution that can inspire the rest of the world,” he noted.
Plastic-Free Landscapes Project proposes the installation of four plastic waste collection fences in four of the most polluted rivers in Costa Rica:
Virilla in San Antonio BelénGrande Tárcoles in OrotinaParismina in the CaribbeanTérraba in the Southern Zone
David Zamora, Pedregal’s commercial director and CRDC’s technical director highlighted the positive impact of this alliance.
“This alliance will provide a definitive and sustainable solution to all plastic waste, allowing Costa Rica to continue to position itself as a world leader in sustainable development and environmental protection,” said Zamora.
Living on Earth: Beyond the Headlines
Air Date: Week of July 8, 2022
stream/download this segment as an MP3 file
Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, has rolled back the previous administration’s plan to phase-out single use plastics in the state (Photo: Glenn Youngkin, Flickr, Public Domain)
Environmental Health News Editor Peter Dykstra and Host Steve Curwood discuss Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s rollback of a plan to phase out single-use plastics. They also remark on the surprising ecological diversity and cleanup efforts of the heavily polluted Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY, before commemorating 30 years since the US stopped dumping sewage sludge in the ocean.
Transcript
CURWOOD: On the line now from Atlanta, Georgia is Peter Dykstra. Peter is an editor with Environmental Health News, that’s EHN.org and dailyclimate.org, and he keeps track of what’s going on beyond the headlines for us. Hi, there, Peter, how are you doing and what have you got for us today?
DYKSTRA: Hi, Steve. We’ve got a story about the Commonwealth of Virginia. The previous governor who left office at the beginning of the year, Ralph Northam, had set up the beginning of a scheme to phase out single-use plastics at all state agencies and state universities. The new governor, Glenn Youngkin, rolled some of that back in favor of pushing the idea of plastics recycling, an idea that we’ve spent many, many years learning does not get the job done.
CURWOOD: So a step forward and, I guess, a step or two backwards, huh?
DYKSTRA: And there was one particularly big program to reduce plastics use and instill other environmental measures at George Mason University, which is a really big commuter school in Northern Virginia outside of Washington, DC. So ambitious was this program, that the new Governor, Glenn Youngkin, recognized George Mason with a Governor’s Environmental Excellence Award in March, and the following month, in April, he issued an executive order essentially cutting the legs out of the single use plastics reduction plan.
CURWOOD: All right, Peter, hey, what else do you have for us for today?
DYKSTRA: I’ve got kind of a stinky story from one of the worst sites in New York City, as far as pollution goes, a Superfund site, the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, the site of heavy industry and rampant dumping for a hundred and fifty years, sewage, all sorts of heavy metals like lead, and there’s stuff at the bottom of the canal that’s lovingly referred to as black mayonnaise.
Wildlife is thriving in and around Gowanus Canal, in Brooklyn, NY, after over a century of industrial pollution (Photo: Alexander Rabb, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
CURWOOD: What a place, huh?
DYKSTRA: Yeah, but there’s a wildlife inventory that’s going on in the canal where they’re finding everything: birds, sea birds, insects, plants, shellfish, finned fish. But one of the issues and conflicts here is that the citizen based effort to clean up the canal is running into the sometimes rigid programs that EPA sets up for cleanup, and some of the Superfund cleanup efforts are getting in the way of the citizen cleanup efforts.
CURWOOD: But, A, it’s helping wildlife and, B, it’s getting remediated, so…
DYKSTRA: Maybe a happy ending someday. It’s just kind of a gross place, but even in this gross place, there’s a concerted effort to clean it up.
CURWOOD: Well, let’s take a look back in history now, Peter, what do you see?
DYKSTRA: Yeah, if you’re ready for a little bit more smelly news out of the same place, good old New York City. On June 30, 1992, 30 years ago, New York City formally ended its practice, more than 100 years old, of dumping sewage sludge into the Atlantic. There was an uproar in the late 80s in New York and New Jersey about medical waste washing up on beaches, trash, sewage, and all sorts of yucky things. But by that date, June 30, 1992. They became the last American municipality to stop barging its sewage sludge out to the nearby ocean and dumping it.
