Why straw bans alone won’t save the environment
If you thought getting rid of plastic straws was the end of it, think again.
Also problematic are disposable contact lenses, your kid’s balloons and the lint from those fuzzy winter jammies.
Really.
And that’s just the beginning of a long list of things we take for granted – like the plastic wrap I put over a leftover bowl of oatmeal.
Used once, that plastic went in the trash – where it will live in a landfill or pollute the ocean as part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a pile of plastic debris the size of Texas.
Why didn’t I use a plate to cover the bowl, as my mother would have done? Habit.
Because even though I wash out Ziploc bags until they have holes, I still reach for the plastic wrap when something else would do.
I'm not the only one who is part of the problem.
Unlike giving up a plastic straw, bigger changes will require rethinking the lifestyle choices and conveniences we take for granted.
For example:
Birthday party. Celebration of life. Game day festivities. Releasing heliumfilled balloons seems like such a pretty way to commemorate important events. But it’s not.
The website Balloons Blow, Don’t Let Them Go posts grim pictures of the impact on wildlife when those balloons fall back to earth.
Similar pictures of the impact of straws on marine life began the movement to rethink how we drink.
There's increasing pressure to abandon balloon releases.
It's no big deal to flush tiny disposable contact lenses or wash them down the drain. Right?
But people who do that produce an astonishing 20 to 23 metric tons of wastewater-borne plastics a year, according to research by Arizona State University.
The durable plastic lenses get broken into “microplastic” during wastewater treatment, which winds up back on the land and in water, where it is consumed by fish, birds and other mammals.
It can also end up on your dinner plate, creating “unwanted human exposures to both the plastic polymer and a spectrum of environmental contaminants that tend to stick to the surface of plastics,” ASU found.
Researchers identified only one contact lens maker, Bausch + Lomb, with a serious lens recycling program. Since November 2016, it collected about 7 tons of lenses and lens packaging waste, according to USA TODAY.
Your clothes don't just get clean in the washing machine.
They shed microfibers. Particles shed by synthetics – polyester, acrylic and nylon, rayon and spandex – don’t degrade like wool and cotton fibers do. These plastic fibers wind up in waterways and oceans, and can also enter the food chain.
"If you're eating fish, you're eating plastic," Gregg Treinish, founder and executive director of the non-profit Adventure Scientists, told NPR.
The level of contamination is still un- der study, but peer-reviewed research found the microfibers show up in unexpected places: table salt in China and fish caught off the coast of California.
The three Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle – are a good place to start.
Add to it that: rethink.
Some plastics take 400 years to degrade, according to Arizona State University researchers.
The amount of plastic in our environment is astonishing. Some of it is recyclable and scientists are working to make more of it biodegradable.
Plastic enabled the throw-away mentality that has consequences most people don't consider.
The Summer of the Straw helped raise awareness.
Now it’s up to people do decide if they care.