Look on My Works, Ye Mighty: The Legacy of Plastic
It’s always entertaining to think how our civilization and culture will be viewed a millennium or so from now. After all, the ancient remains of the past hold fast our interest in the modern day. The material left behind by humans from bygone ages is all we have to remember them. No one recalls the faces and names of the builders of Stonehenge. Their exact motives and meaning are still largely a mystery to us. But they left behind an indelible message through time: we were here, and this is what we made. When the nation states of modern day have long subsided, when our names have long been forgotten and we too occupy the opaque mist of the past, what material will we have left behind? Look in the oceans, the mouths of rivers, and the mountainous landfills. Plastic will be around long after anyone living today has gone. Our message to the future is a onetime use water bottle floating in the ocean for five hundred years.
Columns and Hellenistic statues of marble are called to mind when one thinks of ancient Greece. Imposing and divine Pyramids jut out from the dessert sands, demanding the respect of five thousand years. The concrete of ancient Rome still binds the Aqueduct’s and Coliseum’s bricks together. Periods of human history have certain materials associated with them. We even divide early history based on what was used for tools: Stone age, Bronze age and Iron age. The written history of these places was stored on a material intermediate. The Rosetta Stone for all its worth as a lexicon is still written on rock. A civilization is often defined and restrained by the materials it has to use. The might of colonial England was built on and maintained by the limitations of wooden sailing ships. If our modern age, which seems unlimited in its potential, has a hallmark material it is no doubt plastic. I suspect material archaeologists will divide history into two stages: pre and post plastic. It is a substance completely absent from the historical record, and then, within a few decades, ubiquitous. The trash heaps of ancient cities are of great interests to archaeologists today, our trash heaps will be equally informative in the future. It is impossible to live in the modern world and not use a polyvinyl, polyurethane, or polyamides.
This is because plastic is a tremendously useful and variable material. It’s used in medical devices and precision instruments as well as garbage bags and food packaging. Plastic has replaced materials such as wood, metal and glass at a fraction of the cost. I’d much rather have my food wrapped in sterile polyvinylidene chloride than some sort of cloth or canvas. I’m glad many parts of my car are made up of durable and lightweight polyurethane which brings down the gas mileage. I sleep safer knowing that in the walls of my house sturdy polyvinyl chloride wraps electrical wires as opposed to the flammable cloth insulation of old. Plastic isn’t the hallmark material of the 21st century for no reason. We can’t simply swear off the stuff.
Worldwide we used 380 million tons of plastic in 2015. 10-20 million tons of that ended up in the ocean. Waste plastic is generally divided into two groups: Macroplastics (big bits) and microplastics (I trust you can guess what it means). One of the well-known sources of marine plastic pollution is packaging, we’ve all seen a turtle taking a bight of a garbage bag that looks like a jellyfish. But clothes are an equally deadly percentage of marine plastic pollution. Not that we’re throwing our shirts and ties into the estuaries, it comes mostly from laundry. Modern clothes are made up of all types of materials, many being completely synthetic or a synthetic blend. According to Brown et Al at the College of Dublin each time you run a load of laundry microfilaments from the nylon in a blouse or sock escape away into the drain. Microplastics collect in water disposal pathways and accumulate at the shore. These fibers released through sewage system constitute a large part of shoreline microplastics.
Microfilaments swirl around the currents of the ocean, joining with the debris from a hundred different sources. Finish a nice popsicle on a hot sunny day, drop that wrapper right on the ground. Rain takes it to sewage, sewage to the river, river to the ocean. That wrapper could travel thousands of miles in ocean currents to one of the many and vast oceanic garbage patches. Animals can become easily caught in nets, packaging, or other debris. Even if the remains of a fishing net don’t completely incapacitate an animal, they might be unable to hunt or escape predators. Birds will often use bits of plastic in their nests. A cruel irony is that by building a nest with plastic they endanger the young inside it. Virtually all marine animal species have been found with plastic in their digestive systems. This can cause mechanical blockage or internal damage. Seabirds will often unwittingly feed plastic to their young. If that popsicle wrapper comes in contact with pollutants it will likely bind to them. Once ingested the plastic will release attached toxins, which kill or weaken animals. The main danger of microplastics is their ability to pick up and release toxins. Degraded plastics will often be recognized as sex hormones in many species, even humans, resulting in decreased fertility.
Despite the horrific cost to the environment we will use more and more plastic each year. Plastic pollution is expected to keep pace. Ignoring even that tremendous addition to the problem we still have 500-1000 years of plastic left. The pacific garbage patch if left unattended could last five hundred years. Marine plastic pollution is a blight, and our gift to future human beings. But it’s not entirely hopeless. In developed nations people are acutely aware of the problem. More and more consumers are pushing more and more businesses to be aware of plastic pollution. The United Nations has started a campaign to curtail plastic usage and dozens of nations are getting on board. India, one of the major contributors to marine waste, has passed ambitious legislation looking to curtail plastic use. Dozens of countries and states are starting to ban single use plastic items such as straws and plastic bags. Even though the problem can hardly be solved by such small steps we are at least walking in the right direction.
Perhaps we will gain enough momentum to undo decades of damage. We have a duty to living generations and posterity to maintain the planet. I hope to say with pride someday that I was part of a generation that worked to preserve instead of spoil. When our time is looked back upon in the same light as ancient ages, I hope we will have left not a sea of filth but a world of preserved natural wonder.
References:
Geyer, R., Production, Use, and Fate of All Plastics Ever Made, Science Advances, 2017
Brown et Al, Accumulation of Microplastic on Shorelines Worldwide: Sources and Sinks, Environmental Science and Technology, 2011
Wilcox et Al, Threat of plastic pollution to seabirds is global, pervasive, and increasing, University of California, 2015
Rochman et AL, Ingested Plastic Transfers Hazardous Chemicals to Fish and Induces Hepatic Stress, Scientific Reports, 2013
United Nations Press Releases, www.unenvironment.org
Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change