30 years ago, on June 30th, 1992, New York City became the last city in the US to stop dumping sewage sludge in the ocean. (Photo: bikesharedude, Flickr, Public Domain)
CURWOOD: Well, better late than never. Peter is an editor with Environmental Health News, that’s EHN.org and dailyclimate.org. We’ll talk to you again real soon, Peter, thanks a lot.
DYKSTRA: Thank you, Steve. We’ll talk to you soon.
CURWOOD: And there’s more on these stories on the Living on Earth webpage that’s LOE.org.
Links
Energy News Network | “Virginia Governor Rolls Back Plastics Phase-Out, Seeking to Court Recycling” The Sierra Club | “Brooklyn’s Infamous Superfund Site: Also a Wildlife Haven” EPA | “Reilly in New York to Mark End of Sewage Sludge Dumping”
Living on Earth: Getting plastics out of the parks
Air Date: Week of July 8, 2022
stream/download this segment as an MP3 file
Plastic fork with seaweed. Single-use plastic utensils are difficult to recycle and can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. (Photo: Ingrid Taylar, Flickr, CC)
To help curb the plastic pollution crisis, the US Department of Interior will phase out single-use plastic products sold and distributed in national parks and other federal public lands it oversees. Christy Leavitt, Plastics Campaign Director at Oceana, joins Host Bobby Bascomb to talk about how the phase out could work and why it matters.
Transcript
CURWOOD: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley studios at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood,
BASCOMB: And I’m Bobby Bascomb. Roughly 40% of all plastic produced worldwide each year is thrown away after just one use.And while things like plastic forks, straws and bags may be used for only a moment, they can stick around for up to a thousand years before they decompose.Less than 6% of plastics in the US is recycled, meaning most plastic waste is incinerated, landfilled, or winds up in our oceans.Seeking to curb such waste, Canada has announced a phaseout of the manufacture and import of common single-use plastic starting at the end of 2022 and culminating by the end of 2025.Plastic is made from oil and gas, a major resource for Canada which is one of the world’s largest producers of oil.Still, Prime Minister Trudeau says phasing out single-use plastic is a worthy aim, as the ban would eliminate close to 3 billion pounds of plastic waste over the next decade.
TRUDEAU: Plastic pollution is a global challenge. You’ve all heard the stories, and seen the photos. And to be honest, as a dad it’s tough trying to explain this to my kids. How do you explain dead whales washing up on beaches around the world, their stomachs jam-packed with plastic bags? Or albatross chicks photographed off the coast of Hawaii, their bodies filled to the brim with plastic they’ve mistaken for food? How do I tell them that against all odds, you’ll find plastic at the very deepest point of the Pacific Ocean, 36,000 feet down?
BASCOMB: The U.S. Interior Department has announced a goal to phase out single-use plastics sold and distributed in national parks and other public lands it oversees, but so far the Forest Service under the Agriculture Department has yet to follow suit.The parks system alone had nearly 300 million visits last year and had to deal with some 70 million pounds of plastic waste.
For more, I’m joined now by Christy Leavitt, Plastics Campaign Director at Oceana. And by the way, we should disclose that Oceana is a supporter of Living on Earth through Sailors for the Sea. Welcome to Living on Earth, Christy!
LEAVITT: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
BASCOMB: So what exactly does this announcement entail? And how significant is it?
LEAVITT: This is a big announcement from the Department of Interior and the Biden administration. So on June 8th, on World Oceans Day, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland committed to phasing out single use plastic products in our national parks and other public lands overseen by the Department of Interior. So what she did was she issued a secretarial order that calls for the department to reduce the procurement, sale and distribution of single use plastic products and packaging on all Interior Department-managed lands and buildings by 2032.
