Throwaway world chokes on convenience

Cheap, disposable plastics have long been a part of modern daily life. We use plastic bags for takeout food, tomatoes and countless other purchases. We may reuse some of them, but petroleum-based bags can remain in the environment virtually forever.

Evidence is piling up that the Earth is being choked by plastic. Researchers recently wrote in the journal Scientific American that a floating mass of plastic named the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is up to 16 times larger than previously thought.

The GPGP, floating in the eastern Pacific, is twice the size of France. Researchers think it may have been greatly expanded by trash washed into the ocean in the 2011 tsunami in Japan. A sample of the plastic had 386 pieces imprinted with words from nine different languages, a third of them in Japanese and a third in Chinese, according to a Tribune News Service account of the research published in March.

Plastic can kill such sea creatures as whales and turtles that mistake it for food.

That’s not all: Tiny bits of plastic are also finding their way into our own bodies. The World Health Organization recently tested different brands of bottled water and found microplastic flakes in “almost all” brands, according to The Independent news website.

The WHO said there was no evidence that microplastics pose a risk to human health, but added that studies are needed on the effects of long-term consumption.

Attempts to start to solve this problem have been made for years, with China enacting legislation before many others. Ten years ago, China passed a measure banning the flimsiest bags, which were causing huge amounts of “white pollution”, and requiring consumers to pay for plastic shopping bags such as those used at grocery stores.

Without stricter enforcement, however, the ban hasn’t been as successful as hoped.

China is, however, ramping up waste sorting and recycling. Importation of foreign waste for sorting has been curtailed to make way for an increase in domestic sorting. Dozens of cities are working on residential recycling, commercial food digestion and other programs, the Waste Dive website reports.

At my Beijing apartment building, we sort waste into recyclables, kitchen scraps and other waste.

Also, three years ago, Jilin province banned nonbiodegradable plastic bags in hopes of fostering bioplastic manufacturing in the region. Bioplastics are made in whole or part from materials like cassava root or algae.

The government of the corn-growing region has been promoting a cornbased bioplastic called polylactic acid, Plastics News China reports.

Still, making plastic from plants in a way that benefits the environment is much more complicated than it may appear, and there are many misconceptions, according to Tom Szaky, CEO of the recycling company TerraCycle.

“Bioplastics have the potential to be a truly sustainable replacement for petroleum-derived plastics, but only if we do it right,” Szaky wrote in a series published by Sustainable Brands, a community for green entrepreneurs.

Next month in this space, we’ll dive into the fascinating world of plant-based plastics and the future of waste.