Second Oceanic Plastic Bag Island Discovered

I’ve written about the huge Pacific plastic garbage island twice the size of Texas. Now, as reported in an April 15th, 2010 AP article, researchers have discovered an Atlantic island of waste plastic, most of which comes from land. Researchers are warning that this new blight on the ocean stretches over thousands of square miles between Bermuda and Portugal's Azores islands.

The debris is harmful for fish and sea mammals. There is no real way to clean the oceans, so we have to do what we can by keeping disposable plastics out of circulation. It’s a global problem — it unfortunately is not confined to a single patch," Cummins said. Still more data are needed to assess the dimensions of the North Atlantic patch.

“Charles Moore, an ocean researcher credited with discovering the Pacific garbage patch in 1997, said the Atlantic undoubtedly has comparable amounts of plastic. The east coast of the United States has more people and more rivers to funnel garbage into the sea. But since the Atlantic is stormier, debris there likely is more diffuse, he said."Humanity's plastic footprint is probably more dangerous than its carbon footprint," he said.

A paper cited by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says as many as 100,000 marine mammals could die trash-related deaths each year.

Spring and Trash: Go Ask Alice

With the last vestiges of snow fading away, we are emerging from our winter cocoons and recommitting to our fitness programs. Here’s an idea: how about a trash pick-up fit-walk? In the immortal words of that famous song, Alice’s Restaurant:

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick ….. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both (strange)…. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people [picking up trash] and singin’ a bar of Alice's Restaurant, …... They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day [picking up trash and] singin’ a bar of Alice's Restaurant? And friends they may think it's a movement.

So why not start a neighborhood clean-up movement? First of all, the people who read this are not the ones depositing the trash. I get that. But if I can get people all over the country to start their own fit-walk pick-ups, we could start a trend. All you need are three things:

• Walking shoes
• A grungy old cloth bag with a shoulder strap (not plastic, puleez!)
• Wet wipes

Once a week, you get some friends together and you go out, armed with the above paraphernalia and start race-walking to the first piece of trash. The goal is how fast you can pick up trash and move on to the next piece. It gets your pulse rate up; you get to bend and stoop; use your arms and shoulders; and move those legs. After an hour, you dump your bags of trash in a bonafide trash receptacle, clean off your hands, and reward yourselves with a cup of joe. Then in between your competitive trash walks, when you go out on your own, just stuff a small cloth bag in your pocket and pick up trash as you go. If you happen to see a plastic trash bag as litter, use that to collect your trash. That, my friends is single-person activism at its best! And the adult equivalent of making exercise a game.

Progress is Slow but Steady

Gleaned from the watchdogs at Reusablebags.com, some hopeful progress on plastic bag litter, and some posturing to watch out for….

October 2, 2009, USA Today reported an announcement by Target that it would start offering a 5-cent discount for every reusable bag customers use to pack their purchases. An earlier pilot test with 100 Target stores showed a 58% reduction in the number of plastic bags used.

Also in October, CVS Pharmacies started offering customers incentives for bringing reusable bags, their green bag card system. For every four shopping trips with a cloth reusable bag, customers get a coupon for $1.

Because the plastic bag industry is big business, in Canada, the Environment and Plastics Industry Council published an alarming report that your eco-friendly shopping bag could be making you sick. Consider the source.

The report concluded that reusable grocery bags are "a breeding ground for bacteria and pose a public health risk" because of high counts of yeast, molds and bacteria. Duh! Our clothes have high levels of bacteria if we don’t wash them. Common sense practices like washing your reusable bag and using plastic with leaky meats can reduce contaminants. When you're choosing a reusable shopping bag, avoid the cheap ones and select-or make-durable bags that withstand washing.

The Worldwide Threat from Plastic Bags Marches On

According to an article posted in 2004, even at that time, there was growing international recognition of the threat of plastic bag use on the environment.

The handy plastic shopping bag, so handy for everything from toting groceries to disposing of doggie doo, came into widespread use in the early 1980s. By 2004, environmental groups estimated that 500 billion to 1 trillion of the bags were being used worldwide every year.

Said one critic: "Every time we use a new plastic bag they go and get more petroleum from the Middle East and bring it over in tankers. We are extracting and destroying the Earth to use a plastic bag for 10 minutes…”

To read more from this article, check out the link below:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0721-04.htm

Imagine how that would feel as you walk through an urban area and see plastic bags wafting from a nearby bush, or drive through a pristine countryside to have your vision drawn jarringly to a plastic bag snapped on a western fence. Then think about those eyesores killing wildlife. According to Planet Ark, about 100,000 whales, seals, turtles and other marine animals are killed by plastic bags each year worldwide.

If each of us makes sure we have a supply of washable, reusable bags in our cars, and we don’t enter a single store without them, or don’t fail to stuff one in a pocket when we walk to a store, we will gradually win over converts. The ripple effect will cause businesses to stop offering them. If eliminating plastic bags from our lives is the only environmental change we make, it’s a good one.

