“Our Problems with Plastics Are Only Just Beginning”

Another hat tip to Andy Tobias for this one from Telegraph.co.uk:

Plastic is the main issue. Fifty years ago, most flotsam was biodegradable. Now it is 90 per cent plastic. In 2006, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that there were 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in every square mile of ocean. With its stubborn refusal to biodegrade, all plastic not buried in landfills – roughly half of it – sweeps into streams and sewers and then out into rivers and, finally, the ocean. Some of it – some say as much as 70 per cent – sinks to the ocean floor. The remainder floats, usually within 20 metres of the surface, and is carried into stable circular currents, or gyres “like ocean ring-roads”, says Dr Boxall. Once inside these gyres, the plastic is drawn by wind and surface currents towards the centre, where it steadily accumulates. The world’s major oceans all have these gyres, and all are gathering rubbish. Although the North Pacific – bordering California, Japan and China – is the biggest, there are also increasingly prominent gyres in the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Our problems with plastics are only just beginning.

I’m a layperson here, of course, but stories like this (another here from TreeHugger) scare the shit out of me. And the Telegraph item quotes people who dismiss the possibility of somehow cleaning up the plastic that’s accumulated in the ocean. I hope that things like BioBag and other biodegradable plastics are an answer.

Steps in the Right Direction

• Green Inc. posts on biodegradable potato chip bags.

• Bonne Nouvelle posts on paper packaging for water bottles.

• Guy Kawasaki flags a story on a potential breakthrough regarding a “a crucial component for generating clean hydrogen fuel using only water and sunlight.“