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Climate Strike -- The Scope of the Plastic Problem (week 41) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-08-01  

You can make a difference to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event, in your town or your city! How? Reuse, repurpose, and recycle this information.

This is the letter for week 41 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents to see topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile…

STRIKE FOR THE PLANET

This is a dead albatross chick on Midway.1 It died of starvation with a stomach full of plastic.

The Week 31 letter (PLASTIC) looked at the general chemistry and biology of both plastic production and pollution. But, without understanding the scope of the problem, it is easy to miss the urgency of the issue.

So this week is about THE SCOPE OF THE PLASTIC PROBLEM.



1. Size Matters

In plastic pollution, size determines effects.

Macroplastic pollution is visible, from cigarette butts2 to plastic bags3 to ghost nets.4 This size plastic is both relatively easy to quantify5 and likely to destroy species and ecosystems.6

Microplastics are produced deliberately (plastic beads in cosmetics7) or as the result of mechanical, chemical, and photodegradation of larger plastics (including clothing8). These plastics can be found in the ocean9, in freshwater ecosystems10, in the soil11, in the air12, in our food and water13, and in living organisms (including us14). They bind and accumulate toxins.

Nanoplastic pollution is small in size but possessing enormous surface area15, making the likelihood of bound toxins higher than for microplastics. Nanoplastics cross the blood-brain barrier, and move through cell membranes via endocytosis.16 At this size, plastic no longer acts like particles but like a chemical agent, and can affect physiology, cellular structure, and organism behavior.17, 18

2. Location, Location, Location

Plastic pollution is now literally everywhere. The Midway Atoll is 2500 miles from the nearest continents, and the plastic there that kills a bird can be “recycled” via accidental ingestion to kill and sicken more birds. Plastic has been found at the bottom of the ocean, including in the deepest trenches. Plastic is in the air and in our weather. And micro and nanoplastics bioaccumulate.19

3. Plastic Effects

At the macro level plastics entangle, strangle, constrict, injure, and block organisms.20, 21

At all levels, plastics cause endocrine disruption, contain suspected and known human carcinogens, trap toxic chemicals during production that are released during use, leach toxins into the ground water and aquifers, cause estrogenic activity, contribute to insulin resistance, promote inflammation, bind with heavy metals and toxins, can cause heart disease, and release a range of toxic VOCs.22

4. Plastic Amounts

Humans buy 1 million plastic bottles every minute, make 24.2 billion pairs of shoes out of plastic per year, discard 1 billion plastic toothbrushes in the U.S. annually, have 60 million synthetic rubber and plastic tires in U.S. landfills alone, dump 3 trillion plastic cigarette butts per year, use 10 thousand tampons or pads with plastic applicators or linings per American woman’s lifetime, and go through millions of rolls of plastic food wrap each year in U.S. households.23

The vast majority of this plastic ends up in the ocean and comes from single use items (seconds of use, centuries to degrade), discarded by people in developed, rich nations like the United States. The plastic being recycled is recycled in poor nations by impoverished people in appalling and dangerous conditions. This is why plastic pollution is a core environmental justice issue.24

5. SF’s Contribution and What Plastic Costs SF

Every year, at least 7 trillion pieces of plastic flows into the bay. That would make every person in the SF Bay Area responsible annually for 1 million pieces of plastic each.25 In Golden Gate Park, the preparations for the Feb 1 race that ended at Ocean Beach included stacked pallets of single-use plastic bottles of water, and the stacked pallets were wrapped in multiple layers of plastic film. Biking from the Sunset to downtown, I pass construction sites where whole buildings are wrapped in plastic. We use and throw “out” ENORMOUS amounts of plastic in SF, except there is no “out” on earth26; all this “waste” is coming back to haunt us.

Besides the multiple health effects and the destruction by pollution of SF’s seafood industry, the costs to SF of plastic pollution also include the sheer waste of materials being produced, used once and tossed, the massive amounts of money and pollution spent to pay for “recycling”27, 28 our plastic garbage, and the plastic itself: in our water, in our air, in our food, in our houses and offices, in our clothes, in our blood. We are performing an uncontrolled experiment on ourselves; there are no safety protocols.

6. What Can SF Do?

Eliminate

Regulate

Replace

Clean-up

Eliminate all single-use plastics now. We’re in a Climate Emergency; use an Emergency Declaration and do it immediately.

Regulate by adding the true cost of plastic (there are no externalized costs in a closed system, and the earth is a closed system29) to every piece of plastic sold in of shipped to SF. That includes the true costs of attaining, producing, shipping, and disposal, medical costs, and the environmental costs in terms of ecosystem destruction and/or the true costs of cleaning up escaped waste.

Replace plastic with the many and various alternatives and, where replacement isn’t possible yet, require reuse or on-site recycling. Incentivizing plastic reduction and elimination will spur creativity that can earn patents and money.

And clean-up the plastic that’s already fouling our biosphere. Maybe SF guarantees housing for people doing this clean-up. It’s much more valuable work than some of the jobs currently earning 6 figure salaries and causing gentrification and social injustice locally.

Whatever avenue of action you take, you have to take it now. There are only 47 weeks left.30, 31

FOOTNOTES

1. Chris Jordan. Albatross. https://www.albatrossthefilm.com .

2. Terry Martin. How Cigarette Butts Pollute the Environment. VeryWellMind. 21 January 2020. https://www.verywellmind.com/world-cigarette-litter-facts-that-will-shock-you-2824735 .

