Preventing Plastic Pollution
By Patricia Dines

Article from The Next STEP newsletter
November/December 2008 (Volume 8, Number 6)
(c) Copyright Patricia Dines, 2008. All rights reserved.

I recently discovered another reason to keep plastics out of our shared environment.

It turns out that, in addition to its own toxic components, plastics in the wild become virtual sponges for other human-made toxics, such as PCBs and DDT. In one study, plastic was found to absorb up to one million times the level of these poisons in the water itself.

Plastic's benefit of durability means that it's long-lasting in the environment. Instead of biodegrading back into nature, it "photo-degrades," breaking into increasingly smaller pieces. Animals eat these toxic pellets, which fill their bellies, block vital nutrients, compromise their health, and bioaccumulate toxics up the food chain -- including into the fish that we and other larger creatures eat.

Plastics are cluttering even the most remote and once-pristine places on earth. For instance, in the northern Pacific Ocean, there's a so-called plastic island (more accurately a trash spiral) estimated to be the size of Texas and a mind-boggling 3.5 million tons. A researcher here found six pounds of plastic for every pound of plankton! Scientists estimate that each year at least a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die from eating or getting entangled in plastic.

A Better Way

The good news is that we can recycle plastic, remaking it into composite lumber, railroad ties, playground items, clothing, carpeting, and new bags. However, currently only about 3% of plastics are recycled.

* Plastics accepted here. In addition to household plastic containers, North Bay Corp. (which handles all of Sonoma County's recycling) now takes clean plastic bags and other soft film plastics in the blue recycling can (though not at Recycletown).

You can also drop plastic bags at most grocery stores. This is actually preferable, because they'll stay cleaner if not mixed with other materials, and thus be more usable domestically.

* Getting more info. For a handy flyer describing plastic bag and film recycling, see <http://unicycler.com/pdf/plastic_bags.pdf>. There's also a flyer summarizing the blue can's overall rules, though it has the older plastics info, at <http://unicycler.com/pdf/sonoma_county_ssr_brochure.pdf>. Find more recycling specifics in the AT&T Yellow Pages (under "R"), at <www.recyclenow.org>, and from the EcoDesk (707) 565-3375.

The Bigger Picture

Of course, to truly decrease our earth impact, we must also "reduce and reuse" the plastics in our lives. For instance, you can:

* Buy a reusable grocery bag. Each reusable bag can eliminate 1,000 plastic shopping bags over its lifetime. Ideally, choose one made of organic cotton or recycled plastic.

* Buy a reusable water bottle, to avoid purchasing single-use ones. Consider stainless steel and hard plastic options.

* Buy food in bulk, to reduce the plastic packaging you use.

* Reuse your plastic bags and containers. I dry my washed bags with Real Goods' counter bag dryer <www.realgoods.com>. Then they and my reusable containers go inside my cloth bag, ready for use at the store. Other bags line my garbage cans and collect compost materials.

* Give away unneeded plastic shopping bags, for instance to a thrift store.

* Complete the loop and buy recycled. View recycled products, from coasters to jewelry to furniture, at <www.RecycleStore.com>.

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