This post just makes me sad. It is a sad reminder of just how long lived the plastic in our oceans is. And as a species we are still not doing enough to stop this.
Is it far fetched to think that plastic is one of the most damaging inventions of the 20th century? I imagine it will be affecting us for hundreds of years. Banning single use plastics seems like a no brainer to me at this point.
I think plastic is a true miracle invention. Aviation, medicine, technology, there probably isn't an area where we haven't benefited from this great material. Used properly, it's not a problem.
What is damaging is the brute ugliness of modern materialism. We don't just use plastic to manufacture surgical tools, we use it to make plastic toy that we ship halfway round the world to give away with an equally repugnant 'happy meal' from McDonalds. Then we throw it away (hopefully into a bin) along with all its plastic wrapping.
That's not to say I don't agree with you - I massively support a ban on throw away plastic too (and more). I just think we need to be careful about demonising plastic as a material.
Alternatively, ban non recyclable/biodegradable garbage. Make the suppliers take back refuse as condition for selling, no longer can suppliers think of the waste as externalised cost.
Quickly, distributor countries would solve garbage problem as every country returns plastic, metal, tires, etc that is not biodegradable/recycable. As we saw, some countries absolutely does not want to deal with the garbage from other countries that goods are shipped to. They know it costs so much to deal with that it's better for other countries to internalise the cost.
You would still have your plastic benefits and without worrying about the impact on environment.
It would be impossible to say, without knowing the numbers - both of damage, as well as constructive, healing, or life-saving purposes.
For instance - think of all the things plastics have made possible, that no other material is capable of (or works as well). I'm thinking things like medical implants, as well as more mundane things like adhesives and tapes, and products based on those - for instance, how much infection have bandaids helped to prevent?
Then there's clothing, automotive interiors lessening injury in accidents, as well as use as a material that is lighter weight to lower fuel consumption for a variety of vehicles, among other uses.
I don't think you can paint plastics completely in a terrible light, just like you can't nuclear radiation, and any number of other things.
At worst, they are all double-edged swords, and we must as a species either decide to get rid of them entirely, or learn to use them properly. In the case of plastics, I doubt that the former will be the route we take for a variety of reasons - mainly though because their benefits seem to far outweigh their detriments (unless and until we have hard numbers for both, though, that's as unsupported as your original proposed claim - but it seems like that's what we've mostly decided).
So we need to learn how to better process and manufacture them, how to better manage their shipping and transportation, and how we dispose or recycle them (whatever that ultimately means).
I guess it raises the question, damaging to whom? Humans as a whole are certainly better off, at least for now, because of plastics. The natural world, however, is much worse off. Not just because of the direct results of plastic pollution, but also all the extra economic activity and human life saved you mention. All of that has lead to pollution and habitat destruction.
There's enough important applications for single use plastics (keeping medical equipment sterile before use, for example) that I'd hate to see an outright ban.
However, I think we should be seriously be considering a cap-and-trade approach to managing it.
This could also be a tool to get corporations to use recycled material effectively. Post-consumer recycled material could either not count against the quota, or could be counted at a different rate than "virgin" plastic.
I'll be somewhat contrarian to the popular view, and say that making things biodegradable is even worse because it's essentially planned obolescence; the manufacturers continue to consume resources for producing products which are guaranteed to self-destruct.
The real problem is that people don't seem to appreciate just how amazingly durable plastics are (or the companies try to dissuade that in order to ensure their revenue stream...), and instead waste them carelessly.
> Is it far fetched to think that plastic is one of the most damaging inventions of the 20th century?
Well, given the vast range of utility and the fact that plastics have been in use for over 3000 years, probably (both the word “plastics” as a label for them and fully synthetic plastics are early 20th century inventions, though.)
Plastic in ocean gives extreme insensitive to bacteria or other life forms to come with way to consume it for energy. If something will come up with necessary enzymes and reactions, then not only we will end up without plastic, but perhaps without oil as well in a world polluted by byproducts of that plastic consumption that may not be compatible with human life.
> Plastic in ocean gives extreme insensitive to bacteria or other life forms to come with way to consume it for energy.
That's just not very likely to happen from a basic chemistry point of view.
Plastic tends to be quite stable--that's the whole point. However, that stability means that there is almost nothing to be gained by breaking plastic down--certainly not energy. And, in the ocean, practically everything plastic could provide when broken down is far more abundant and easier to access by other means.
Consequently, there is no good reason to evolve the ability to consume plastic.
Plastics burns and releases a lot of energy during that process. In that regard its energy density is similar to wood. The problem is that compared with cellulose the life has not figured out how to harvest the energy of plastic oxidation at the room temperature. But there is no law that prevents that.
Given that amount of plastic waste that humans put into the ocean is already on the scale comparable with a mass of a lot of fish species, an organism that can consume it can have a nice evolutionary advantage.
And, yet, that bacterium isn't consuming and breaking down all the PET around it (It was isolated outside a bottling facility, after all. It should spread like wildfire.).
Why?
Because the energy expended to break down the plastic means that it is outcompeted by the bacteria who get their materials by other means unless plastic is the only thing available.
In the ocean, there is always lots of other things available.
Perhaps this will turn out like the evolution of lignin-modifying enzymes, but those took a LONG time to come about even while lignin is far less stable than most plastics.