BASCOMB: Now, the goal here is to phase out plastic by 2032, as you just mentioned, but that’s a full decade away. Why does it have to take so long? And what needs to happen between now and then?
LEAVITT: Yeah, well, we are hopeful that they will move quickly to phase out some of the worst, the most problematic, single-use plastics as quickly as possible. Our understanding is that it’s going to take them up to 10 years to deal with some of the specific concession contracts that they have. But we definitely know they’re interested in moving quickly, and we will be following up to make sure that they do move as quickly as possible.
BASCOMB: Well, what kind of impact does plastic waste currently have in our public lands and waters?
LEAVITT: Just to give you the scope of the problem, as we look at our oceans is that every year, 33 billion pounds of plastic enter the ocean. And to put that in perspective, that’s roughly equivalent to dumping two garbage trucks full of plastic into the ocean every minute. And it’s not just harming our oceans, but it’s also our climate and our health and our communities and our public lands. Basically, no place on earth is untouched by plastic. And we’re finding it in our national parks and other public lands. And it has a couple of impacts there. One impact is that nobody wants to look and see single use plastic water bottles or plastic straws or other plastic as they’re exploring the beautiful places like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon. And then it’s also harmful for the ecosystems there. So not only are there the big pieces of plastic, so the plastic bag, or the plastic water bottle, but it also, plastic breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastic, that then can get into the soil, can get into the air. That’s what we’re finding in rain; we’re even finding it in human blood and in our lungs, too. So we’re finding it everywhere, including in our national parks.
Water bottles for sale in Death Valley National Park, California. Sales of single-use products such as these are slated to end by 2032 in all Department of Interior facilities including in national parks. (Photo: Courtesy of Oceana)
BASCOMB: And to what degree is that potentially a threat to wildlife? You know, the very reason that we’re going to these national parks?
LEAVITT: It is a big problem for wildlife. So not only can wildlife get entangled, or ingest plastic, but the same thing is happening with microplastics, where they might be eating it, they might be, you know, breathing it in, those sorts of things, too. So it’s a problem for wildlife. And when we talk about our national parks, there’s more than 400 different national park units around the country. Some of them are the really big parks, like Grand Teton National Park, and some of them are smaller areas. But 88 of the National Parks are ocean and coastal parks. So they’ve got a direct impact on what’s happening in our oceans as well as our coastal Great Lakes too. So the plastic, if plastic is going out there, it’s gonna end up in our oceans. And Oceana did a survey a few years ago, we pulled together a report that looked specifically at what was happening with animals in US waters. And we found nearly 1800 animals — these were marine mammals, so dolphins, whales, as well as sea turtles — had been harmed by either ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic in US waters since 2009.
BASCOMB: And of course, those are just the ones that we know about and documented, you can be sure the number’s much, much higher.
LEAVITT: That is definitely true. Those are only the ones that people were able to see and observe. But there’s a lot more animals that are being impacted by plastic.
Installing additional water fountains, such as this one at Grand Canyon National Park, can help reduce the need for single-use plastic bottles by making it easier for visitors to refill reusable bottles. (Photo: Michael Quinn / NPS, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
BASCOMB: Now, of course, plastic is made from fossil fuels, and the production of plastic and the plastic itself is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet. And as we know, climate change is one of the biggest threats to our national parks. To what extent, do you think that was maybe a factor in Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s decision here to phase out plastics on our public lands?
