5 minute read
Drowning in Plastic
BY GUY DAUNCEY
Since the 1970s, our global use of plastics has increased elevenfold. In 2023, we produced 450 million tonnes of the stuff, of which 350 million tonnes became waste. Less than nine per cent was recycled for a second life — and most can only be recycled once. Then it’s off to the land fill, the incinerator or the ocean.
In Canada, we use 57 million plastic straws every day, 15 billion plastic bags every year, and 39 per cent of the plastic pollution comes from five companies: Nestle, Tim Hortons, Starbucks, McDonalds and Coca-Cola.
In our home, we have a kitchen bin for cans, paper, cardboard and hard plastics and another for soft plastics, which we squeeze into larger plastic bags and take to the Peerless Road Recycling Centre. We are appalled by the amount of soft plastic we generate for just two people.
Some countries in Asia — the Phillipines is the worst — have not set up recycling programs, and they turn a blind eye when people dump their wastes into local rivers, killing the fish and filling the ocean with plastic. A whole generation is growing up distressed by the sight of seals strangled by six-pack plastics and albatross chicks dying with their stomachs full of plastic. If you doubt this, watch the documentary Drowning in Plastic on YouTube.
Enough, for all, forever, Four words that heal our Earth. The simple truth of future life, The hope that leads to birth. Enough, for all, together, For humans, sharks and trees, That all of us can live as one, And sleep at night in peace.
In the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 52 per cent of the trash comes from land-based sources; the rest from fishing boats whose crews can’t be bothered to collect their wastes.
A 2021 study in the Pacific Ocean found microplastics in every water sample collected over thousands of square kilometres. Every fish, squid and shrimp studied had microplastics in it. That tasty seafood contains more than you think.
Ten products make up three-quarters of the plastic waste, including single-use bags, plastic bottles, food containers, food wrappers, plastic lids and fishing gear. In 2022, Canada introduced a welcome ban on single-use plastic bags, cutlery, stir sticks, six-pack rings, straws and some take-out containers. Country Grocer responded by offering stronger plastic bags that can be used more than once. Is that really a solution? So many things come in tight plastic wrap or plastic clamshells. The plastic is everywhere!
And don’t get me started on bottled water. It takes five times more water to make the bottle than the volume it contains, and in 2023, university researchers found some 240,000 detectable plastic fragments in a typical litre of bottled water. About ten per cent were microplastics, 90 per cent were nanoplastics. Microplastics have been found in people’s lungs, excrement, blood and placentas. In case this alarms you, yes, there’s evidence that if your blood vessels are contaminated with microscopic particles of PVC plastic, you will be nearly five times more likely to suffer a stroke, heart attack or early death than if they were free of contamination.
In 2023, the world’s nations agreed to develop a legally binding treaty to halt all plastic pollution, covering its entire life cycle, following pressure from the World Wildlife Fund and two million people who signed a petition demanding it. A requirement that plastics must be recyclable is not enough, however. If annual production increases faster than the increase in recycling, the problem will only get worse.
Then there’s clothing. Clothes made from polyester, nylon and Lycra release plastic microfibres into the air when we wear them and into our sewers and the ocean when we wash them. If you have a septic field, they’ll enter the groundwater beneath your home. In the ocean, they are swallowed by zooplankton and tiny shrimp-like creatures, which are eaten by herring, juvenile salmon and rock fish. The microfibres have no nutritional value, so the zooplankton slowly become malnourished. Their pooped-out microfibres accumulate on the ocean bottom, where they are likely eaten by crabs and sea stars.
Washing a single load of synthetic clothes releases millions of these microfibres. If you wash your clothes less often, use a front-loading washing machine, install a lint trap and wash on the gentle cold setting, you will supposedly reduce microfibre shedding by 70 per cent. We need to reject fast fashion, buy clothes that are made to last, buy used clothing at the thrift store and avoid those much-loved fleeces.
And there’s more. Around the coast of Vancouver Island, the problem is the blocks of expanded polystyrene that people use to build docks and floats. The ocean is often stormy, and when a block breaks away, it gets smashed on the rocks. Each expanded styrene cell is the size of a fish egg, which to other fish is lunch. A cubic metre block breaks down into 8.3 billion cells. When volunteers from the Rugged Coast Research Society used paddle boards to gather plastic wastes near the Brooks Peninsula, they gathered 125 cubic metres of the stuff. Left in the ocean, it would have broken down into a thousand billion cells. We need to ban the use of expanded polystyrene blocks and replace them with air-filled flotation systems.
We’ve got to stop consuming so much, for it is doing so much harm to nature. We need to know when is enough and start giving things away, instead of always buying more.
The next time you are in Duncan, visit PlentiFILL at 163 Kenneth Street. Its owners, Stephanie Farrow and Crystal Aikman, want to drastically reduce consumer waste in the Cowichan Valley.
We need to be the change we want to see.