Responsible Recycling Eases Strain on Landfills

Besides not using plastic throw-aways, we can reduce waste everywhere by responsible recycling. Surprisingly, landfill capacity has increased at the same time the number of landfills has drastically decreased. The EPA reports that the number of landfills in the United States has fallen 77 percent since 1988. In its 2006 MSW study, the EPA reports that while the number of U.S. landfills has steadily declined over the years, the average landfill size has increased. It goes on to report that in 2006, compared to 1990, the total volume of waste going to landfills dropped by 4 million tons, at the same time that the U.S. population increased by more than 50 million people.

During the past five decades American attitudes toward recycling and ecology radically changed. Environmental concerns also influenced landfill policies and materials recovery. The newer landfills are better controlled and protected, and considerably larger with more efficient compacting. We not only have much larger landfills and are putting less in them, we also use them more efficiently. A given amount of landfill space will hold about 30 percent more content today than in the past. The three main waste hauling companies in the U.S. say they have a long-term capacity of 26-38 years.

Bottom Line: Despite a vast population increase, nationwide landfill use is down and materials recovery is up. Our larger population is sending less to landfills. Efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle are paying off.

Some examples of the trends between 1960 and 2006 include:
• Recovery and reuse of trash has gone from 5.6 to 81.1 million tons.
• Discards going to landfills as a percentage, has gone from 93.6% to 54.9%.
• Population in the millions has gone from 179,979 to 299,398.
Source: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in
the United States: Facts and Figures for 2006, EPA, page 9

How do we contribute to making this trend even better?
• Reduce the type and numbers of disposables we use: plastic bags, bottled water, paper plates, food baggies
• Download the recycling guidelines for your community and make sure you are recycling everything they take.
• If your community doesn’t recycle something you use a lot of, like glass, then find another source for those.
• Take the time when cooking dinner or doing dishes to wash out those disposable containers and put them in the recycling bin

Tis the Season-To Think About the Environment

Well, here we are approaching the holidays again—and shopping. What’s it going to be? More plastic bags for your purchases, or have you really reformed and carry your reusable bags everywhere?

In earlier blogs, I’ve given good reasons for eschewing plastic bags. At this time of year, when we are searching our databanks for cool, yet inexpensive gift ideas, think about giving the gift that keeps on giving—to our environment: give all your friends and relatives good quality reusable, washable bags. I have a pile of bags in every car that I’ve accumulated over the years at conferences, trade shows, and ecology events. My favorite ones came as gifts:
• My friend Kathy made me two large cloth bags with sturdy handles. She stenciled flowers on them and they are darling; plus, they hold a lot! I just throw them in the washing machine.
• My sister Beth bought each of us a sturdy canvas tote on which she had stenciled a big peace symbol (yep, we’re Baby Boomers, all right).
• I bought string bags for my nieces and nephews to get them on the road to reusables.
Cloth bags are a palette to unleash your artistic talents. You can put anything memorable on them, even family pictures. How’s this: give your younger brother a big tote bag with his naked baby picture on it. His kids will think it’s hilarious.
If you’d rather branch out, you can go to www.Reusablebags.com and pick out any number of environmentally friendly products for kids, adults, athletes, seniors. Some of their really neat things include:
• Fun-print nylon-lined Velcro lunch baggies (Do you know how many of those throw-away lunch baggies a family goes through in a year? Trailer-loads)
• Nalgene water bottles
• Big totes and string bags
• Thermal coffee mugs that go in the dishwasher and microwave (I love mine)
• Sippy cups for the tots
• Camping cookware
• Silverware
• Christmas drawstring wrapping bags.
If you are going to make tote bags, get some Christmas fabric, some bias tape or ribbon, and make your own drawstring package wrapping. Your gift recipients will love them and are guaranteed to regift at least the wrapping. They are so simple to make.
There are so many ways we can reduce waste and increase personal connections with a little thought. Let me know if you use any of these ideas.

Around the World in Discarded Plastic Bags

Africa has some wonderfully strange smells, sights, cultures, and customs. It also has some very familiar sights such as plastic bag litter. We visited a bustling market in Mindelo, Cape Verde Islands. Here, people shop for food daily and plan meals around what is fresh and readily available. We didn’t see one person there with reusable bags. They all got the cheap plastic bags from the vendors, and they are doing this daily. Where do you think all these bags end up? There and everywhere else we visited in West Africa, they ended up on the ground, in pits, and in waterways, wending their way out to sea. There they end up in the craws of sea turtles, birds, and fish, eventually strangling them.

Other plastic debris is just as ubiquitous. Bottle caps, rings off bottles, even disposable lighters have ended up in the stomachs of birds that died. Our love affair with plastics and disposables in general is killing wildlife and trashing our world. Plastics have become the babies of the third world where money is scarce and the per capita annual income is around $200. Plastic is cheap to produce and so more readily available for the indigent.

This is an issue that deserves some attention. Plastic bags can be easily replaced by cloth bags for shopping in these cultures where they make their own cloth, if they had a reason to do so. But plastic bags are handy and free. We’re making great headway with plastic bag litter, and some with other disposables in the United States, but hardly any in these forgotten parts of the world we come so far to visit. How do we choose between malaria eradication and plastic bag litter? It’s not even a contest.