LEAVITT: Yeah, our national parks are definitely faced with extraordinary adaptation challenges. So it’s a critical problem. And it’s definitely something that the Department of Interior and the Biden administration overall are looking at solutions to the climate crisis. As you mentioned, plastics have a big impact on climate. Almost all plastic is created from fossil fuels. So throughout its entire existence, plastic is creating climate changing greenhouse gases, so it’s extracted from, whether it’s from oil and gas, that extraction creates greenhouse gases; then the production of plastic creates more; they’re transported; they then break down in landfills or they’re incinerated or burned. So throughout its whole life, that plastic is creating more and more greenhouse gases. And I don’t think most people think of that plastic bottle or that plastic bag as coming from fossil fuels, but it is. And in fact, if plastic was a country, it would be the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
BASCOMB: So how will phasing out single use plastic and the national parks and public lands actually work? What might a visitor see that might be different?
According to Christy Leavitt, every year around 33 billion pounds of plastic enter the oceans worldwide. That’s about two garbage trucks full of plastic every minute. (Photo: Courtesy of Oceana)
LEAVITT: I think some of the things that visitors will see at national parks will be more refillable water stations. So rather than buying a plastic water bottle, there’ll be stations at all of our national parks and other Department of Interior sites where you can go and refill your reusable water bottle. There’ll also be inexpensive water bottles for sale, so if you didn’t bring a water bottle, you’ll be able to purchase one right there. And you could use it over again and again. There’s already some of that happening at national parks and this will expand it even more. There are a lot of national parks, you can buy food, whether lunch or for dinner. Some of those are cafeteria style. Some of those are restaurant style. And they can move to reusable plates and dishes and cups and utensils. So they’ll need to create systems to be able to wash all those dishes. But it will be able to make sure that we’re not using single use plastic products in those places.
BASCOMB: Now, from what I understand many of the gift shops and food vendors in the national parks are actually concessionaires who contract with the National Park Service. So how might this affect them?
LEAVITT: Yes, that is definitely the case where a lot of the restaurants or gift shops are being run by concessionaires. And so they will need to make these changes, they’ll need to get rid of unnecessary single use plastic products, whether it’s in Yosemite or a National Seashore or another wildlife refuge.
BASCOMB: Christy, what kind of public support or, for that matter, pushback have you seen for this plan to phase out single use plastic in the parks?
Christy Leavitt is Oceana’s Plastics Campaign Director (Photo: Courtesy of Oceana)
LEAVITT: We know that people love their national parks, as we’ve been talking about a bit here. And we did a survey earlier this year. And we found that 82% of American voters would support a decision by the National Park Service to stop selling and distributing single use plastics at our national parks. So that’s a very high level of support, it’s bipartisan support. So definite interest in protecting our national parks from single use plastic.
BASCOMB: Christy Leavitt directs the plastics campaign at Oceana. Christy, thank you so much for your time today.
LEAVITT: Thank you. It’s a pleasure.
Links
E&E News | “National Parks to Phase Out Single-Use Plastics” Read about Secretary Haaland’s order to phase out single-use plastics About Canada’s single-use plastics ban About Christy Leavitt
Living on Earth: Getting plastics out of the parks
Air Date: Week of July 8, 2022
stream/download this segment as an MP3 file
Plastic fork with seaweed. Single-use plastic utensils are difficult to recycle and can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. (Photo: Ingrid Taylar, Flickr, CC)
To help curb the plastic pollution crisis, the US Department of Interior will phase out single-use plastic products sold and distributed in national parks and other federal public lands it oversees. Christy Leavitt, Plastics Campaign Director at Oceana, joins Host Bobby Bascomb to talk about how the phase out could work and why it matters.
Transcript
CURWOOD: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley studios at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood,
BASCOMB: And I’m Bobby Bascomb. Roughly 40% of all plastic produced worldwide each year is thrown away after just one use.And while things like plastic forks, straws and bags may be used for only a moment, they can stick around for up to a thousand years before they decompose.Less than 6% of plastics in the US is recycled, meaning most plastic waste is incinerated, landfilled, or winds up in our oceans.Seeking to curb such waste, Canada has announced a phaseout of the manufacture and import of common single-use plastic starting at the end of 2022 and culminating by the end of 2025.Plastic is made from oil and gas, a major resource for Canada which is one of the world’s largest producers of oil.Still, Prime Minister Trudeau says phasing out single-use plastic is a worthy aim, as the ban would eliminate close to 3 billion pounds of plastic waste over the next decade.
