California Coast & Ocean

Some governments have banned plastic bags or expanded polystyrene containers altogether. The Cities of Malibu and San Juan Capistrano, and also Ventura County, have all passed some form of polystyrene ban to help them comply with the zero-trash mandate for their watersheds. San Juan Capistrano also started a curbside plastic bag recycling program and has now collected more than one million bags. Plastic bags of certain types have been banned in South Africa, Rwanda, and in parts of India and Bangladesh, where they were clogging gutters and drains and contributing to severe flooding.

Moore believes that industry ultimately holds the key to solving the plastics problem, by designing products that can be recycled back into the same products over and over again--so-called "closed-loop" recycling. I deal directly with industry, and I tell them that they have to design for recycling, to create new pathways back into production" for the materials they produce.

The European Union, Japan, Korea, and Canada have adopted or are in the process of adopting laws that require manufacturers to take back or pay for the disposal of some types of products and product packaging. In Maine, a new law took effect in January that requires manufacturers to pay for recycling old TVs and computer monitors, and a number of other states are considering similar legislation.

In California, a 2003 law requires consumers to pay a recycling fee when they purchase a TV or monitor. This, however, puts the burden on consumers and retailers, rather than where it belongs, says Barbara Kyle of the Computer Takeback Campaign. We want producers on the hook for costs, to give them incentives to design their products better and make them less toxic," she says.

Looking at the Big Picture

As has happened many times before, the cumulative impact of citizens and local governments seems to be building toward more comprehensive approaches. In September 2005, the Coastal Commission, the Algalita Foundation, and the State Water Resources Control Board held a conference that brought together representatives from government agencies, academic and research institutions, environmental protection groups, and the plastics industry to share information and discuss the range of possible solutions to the plastics plague.

An action plan is being developed, to be presented by the Coastal Commission at a meeting of the Ocean Protection Council in April. (After its presentation, the plan will be online at www.plasticdebris.org.) Our goal is to keep the action plan and the dialogue about marine debris moving forward toward implementation," says Miriam Gordon, the Commission's plastic debris project coordinator. The Commission is in the process of determining the next steps."

For Moore, the next step is to head back out on the ocean: he's planning another trip around the entire North Pacific gyre in 2007--2008. He and his crew will spend 11 months tracking, collecting, and tagging trash so they can follow its progress as it makes its way around the gyre (in general, he says, it takes a piece of trash about six years to make the entire trip around its edge). He's also planning studies to find out what pollutants are in the plastics, as well as to see if very tiny bits of plastic are being consumed by marine organisms. Pieces smaller than one millimeter just disappear from the system, and they shouldn't," he says. I want to know where they go."