Americans love plastic! It is everywhere. But plastic has a dark side. It is everywhere in our environment and hurts human and animal health. How can we live without it? The Meetinghouse’s own Heather Cochrane teaches us simple ways to take action and reduce the use of plastics and get your lawmakers to protect your health.
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner so we should take the time to say we love…plastic. We truly do love its practicality, flexibility, and its many forms. But if we really get to know plastic, we should consider it a toxic love affair. In fact, Susan Freinkel wrote a book titled Plastic: A Toxic Love Story. In her book, she documents the evolution of plastic through the many ways we use it every day, such as combs, furniture, soda bottles, and credit cards.
To show plastic’s deceptive side, we should consider its many aliases: polyethylene, polypropylene, vinyl (PVC), polystyrene (Styrofoam), polyurethane, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), phenolics, nylon, polycarbonate, fiberglass, and acrylic.
The rapid growth of plastic in everyday items
Plastic came into widespread use in the 1930s when chemical companies found that petroleum companies had waste products of the refinement process that could be used. With the partnering of the two industries, the byproduct of ethylene was turned into packaging materials, propylene was turned into disposable diapers and yogurt cups, and acrylonitrile was turned into AstroTurf, just to give a few examples.
The average American throws away 110 pounds of single-use plastic per year
As the petroleum industry grew, so did the chemical industry which created a dizzying number and varieties of plastic, resulting in the current day average American throwing away 110 pounds of single-use plastic per year.
Plastic pieces stay in the ocean getting smaller and more deadly to sea life
Plastics do not break down in nice ways. It is difficult to recycle plastic because the many forms and chemical makeups can be hard and expensive to sort through, and if not done properly, can lead to contaminated batches. Plastic that is disposed of improperly or that escapes from the refuse/recycling stream eventually will make it to the ocean. In the wave action of the ocean, plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually reaching microplastic status, pieces that are smaller than 5mm (0.20 in.). Much of that plastic floats at the surface and is often mistaken as food by zooplankton, the larval stages of many fish and crustaceans. It only takes a few pieces of microplastic to fill them up, but since they get no energy or nutrition from plastic, they ultimately die.
As phytoplankton and zooplankton are the basis of the marine food chain, the death of these organisms can have a ripple effect up the food chain ultimately impacting the seafood that we consume. Sea birds and sea turtles also consume larger pieces of plastic mistaking them for food. Laysan albatrosses spend their adult lives at sea hunting for squid. While autopsying these birds, biologists have found bottle caps, pen tops, toys, fishing line, and lighters among other things in their stomachs. Chicks have it even worse as their parents regurgitate food into their mouths to feed them. One dead chick had over 500 pieces of plastic in its stomach.
Human health is damaged by plastic chemicals
The impact of plastic on humans is still being studied. Bisphenol A (BPA) (in baby bottles, eyeglasses, lining cans of food, etc.), PET (in soda bottles), DEHP (in IV bags and tubing, garden hoses, shower curtain liners, etc.), as well as additives to plastic such as phthalates, have been found to leach out into our food or into our bodies.
These are all shown to be endocrine disruptors, most often affecting estrogen. Because plastics are so complicated and so ubiquitous, much more study is needed, but these disruptors appear to be tied to cases of early puberty, male infertility, endometriosis, and a host of other issues.
You have the power for change by contacting your lawmakers and reducing the use of plastic in your everyday life
So, what can you do? If you have the choice to buy something made with plastic and something not, go with the non-plastic item. Eliminate the consumption of single-use plastics, like water bottles and plastic utensils. Dispose of plastics properly.
Push our government. The U.S. treats all chemicals as safe until they are proven otherwise. Europe, on the other hand, requires companies to show that chemicals are safe before use, putting the burden on the industry. Doing this would address the toxicity of plastics. By weaning ourselves from our plastic love affair we will be working to fulfill two of the conservation goals I wrote of last month: clean drinking water and saving wildlife.
