A drop in the ocean

A tiny piece of positivity in the news this week (8 minute read)

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Hope has been in short supply over the last couple of weeks. The most obvious reason, of course, is the developing disaster resulting from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine[1]. Those events have wiped almost everything else off the international headlines. But the world’s other trouble spots haven’t improved while our attention has been diverted. Those protesting against last year’s coup in Sudan are still being shot by the security forces. Fighting continues in the Sahel region, where both al-Quaeda and IS are active. The crisis that has been worsening in Myanmar since last year’s coup continues to deepen. Yemen continues to be a disaster of incomprehensible proportions, and Afghanistan still teeters on the brink.

But for those paying attention to the headlines, there was a small piece of good news among the doom. At a time when everything seems to be falling apart, 175 nations managed to agree on a common cause – solving the problem of plastic pollution. It’s only a tentative first step, an agreement to come to an agreement, rather than a concrete plan. There’s a very long way to go before we see any real progress, but right now I’m willing to take any good news that I can find.

The agreement itself makes for tedious reading, since it is four pages long and contains only a single sentence. But the crucial phrase states that a committee will develop a legally binding agreement on plastic pollution, addressing the full life cycle of plastic. This is important, because no matter how much effort we as consumers put into reducing our consumption, the production of plastic waste is currently, in effect, subsidised. We are the ones who pay for plastic to be disposed of, since we are the ones who pay for waste disposal and recycling through our council rates. But we’re not the ones who profit from creating plastic in the first place.

Most modern plastics have the same origin as many of our environmental problems – fossil fuels. But the very first plastic was made from cotton fibre and known as celluloid. It was introduced in the late 19th century, and used as a substitute for materials such as ivory, coral and tortoiseshell. It was praised for its environmental virtues, since making something like billiard balls from chemically-treated cotton was vastly preferable to making them from elephant tusks. Now, we mostly associate the term ‘celluloid’ with the movie industry – it was used for film until the 1930s. But today, its main use is actually to make ping pong balls.

The first synthetic plastic was invented in 1907. Known as Bakelite, it was made from chemicals derived from coal tar and methanol. It had excellent insulating properties, and its invention was timely. Before the invention of Bakelite, electrical insulation was made from shellac, derived from secretions of the lac bug – a type of scale insect native to parts of south and south-east Asia. It’s hard to imagine our ability to use electricity being dependent on breeding enough bugs to make insulation for all the wires.

Both plastics and the natural products they replaced are made of a specific type of chemical compound known as a polymer. The easiest way to understand a polymer is to think of it as a metal chain. Just as a chain is made up of individual links, a polymer made up of individual chemical units known as ‘monomers’. The names of our most common plastics – polythene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polypropylene – come from the names of the monomers, respectively ethylene, vinyl chloride and propylene.

Ethylene, vinyl chloride and propylene are all very similar molecules, made from oil or natural gas. The processes for producing them use large amounts of energy, and vinyl chloride, before it is turned into a polymer, is toxic. But the main environmental issue with plastic – and the reason why any agreement to manage its impact must address the whole lifecycle – is the way it breaks down, or rather doesn’t break down.

In general, synthetic plastics don’t break down easily. When we are using them, this is a useful property. Plastic packaging is extremely effective at keeping our food clean and our medicines safe. Even though I try to restrict my plastic use, I can’t imagine life without it. The problem comes when plastics have served their useful purpose and we are left with a useless lump of polymer.

The problem is particularly bad because of the widespread use of single-use plastics. They’re cheap, and this has encouraged their profligate use in situations where they aren’t necessary or where there are viable alternatives. Of course, part of the reason they are cheap is that the cost of disposal and the environmental impact is not accounted for in the price – another reason we need an agreement to manage the problem.

Plastic waste is one of our most visible environmental problems. We can’t see climate change directly, nor can we see many toxic pollutants. But we see plastic waste all around us. It’s on our streets, on our beaches and in our parks. It clogs up our landfills. At least 14 million tons a year ends up in the ocean. Once it’s in the sea, most of us don’t see it anymore, but huge amounts of it have accumulated in the northern Pacific Ocean in what’s known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Image credit: Andriy Nekrasov/ Getty Images

Globally, around 60% of plastic waste ends up either in landfill or discarded in the environment (the remainder is incinerated or recycled). New Zealand manages better than the global rate. The Packaging Council (which represents manufacturers of packaging) estimated that New Zealand recycles 58% of plastic waste, a similar percentage to India. However, it is not clear whether the figure for New Zealand or India is the percentage collected for recycling or the percentage actually recycled. In Germany, one company claims that although more than 99% of plastic waste is recovered, less than half is actually recycled. The company quoting these figures does have a vested interest, because it makes machines that can sort waste. Nonetheless, it is well recognised that a significant proportion of the waste collected for recycling ends up in landfill, including in New Zealand, so I have no reason to doubt the figures.

Recycling plastic is, therefore, far from a sustainable solution. While many of the issues with recycling come down to economics, even if money is taken out of the equation, recycling still has its problems. Only certain types of plastic can be recycled and then only if it’s clean, so it depends on us washing our rubbish properly. And, as a rule, recycled plastic is of lower quality than completely new plastic, and it can only be recycled two or three times before it becomes unusable.

Incinerating plastics is also no solution. Burning plastic releases many toxic chemicals, although high temperature incinerators make it safer. It is possible to burn plastic waste to produce energy – although that’s a problem in itself since plastics come from fossil fuel, so burning plastic contributes to climate change.

Once in the environment, it is the persistence of plastic that makes it such a problem. Plastics can persist for decades or centuries, and in some cases, millennia. How much harm plastic waste does depends on the type of plastic and what it’s been made into. For example, much of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes from the fishing industry, including old nets. These nets keep on killing wildlife for decades as they float through the ocean. As well as getting entangled in plastic waste, marine species can die from starvation as their stomachs fill up with pieces of plastic small enough to be eaten.

Although it is persistent, plastic does break down in the environment, and that creates more problems. It was only in 2009 that scientists first realised that plastics in the ocean were breaking down and releasing chemicals that were potentially toxic. Around the same time, there was increasing awareness of microplastics – pieces of plastic smaller than 5mm in size. We don’t yet know about the impacts of microplastics and the chemical released during plastic breakdown, so we don’t know how much of a problem it is. But with microplastics being found in more and more places, from drinking water to desert dust, and remote locations such as Greenland and Antarctica, an international agreement to combat the problem can’t come soon enough.

Has the current crisis in Ukraine or the litany of disasters I mentioned in my opening paragraph made you feel like doing something to help? Please consider donating to organisations such as Red Cross or Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders which operate in all of these areas of conflict and crisis, not just the ones grabbing the headlines.

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[1] You may notice that I refer to Putin’s invasion rather than Russia – I have no wish to blame ordinary Russians for the actions of their leader.