> What usage lifetime justifies the total lifetime of a plastic object?
Probably depends on if you're having to justify it to someone who wants to 100% ban all plastic or someone who wants a silly phone simply because they like Garfield.
The value of reusable plastic devices in a pollution sense is less that the device will be ~20 years older by the time it's thrown away, but rather that there will be so much less plastic used overall than if disposable devices were used for that purpose for that time.
Plastic that's been buried in a landfill won't show up in the ocean. Plastic that's been burnt in incinerators won't show up in the ocean. As this story shows, if plastic finds its way into the ocean, it's because people had loaded it onto ships and dropped it there.
No, cars are. A million people directly killed every single year, another million killed by pollution. Roads everywhere. Killing animals. Huge industry polluting. Mining. Oil. Oil spills. etc...
Then most of the body decomposes, but the feet stay in the shoes, which float on the surface due to the buoyant cushy soles (often containing air bladder cushions).
Sure - that's a reasonable hypothesis, but as the Wikipedia article notes, there are other potential explanations. The level of rarity section speaks to the decomposition process as well as the likelihood of finding feet without other body parts.
you'd think with the new dna 'matching random dna leads to that person's relatives' that keeps happening would lead us to identify some of those remains.
Sadly, this problem will only get exponentially worse. Those phones were from 30 years ago. Considering how much the population and consumerism has grown since then, I imagine in 30 years this will be a relatively common type of manmade disaster.
You should be more concerned that global CO2 emissions rose last year more than that emitted from air travel, and we’re nowhere near hitting 2C by 2100 (closer to 4C).
IMO both problems are similarly serious. Phytoplankton are responsible for producing at least half of the world's oxygen (50-85% depending on who you ask) and at the moment they are under constant threat, as they tend to consume plastic microparticles (not to mention are under heavy stress from the ever-increasing levels of noise pollution from e.g. fracking, oil exploration, shipping, etc).
If the global temperature rises a few degrees, the consequences will be catastrophic, but I somehow think we as a species will somehow survive (albeit many many many people will likely die).
Whereas if in 50 years there is 50-85% less oxygen in the air, I have a feeling that humans will be in a considerably worse position.
But who am I to kid, both events are likely going to happen and we will soon learn the meaning of Fermi's "Great Filter".
> Phytoplankton are responsible for producing at least half of the world's oxygen (50-85% depending on who you ask) and at the moment they are under constant threat, as they tend to consume plastic microparticles
Phytoplankton gain energy by photosynthesis, so how would they consume plastic microparticles (most of which are probably larger than the plankton)?
I can't find any good sources right now but here's some information[0] (with references to NASA and MIT). Here's one relevant bit:
> Along with sunlight, water and carbon dioxide, phytoplankton require a variety of other nutrients from the water including nitrogen, phosphorous and iron. The most important are nitrogen and phosphorous which are essential to survival and reproduction. Nitrogen is in short supply in some areas but in other areas, phosphorous is limited. Phytoplankton cannot continue to grow when one or the other has been used up.
Yes, but the way they absorb those nutrients is by having dissolved ions pass through their cell membranes, just like land plants do it. That's not the kind of "eating" I'd associate with the consumption of plastic particles. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus from waste water are a problem, but mostly by causing too much growth at the expense of other organisms.
Are you saying that nanoparticles of plastic couldn't ever be small enough for "ingestion"?
I'm having trouble finding references to support my claim, other than phytoplankton attaching themselves to plastic particles, which are then consumed by zooplankton, or plastic particles blocking sunlight thereby preventing photosynthesis, but nothing about actual plastic "consumption".
Think about what plastic actually is on a molecular level: it's the exact same atoms that make up all of life. (Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, rarely chlorine.)
So if anything the plastic might be beneficial, assuming that it's able to decompose it and absorb only those atoms it actually needs as nutrients.
That's kind of what the person you are replying to is saying: if the plant is absorbing it, it's obviously been decomposed into its constituents and is actually beneficial to it.
It doesn't work the same as it does for an animal that eats in the standard way you use the word eat.
Thanks for the clarification. I get now what you both are saying and I welcome the uplifting alternative viewpoint.
I was a bit confused (and at work) before but I was originally thinking of some species of dinoflagellates[0] who hunt/absorb/engulf prey (which I assumed to be larger than atoms), granted they are the exception. I could only find a study which noted higher concentrations of varying plankton/organisms (some dinofl.) near plastic[1] and partially related, on land some lifeforms were found to process PET bottles[2]. Life will hopefully find a way to process our trash before the ecosystem collapses ;)
> not to mention are under heavy stress from the ever-increasing levels of noise pollution from e.g. fracking, oil exploration, shipping
Wow, is this really a thing? Got any links on the subject? I wouldn't have thought that they could perceive sound/vibration in any capacity, if only due to their limited cognition.
I should divulge that I'm working on an art/science project to raise awareness about noise and plastic pollution, but here is a small collection of links[0] to papers and articles.
I'm not a biologist (or scientist of any sort), so my knowledge and terminology is severely limited, but as I understand it, sound creates pressure waves, which if strong enough, can literally kill plankton, such as used with "air guns" for oil exploration. Here's one study[1] with a snippet from the abstract:
> Here we present evidence that suggests seismic surveys cause significant mortality to zooplankton populations.