TRUDEAU: Plastic pollution is a global challenge. You’ve all heard the stories, and seen the photos. And to be honest, as a dad it’s tough trying to explain this to my kids. How do you explain dead whales washing up on beaches around the world, their stomachs jam-packed with plastic bags? Or albatross chicks photographed off the coast of Hawaii, their bodies filled to the brim with plastic they’ve mistaken for food? How do I tell them that against all odds, you’ll find plastic at the very deepest point of the Pacific Ocean, 36,000 feet down?
BASCOMB: The U.S. Interior Department has announced a goal to phase out single-use plastics sold and distributed in national parks and other public lands it oversees, but so far the Forest Service under the Agriculture Department has yet to follow suit.The parks system alone had nearly 300 million visits last year and had to deal with some 70 million pounds of plastic waste.
For more, I’m joined now by Christy Leavitt, Plastics Campaign Director at Oceana. And by the way, we should disclose that Oceana is a supporter of Living on Earth through Sailors for the Sea. Welcome to Living on Earth, Christy!
LEAVITT: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
BASCOMB: So what exactly does this announcement entail? And how significant is it?
LEAVITT: This is a big announcement from the Department of Interior and the Biden administration. So on June 8th, on World Oceans Day, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland committed to phasing out single use plastic products in our national parks and other public lands overseen by the Department of Interior. So what she did was she issued a secretarial order that calls for the department to reduce the procurement, sale and distribution of single use plastic products and packaging on all Interior Department-managed lands and buildings by 2032.
BASCOMB: Now, the goal here is to phase out plastic by 2032, as you just mentioned, but that’s a full decade away. Why does it have to take so long? And what needs to happen between now and then?
LEAVITT: Yeah, well, we are hopeful that they will move quickly to phase out some of the worst, the most problematic, single-use plastics as quickly as possible. Our understanding is that it’s going to take them up to 10 years to deal with some of the specific concession contracts that they have. But we definitely know they’re interested in moving quickly, and we will be following up to make sure that they do move as quickly as possible.
BASCOMB: Well, what kind of impact does plastic waste currently have in our public lands and waters?
LEAVITT: Just to give you the scope of the problem, as we look at our oceans is that every year, 33 billion pounds of plastic enter the ocean. And to put that in perspective, that’s roughly equivalent to dumping two garbage trucks full of plastic into the ocean every minute. And it’s not just harming our oceans, but it’s also our climate and our health and our communities and our public lands. Basically, no place on earth is untouched by plastic. And we’re finding it in our national parks and other public lands. And it has a couple of impacts there. One impact is that nobody wants to look and see single use plastic water bottles or plastic straws or other plastic as they’re exploring the beautiful places like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon. And then it’s also harmful for the ecosystems there. So not only are there the big pieces of plastic, so the plastic bag, or the plastic water bottle, but it also, plastic breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastic, that then can get into the soil, can get into the air. That’s what we’re finding in rain; we’re even finding it in human blood and in our lungs, too. So we’re finding it everywhere, including in our national parks.
Water bottles for sale in Death Valley National Park, California. Sales of single-use products such as these are slated to end by 2032 in all Department of Interior facilities including in national parks. (Photo: Courtesy of Oceana)
BASCOMB: And to what degree is that potentially a threat to wildlife? You know, the very reason that we’re going to these national parks?
