Editor’s Comments: One Word—Plastics

It’s no secret that plastic litter in lakes and oceans is a growing problem. Ocean currents cause it to accumulate in certain areas; the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now about the size of Texas, and we’re adding an estimated 20 million tons of plastic to our waters every year. Last year, researchers at the University of Delaware showed that the oceans contain more plastic—up to two and a half times more—than we previously thought, because it not only floats on the surface but also is abundant at depths of 20 meters or more, where we hadn’t previously measured.

Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, but instead breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, which are more easily ingested by birds, fish, and other marine life—entering the human food chain as well. Studies from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and from NOAA have shown that between 9% and 12% of ocean fish have ingested plastic, and that percentage can be much higher for some species.

Part of the problem is trash: items made from plastic and Styrofoam are discarded and end up in the waterways. From a stormwater management perspective, we can do something about these, intercepting the debris in catch basin inserts or larger trash-capturing devices. But the plastics come from other sources as well; for example, the small plastic pellets, or “nurdles,” used in the manufacture of plastic goods are sometimes mishandled or improperly disposed of, escaping from factories, trucks, and railroad cars. Even more insidiously, it now appears tiny plastic beads used in personal care products like exfloliants are not being captured by sewage treatment plants and are making their way to surface waters.

Two recent publications highlight the problems plastic litter causes, and more importantly they offer specific suggestions for how to deal with it. One is a report titled “Stemming the Tide of Plastic Marine Litter: A Global Action Agenda” from the UCLA School of Law’s Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment and UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. It contains several ambitious recommendations, such as an international treaty for monitoring plastic debris, local bans on the most common and dangerous types of plastic litter, placing more long-term responsibility on the producers of plastic products, and an “ocean friendly” certification program for those products.

The other report has a bit narrower focus, but also offers a solution in which ordinary consumers can take part. The 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit group dedicated studying and solving the plastics-in-the-ocean problem, has published research on “micro-plastics,” or tiny grains of polyethylene and polypropylene, that are found in high concentrations in the Great Lakes and elsewhere; personal care and beauty products are apparently a major source. Several companies—Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, The Body Shop, Colgate-Palmolive, and Unilever—have agreed to phase out the use of these micro-beads in their products. 5 Gyres, in partnership with similar organizations, has also developed an international mobile app that allows consumers to scan barcodes of personal care and beauty products to see whether they contain micro-beads, as well as whether the manufacturer has agreed to phase them out.

An increasing number of cities have enacted bans on plastic bags, and trash TMDLs are becoming more common, but source-reduction efforts like this one still seem to be rare. Is plastic a focus of your stormwater program, or are you aware of other types of efforts to control it?