The Oceans' Plastic Plague

Far out in the Pacific Ocean, about halfway between California and Hawaii, air and ocean move together in a huge clockwise spiral known as the North Pacific subtropical gyre. A phenomenon caused by the heating and subsequent cooling of air as it moves from the equator toward the polar regions, the gyre (one of five major subtropical gyres in the world) has been avoided by sailors for centuries because there is very little wind within it. It contains one of the regions known as “horse latitudes,” reputedly named by Spanish sailors who were frequently becalmed there and forced to throw their livestock overboard. Gyres are also known for having few fish, particularly top predators, because of their low levels of nutrients—they are sometimes referred to as “ocean deserts.”

One thing the North Pacific subtropical gyre has plenty of, though, is plastic. Plastic debris swirls with the current for miles and miles, brought here from around the Pacific Rim. In 1999, researchers from the Long Beach–based Algalita Marine Research Foundation discovered six pounds of plastic for every pound of zooplankton floating in the surface waters of the gyre. This included not only such ubiquitous debris as plastic bottles and bags, but also hundreds of tiny plastic fragments floating in what Algalita founder Charles Moore describes as a “plastic-plankton soup.” Plastics don't biodegrade, but in the ocean they do break down from exposure to sunlight and wave action into “microplastic debris”—what one scientist describes as “plastic powder.”

Many people understand the damage that larger pieces of plastic trash can do to ocean life, having seen countless pictures of turtles trapped in abandoned fishing nets, fish maimed by six-pack rings, and birds asphyxiated by plastic bags. But in the long run, it may be small bits of plastic that do the most harm. Seabirds often mistake smaller plastic bits for food and eat them, or feed them to their chicks. The plastic takes up space in the chicks' stomachs and can cause them to starve to death. A 1994–95 study of 251 dead or injured albatross chicks on Midway Atoll, near the northwestern end of the Hawaiian archipelago, found only six that did not contain plastic.

Microplastic debris is small enough to be ingested by a wide variety of marine life, including barnacles, lugworms, and zooplankton, a key link in the food chain. Japanese researchers recently found that these tiny fragments floating through the ocean act as sponges for toxic chemicals that are not water-soluble, such as PCBs, DDE, and PAHs—known or suspected carcinogens and endocrine disruptors (substances that may have adverse affects on the developmental and reproductive systems). Very little research has been done on what effects, if any, microplastic debris has on marine organisms, but its potential for introducing endocrine disruptors and other toxins into the food chain—which ultimately includes humans—is disturbing.

More and More and More

Each year, more than 50 million tons of plastic resin (the raw material used to make plastic products) are produced in North America alone; a record high of 57.5 million tons was produced in 2004, according to the American Plastics Council. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that in 2003, of the 26.7 million tons of plastic that made it into the municipal waste stream, less than four percent (1.4 million tons) was recycled.

The amount is growing all the time, in part because of a phenomenal increase in plastic packaging, particularly disposable single-use containers. “People are consuming more of everything, they're consuming more stuff on the go, and for many of those products, plastic has become the packaging of choice because it's lightweight and durable,” says Pat Franklin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute. For example, about 3.3 billion small (less than two liters) units of non-sparkling water—a product that essentially didn't exist before the 1990s—were sold in the United States in 1997 (the first year for which figures are available), mostly in plastic bottles. By 2003, more than six times that much was sold and now, Franklin estimates, around 25 billion plastic bottles of water are purchased in this country in a year. That's an eight-fold increase in less than ten years.

Online purchases are another growing source of plastic waste. Businesses that ship products directly to customers, rather than in bulk to stores, use more protective material and filler, according to Fritz Yambrach, professor of packaging science at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

An unknown, but significant, amount of the plastic produced never makes it to the landfill or the recycling plant, landing as trash along roadways, in parks, on beaches, and in the ocean. A sizeable amount never even makes it into products: Algalita's Moore estimates that fully ten percent of the microplastic loose in the environment comes from the tiny pellets used to make plastic goods. Commonly called “nurdles” (legend has it they were named years ago by southern California lifeguards), these pellets are the most common contaminant found on Orange County beaches, Moore says. In three days of testing in 2005, Algalita collected 236 million pellets from the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers. Algalita has been working with some plastics manufacturers in southern California to identify where they're losing pellets and what they can do to stop the loss.

Sixty to 80 percent of all marine debris—any manmade, solid material that ends up in coastal waters, estuaries, and oceans—worldwide is plastic. Some comes from spills at sea: containers falling off cargo ships, waste thrown overboard from passenger and commercial ships, and gear lost from fishing boats. Plastic pellets can come from containers lost at sea, but many are lost during transport on land or at industrial facilities and make their way into streams and waterways. According to the EPA, 80 percent of marine debris is from land-based sources, including landfills along the coast, urban runoff and storm­water overflows, and beach litter.