LEAVITT: It is a big problem for wildlife. So not only can wildlife get entangled, or ingest plastic, but the same thing is happening with microplastics, where they might be eating it, they might be, you know, breathing it in, those sorts of things, too. So it’s a problem for wildlife. And when we talk about our national parks, there’s more than 400 different national park units around the country. Some of them are the really big parks, like Grand Teton National Park, and some of them are smaller areas. But 88 of the National Parks are ocean and coastal parks. So they’ve got a direct impact on what’s happening in our oceans as well as our coastal Great Lakes too. So the plastic, if plastic is going out there, it’s gonna end up in our oceans. And Oceana did a survey a few years ago, we pulled together a report that looked specifically at what was happening with animals in US waters. And we found nearly 1800 animals — these were marine mammals, so dolphins, whales, as well as sea turtles — had been harmed by either ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic in US waters since 2009.
BASCOMB: And of course, those are just the ones that we know about and documented, you can be sure the number’s much, much higher.
LEAVITT: That is definitely true. Those are only the ones that people were able to see and observe. But there’s a lot more animals that are being impacted by plastic.
Installing additional water fountains, such as this one at Grand Canyon National Park, can help reduce the need for single-use plastic bottles by making it easier for visitors to refill reusable bottles. (Photo: Michael Quinn / NPS, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
BASCOMB: Now, of course, plastic is made from fossil fuels, and the production of plastic and the plastic itself is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet. And as we know, climate change is one of the biggest threats to our national parks. To what extent, do you think that was maybe a factor in Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s decision here to phase out plastics on our public lands?
LEAVITT: Yeah, our national parks are definitely faced with extraordinary adaptation challenges. So it’s a critical problem. And it’s definitely something that the Department of Interior and the Biden administration overall are looking at solutions to the climate crisis. As you mentioned, plastics have a big impact on climate. Almost all plastic is created from fossil fuels. So throughout its entire existence, plastic is creating climate changing greenhouse gases, so it’s extracted from, whether it’s from oil and gas, that extraction creates greenhouse gases; then the production of plastic creates more; they’re transported; they then break down in landfills or they’re incinerated or burned. So throughout its whole life, that plastic is creating more and more greenhouse gases. And I don’t think most people think of that plastic bottle or that plastic bag as coming from fossil fuels, but it is. And in fact, if plastic was a country, it would be the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
BASCOMB: So how will phasing out single use plastic and the national parks and public lands actually work? What might a visitor see that might be different?
According to Christy Leavitt, every year around 33 billion pounds of plastic enter the oceans worldwide. That’s about two garbage trucks full of plastic every minute. (Photo: Courtesy of Oceana)
LEAVITT: I think some of the things that visitors will see at national parks will be more refillable water stations. So rather than buying a plastic water bottle, there’ll be stations at all of our national parks and other Department of Interior sites where you can go and refill your reusable water bottle. There’ll also be inexpensive water bottles for sale, so if you didn’t bring a water bottle, you’ll be able to purchase one right there. And you could use it over again and again. There’s already some of that happening at national parks and this will expand it even more. There are a lot of national parks, you can buy food, whether lunch or for dinner. Some of those are cafeteria style. Some of those are restaurant style. And they can move to reusable plates and dishes and cups and utensils. So they’ll need to create systems to be able to wash all those dishes. But it will be able to make sure that we’re not using single use plastic products in those places.
BASCOMB: Now, from what I understand many of the gift shops and food vendors in the national parks are actually concessionaires who contract with the National Park Service. So how might this affect them?
LEAVITT: Yes, that is definitely the case where a lot of the restaurants or gift shops are being run by concessionaires. And so they will need to make these changes, they’ll need to get rid of unnecessary single use plastic products, whether it’s in Yosemite or a National Seashore or another wildlife refuge.
BASCOMB: Christy, what kind of public support or, for that matter, pushback have you seen for this plan to phase out single use plastic in the parks?
Christy Leavitt is Oceana’s Plastics Campaign Director (Photo: Courtesy of Oceana)
LEAVITT: We know that people love their national parks, as we’ve been talking about a bit here. And we did a survey earlier this year. And we found that 82% of American voters would support a decision by the National Park Service to stop selling and distributing single use plastics at our national parks. So that’s a very high level of support, it’s bipartisan support. So definite interest in protecting our national parks from single use plastic.
