The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Lake County residents encouraged to recycle
Plastic items offer a lot of convenience for consumers, but all that waste could now be posing a problem.
According to Valeria Merino, vice president of Global Earth Day at the Earth Day Network in a media release, more than nine billion tons of plastic have been produced to date in the United States resulting in over six billion tons of plastic waste of which only 9 percent has been recycled.
With more than 313 tons of plastic collected from Concord Township, Eastlake, Madison Township, Madison Village, North Perry Village, Painesville Township, Wickliffe, Willoughby, Willoughby Hills and Willowick during 2017 and more than 206 tons from Mentor in 2017, Lake County residents are getting the message. Residents are encourage to recycle to keep waste such a plastic bottles from ending up in the lakes, oceans, and landfills where it can take centuries to decompose or as litter on the streets.
“The world is already incapable of properly managing this enormous amount of waste, and the production of plastic is predicted to increase three times in the next 25 years,” Merino said in the April 3 news release.
The average decomposition time for plastic depending on exposure to sunlight, heat, cold and moisture is 450 years, said Bonnie Rice, Keep Mentor Beautiful executive director and solid waste coordinator for Mentor Public Works Department. It’s estimated that stronger plastics can take over 1,000 years to decompose.
And decomposing plastics can cause problems for communities and pose health hazards for people and animals.
The plastic along with other waste becomes an eyesore when it ends up as litter on the street or sitting in a landfill.
Animals mistake small pieces for salt and other food sources, according to Rice.
“It can build up in their digestion system and they slowly starve to death or die of internal infection,” Rice said. “Aquatic animals are known to get plastic six- and eight-pack holder rings around their necks or legs. There have been documented cases of ducks and
geese drowning from the plastic rings catching them under water and holding there.”
Plastic also becomes brittle during decomposition.
“As they break into pieces they can be as sharp as glass and cut through the skin of people or animals and carry germs and bacteria into the wound,” Rice said.
“Plastic pollution is now an ever present challenge. We can see plastics floating in our rivers, oceans, and lagoons, littering our landscapes and affecting our health and the future of billions of children and youth,” Merino said. “We have all contributed to this problem, most unknowingly, and we must work to reduce the and ultimately to end plastic pollution.”
Non-recycled plastic waste has resulted in huge
garbage patches on the oceans. Garbage patch is a nickname given to open ocean areas where marine debris concentrates, according to www.marinedebris.noaa.gov.
According to that website, plastic is the main ingredient in these garbage patches.
Large corporations such as Nike are starting to harvest materials slowly from these debris concentrations to recycle. Nike uses the harvested plastic to make shoes, according to Rice.
In addition to tennis shoes, T-shirts, canvas tote bags and pens are just some of the unexpected items now being made from recycled plastics.
While recycling is a start, according to Merino, it’s going to take more effort to eliminate the problem, including
individuals reducing their levels of plastic consumption.
Some of the ways Merino suggests doing that are:
• Ask yourself every time you consider buying a disposable plastic item, if it’s really needed;
• Prevent creation of micro plastics by properly disposing of plastic products;
• Pick up plastic trash whenever you see it; and
• Consider changing the way you wash clothes.
Plastic waste can be reduced locally by participating in area special waste collection days.
The Earth Day Network is launching a plastic pollution calculator on April 22 that allows individuals to track the amount of plastics they use in the form of bottles, bags, containers, other items and allows the user to calculate ways they can reduce plastic use. The calculator along with the Plastic Pollution Primer and Toolkit can be found at www.earthday.org/plastic-calculator.