Moore, a third-generation Long Beach resident, has been sailing the Pacific since childhood, when his father, an industrial chemist and avid sailor, took him and his siblings on voyages to remote locations. Moore did volunteer water monitoring before founding the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in 1994 to expand his efforts into ocean monitoring, research, and restoration. Over the years he had seen plastic debris in the ocean proliferate, but nothing prepared him for what he and the crew of his research vessel, the Alguita, encountered in 1997 on their way back from a Los Angeles–to-Hawaii sail race, when they decided to cross the North Pacific subtropical gyre. The plastic garbage patch they found there went on without a break for the week it took them to cross. “I knew I had to go back and quantify it,” he says.

In 1999, his surveys in the gyre led him to the conclusion that plastic outweighed the zooplankton by six to one in its surface waters. After he presented the results of his study at a meeting of the American Cetacean Society in 2000, independent filmmaker Bill Macdonald, who was in the audience, approached him with a proposal to make a documentary on the subject. Our Synthetic Sea drew worldwide attention to the problem. “The study was explosive,” Moore says, “and the video brought it to the attention of John Q. Public.”

You Can't Vacuum the Ocean

There are pilot programs that have successfully removed large quantities of derelict fishing gear—a particular threat to marine life and habitats—from the ocean (see Coast & Ocean, Autumn 2005). But cleaning out all the plastic simply isn't possible, especially when it comes to micro­plastics. Moore points out that plastic is thoroughly mixed into the water column, not just floating on the surface, so even if it were physically possible to vacuum 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of water, you'd end up vacuuming out all the plankton as well.

Hauling trash out as it accumulates on beaches is one approach. In 2004, people from 88 countries around the world took part in International Coastal Cleanup Day. The first coastal cleanup day in this country took place in Oregon in 1984. In California, the Coastal Commission has organized an annual coastal cleanup day every year since 1985. It is now the largest volunteer event in the state and reaches up into the watersheds, capturing trash before it can reach the coast. In 2005, 48,250 volunteers picked up a total of 971,047 pounds of debris along 2,029 linear miles of shoreline. “We know we're getting a lot of stuff from Asia and Hawaii—areas around the Pacific Rim,” says Eben Schwartz, outreach manager for the Coastal Commission. “But probably about 80 percent of it comes from inland areas.”

“What beach cleanups do very well is raise awareness,” Moore says. “But you can go out four days later and the tide will have deposited more trash. What we have now is a geometric increase in the amount of plastic; it's just not realistic to think you can clean it all up. Do no more harm: stop putting it in.”

That's the approach southern California is trying to get a handle on. As early as the 1980s, Los Angeles County, spurred by the amount of trash washing up on area beaches, installed booms on the Los Angeles River and Ballona Creek to capture some of the debris before it reaches the coast. More recently, following a lawsuit by environmental groups, county and city governments within Los Angeles County were ordered by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board to completely eliminate all trash runoff into the watershed by the end of 2012.

That requirement has forced local governments in the county to reassess municipal waste and water policies and practices (for example, how much trash escapes during city trash collection?) and spurred installation of improved storm drain screens and catch basins, as well as development of better screen technologies and designs. It has also led to new permitting systems for municipal and manufacturer facilities, greater enforcement efforts against illegal discharges, and the targeting of trash “hot spots.” Under the water board's plan, government agencies are also required to undertake public education and outreach to cut down on litter and encourage people to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

In Orange County, the Earth Resource Foundation in 2004 launched a “Campaign Against the Plastic Plague,” with the goal of eliminating single-use throwaway plastic containers, particularly plastic bags. Students in 16 high schools have formed Earth Resource youth clubs to tackle environmental projects that include cleaning up their campus. The Newport Harbor High club got its school to eliminate polystyrene foam (often referred to as styrofoam) from the food service; now students are working to convince nearby cities to ban polystyrene. “We're teaching environmental responsibility where you live, work, and play,” says Lindsey Payne, the group's campaign coordinator.

“The public is way, way out in front of the government on this one,” Moore says. ”If the people lead, the leaders will follow, but we've got a lot of leading to do.”

On another front in the growing citizens' war against plastic is Californians Against Waste, an environmental research and advocacy group that spearheaded the passage of California's bottle bill, which imposed a deposit fee on beverage containers and has reclaimed nearly 200 billion containers since its passage in 1986. “We're encouraging manufacturers to play a greater role to reduce waste from plastic bags and containers,” says executive director Mark Murray. The group is asking manufacturers and retailers to commit to cutting plastic waste in half by reducing the amount of plastic produced and by recycling.

Monetary incentives are also being tried, and some have proven effective in reducing use and encouraging recycling. Ireland levied a 15-cent tax on plastic bags in 2002 and within the first five months saw their use cut by 90 percent as people switched to reusable bags. In California, a statewide fee on plastic bags and disposable cups was proposed in 2003, but the bill, by Assemblyman Paul Koretz, never made it out of committee. In San Francisco, the Department of the Environment in 2002 proposed a 17-cent-per-bag fee, to be paid by shoppers, but when that met with strong objections, the city signed an agreement with several large supermarket chains to reduce the number of all grocery bags distributed by 10 million a year by the end of 2006. If this target isn't reached, the city will reconsider the bag fee.

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.