3. The Bad Boy of Pollution. TheWorldCounts. 2020. https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/Plastic-Bag-Pollution-Facts .

4. Ghost Nets, Among The Greatest Killers In Our Oceans. Mission Blue. 13 May 2013. https://mission-blue.org/2013/05/ghost-nets-among-the-greatest-killers-in-our-oceans/ .

5.

Fighting for Trash Free Seas. Ocean Conservancy. 2020. https://oceanconservancy.org/trash-free-seas/international-coastal-cleanup/annual-data-release/

6. Christian Aden. Macroplastics. Makroplastik Nordsee. 2016-2018. http://portal.macroplastics.de/index.php?page=Macroplastics-EN .

7. Microplastics in Cosmetics: Banned? Harmful? Microplastics. 2 December 2019. https://microplastics101.com/microplastics-in-cosmetics/ .

8. Laura Paddison. Single clothes wash may release 700,000 micro plastic fibres, study finds. The Guardian. 26 September 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/27/washing-clothes-releases-water-polluting-fibres-study-finds .

9. Damian Carrington. Microplastic pollution in oceans is far worse than feared, say scientists. The Guardian. 12 March 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/12/microplastic-pollution-in-oceans-is-far-greater-than-thought-say-scientists .

10. Microplastic pollution: an emerging freshwater stressor. The Freshwater blog. 24 June 2015. https://freshwaterblog.net/2015/06/24/microplastic-pollution-an-emerging-freshwater-stressor/ .

11. Susanna Gionfra. Plastic Pollution in Soil. Institute for European Environmental Policy. May 2018. https://ieep.eu/uploads/articles/attachments/3a12ecc3-7d09-4e41-b67c-b8350b5ae619/Plastic%20pollution%20in%20soil.pdf?v=63695425214.

12. Damian Carrington. Revealed: microplastic pollution is raining down on city dwellers. The Guardian. 27 December 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/27/revealed-microplastic-pollution-is-raining-down-on-city-dwellers .

13. Christina Thiele and Malcolm David Hudson. How You’re Eating Microplastics — And Don’t Even Realise. Independent. 6 July 2018. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/food-microplastics-eating-plastic-pollution-environment-a8395556.html .

14. Fiona Harvey and Jonathan Watts. Microplastics found in human stools for the first time. The Guardian. 22 October 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/22/microplastics-found-in-human-stools-for-the-first-time .

15. Earl Boysen, Nancy C. Muir, Desiree Dudley, and Christine Peterson. How Nanotechnology Maximizes Surface Area. Dummies. https://www.dummies.com/education/science/nanotechnology/how-nanotechnology-maximizes-surface-area/ .

16. Endocytosis. Wikipedia. 27 January 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocytosis .

17. Priyanka Bhattacharya, Sijie Lin, James P. Turner, and Pu Chun Ke. Physical Adsorption of Charged Plastic Nanoparticles Affects Algal Photosynthesis. The Journal of Physical Chemistry. 13 September 2010. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp1054759 .

18. Nadja R. Brun,, Patrick van Hage, Ellard R. Hunting, Anna-Pavlina G. Haramis, Suzanne C. Vink, Martina G. Vijver, Marcel J.M. Schaaf, and Christian Tudorache. Polystyrene nanoplastics disrupt glucose metabolism and cortisol levels with a possible link to behavioral changes in larval zebrafish. Communications Biology. 18 October 2019. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6802380/ .

19. Asian Scientist Newsroom. The Problematic Persistence Of Nanoplastic Pollution. AsianScientist. 13 June 2018. https://www.asianscientist.com/2018/06/in-the-lab/nanoplastic-persistent-pollution/ .

20. Natasha Daly. For Animals, Plastic Is Turning the Ocean Into a Minefield. National Geographic. June 2018. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-animals-wildlife-impact-waste-pollution/ .

21. photo of seal from Rossa Cole. “Penguin of Six Pack Rings.” point green BLOG Rossa Cole. 15 February 2011. http://pointgreenblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/penguin-of-six-pack-rings.html .

22. Volatile Organic Compounds. American Lung Association. 27 February 2018. https://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/indoor/indoor-air-pollutants/volatile-organic-compounds.html .

23. Lori Cuthbert. Our Addiction To Plastic. pg. 68-81. National Geographic. 12 2019.

24. Greenpeace. 3 Reasons Why Plastic Pollution Is an Environmental Justice Issue. EcoWatch. 28 April 2019. https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-pollution-environmental-justice-2635748912.html .

25. Paul Rogers. “Things you do every day are causing trillions of pieces of micro plastic to flow into San Francisco Bay”. The Mercury News. 2 October 2019. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/02/7-trillion-pieces-of-microplastic-wash-into-san-francisco-bay-every-year-new-study-shows/ .

26. Except for hydrogen and helium. We lose those gases — mostly helium (a Noble Gas, so it doesn’t bond with anything) — because the earth isn’t massive enough to generate the gravity to hold on to the two lightest elements.

27. Laura Parker. “A whopping 91% of plastic isn’t recycled”. National Geographic. 20 December 2018. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/07/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment/ .

28. Oliver Franklin-Wallis. “‘Plastic recycling is a myth’: what really happens to your rubbish?” The Guardian. 17 August 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish .

29. Save a small amount of hydrogen, all the helium, the rovers and probes, the lunar vehicles and flags and, in the opposite direction, space dust plus the occasional meteorite that smashes onto earth.

30. Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change, Speakers Warn during General Assembly High-Level Meeting. United Nations. 28 March 2019. https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm . See the action timeline in the report.

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