BASCOMB: Christy Leavitt directs the plastics campaign at Oceana. Christy, thank you so much for your time today.
LEAVITT: Thank you. It’s a pleasure.
Links
E&E News | “National Parks to Phase Out Single-Use Plastics” Read about Secretary Haaland’s order to phase out single-use plastics About Canada’s single-use plastics ban About Christy Leavitt
What's the best alternative to a single-use plastic bag? It depends
Ottawa recently announced it will phase out some single-use plastics by 2025, but finding sustainable alternatives is trickier than you might think.The ban, which targets six categories of plastics, is part of an effort by the Liberal government to achieve zero plastic waste by 2030. A study commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada showed that, in 2016, Canadians threw away three million tonnes of plastic waste, only nine per cent of which was ultimately recycled. The rest ended up in landfills, waste-to-energy facilities or the environment, where it can harm wildlife while taking hundreds of years to break down.One of the single-use items on the banned list is the plastic checkout bag that many Canadians use for groceries and other kinds of shopping. Up to 15 billion plastic checkout bags are used every year in the country, according to government data.They’re also one of the major sources of plastic litter found on shorelines. In 2021, almost 17,000 plastic bags were collected during community cleanups.Even before the federal government’s move, some jurisdictions including P.E.I., Nova Scotia and a number of B.C. communities had already banned single-use plastic bags. Some major retailers such as Sobeys and Walmart have also stopped offering them.The majority of Canadians are shifting away from single-use plastic bags, too. In a 2019 survey, 96 per cent of respondents said they used their own bags or containers when grocery shopping, though only 47 per cent of those said they always did so.Examining the full life cycle The challenge for eco-conscious shoppers is that alternatives to single-use plastic bags also leave an environmental footprint.A 2020 study by the UN Environment Program analyzed the findings of seven life cycle assessments (LCAs) on shopping bags published since 2010. An LCA assesses the environmental impacts of a product or services from, essentially, cradle to grave. This includes: Raw material extraction.Production.Logistics and distribution.Use.End-of-life.The study found the environmental ranking of bags varies depending on which criteria you consider. For example, one type of bag may score well in cutting down on litter but be a poor option when it comes to water and land use to make it.The number of times a reusable bag is used is also crucial, the study found. On the lower end, a paper bag needs to be used four to eight times to have less impact on the climate than a single-use plastic bag. Meanwhile, a cotton bag needs to be used 50 to 150 times to be environmentally superior, according to the study.Given the impacts from all life cycle stages, one of the best options for shoppers would to skip the bag altogether whenever possible, said Tony Walker, an associate professor of environmental studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax.”Reducing consumption of anything and everything is key because everything requires resources and energy to produce,” said Walker, who advised the federal government on its Zero Plastic Waste Agenda and Oceans Plastics Charter.If you do need a plastic bag alternative, here’s a closer look at the pros and cons of some common options.Cotton bagThe cotton bag has greater environmental impacts than other types of bags during production due to the high amount of energy required to grow, irrigate and fertilize the cotton.However, its durability lends itself to hundreds, even thousands, of uses, which makes it an environmentally friendly alternative, says Walker.As well, cotton bags are made from a renewable resource and are degradable at end of life, though the 2020 UN study notes it matters how it is disposed. Waste incineration for cotton bags is climate neutral and therefore a better option than landfilling, where the study says degradation of the cotton releases methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.Paper bagPaper bags have a few things going for them: they can decompose easily, they can be put in compost bins depending on your jurisdiction and they can be recycled as paper, says Walker.However, like cotton, they demand quite a bit of energy to produce. They also require forestry products as raw materials and take more fuel to transport than other, lighter materials.Tony Walker, an associate professor of environmental studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, advised the federal government on its Zero Plastic Waste Agenda and Oceans Plastics Charter.