"Plastics: made to last forever, designed to throw away."
Inspire your company, community, school, and home to consider what they make and consume. Know the lifecycle of what you buy- what happens to your products when you’re through with them? Shift some habits as you go along- commit to put your bags in the car, to not use plastic bottles, etc. Support legislative efforts to manage waste in your local community- your voice must be heard! Bring your own bag, bottle, cup, To-Go Ware, and inspire others to do the same. Be a leader in your industry and community for sustainable living. Knowing the impact of plastic pollution on the world, inaction is unacceptable.
http://5gyres.org/what_is_the_issue/the_problem/
"On a voluntary basis, it's really hard to get people to change," says Ms Borrelle. "It has to be done with the support of legislation, council and government."
Ms Borrelle is pushing for a law banning supermarkets and large retailers in Auckland from giving away free plastic shopping bags. Ms Borrelle says New Zealanders go through 1 billion plastic bags each year – a figure she wants to drastically reduce.
"If there weren't any plastic bags available, people would just get into the habit of taking their own bags," says Ms Borrelle. "It's not that big of a shift."
Some retailers, including Pak'nSave and The Warehouse have already taken a stand against plastic, charging for shopping bags. But Ms Borrelle says regulation would mean an even playing field for competitive businesses.
"If we're going to redeem our reputation, we need to take action on waste products, and reducing plastic bags is one step to doing that."
Evolving out of the 1950s, this product, which already uses 75 per cent less resin than 20 years ago, nearly made its competitor, the paper bag, extinct. This was due to their being three to four times cheaper to make than their heavier and bulkier opponent.
This is especially so when you realise that plastic bags have the highest reuse rates of any disposable product, with around 80 per cent going on to have a second life as lunch bags, bin liners, nappy bags or poop-holders for conscientious dog owners.
Their opinion is not because of the life-cycle analysis of plastic bags, their (minimal) contribution to landfill or their low rates of recycling. It is because, despite being a small percentage of the litter, their permanence and prevalence has allowed them to become a type of eyesore that has evolved into an ugly emblem of waste and excess.
People feel uncomfortable seeing discarded plastic bags out of place, such as in the landscape. These feelings intensify when they are linked to problems ranging from blocked drains to choked wildlife, especially in the sea.
In the oceans, around 80 per cent of plastic litter originates on land. Plastic bags are not as guilty of directly killing wildlife as other types of plastic, but they are part of the picture.
The same problem exists with litter that comes back ashore. Although plastic bags are often in the minority of types of plastic waste, it is still a sizeable problem.
Clean-ups of Auckland's North Shore beaches in 2011 and 2012 showed this clearly with around 4000 plastic bags picked up and taken to the landfill both years.
Globally, beach clean-ups retrieve close to one and a half million plastic bags a year.
These figures show only what we can see. That is, unlike many other types of plastic, bags can sink, becoming immune to the ultra-violet light that could have eventually broken them down. The extent or impact of plastic bags on the ocean floor is unknown.
In many of the countries listed, the costs trump the benefits of lightweight plastic bags being freely available. This is not the case in New Zealand, where the Government remains unconvinced of the need to adopt regulations that have reduced around 80 per cent of the problem elsewhere.
This attitude is different to leading New Zealand brands like the Warehouse, which charges its customers 10c a bag.
Last year, this charge totalled $432,000, which was given to around 68 community groups. The move also diverted more than 500 tonnes of plastic from both landfill or litter.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, sometimes known as the Pacific trash vortex, is thought be to six times the size of France. It’s a swirling mass of discarded plastic bags and bottles; a thick soup of plastic gloop in the north east of the Pacific Ocean. It’s the world’s biggest landfill, and it is ever increasing in size.
While some kinds of plastic degrade over time, none of it ever completely breaks down. Some of the plastic items in the ocean end up in the bodies of marine wildlife, who mistake them for food. Turtles, for example, occasionally mistake plastic bags for their food staple of jellyfish and suffocate. Dead albatrosses have been found in Hawaii with bellies full of cigarette lighters and bottle caps. Plastic items are considered to cause more marine animals deaths than oil spills, heavy metals, or other toxic materials.
As plastic particles circulate through the sea, they become ‘sponges’ for waterborne contaminants such as PCBs, DDT, other pesticides, PAHs, and many other hydrocarbons. These toxin pollutants, known as ‘POPs’ (persistent organic pollutants), are absorbed in high concentration by plastic pollution in the marine environment. These toxins then enter the marine food chain, with potentially dire consequences for all living things.
A scientific study conducted in 2012 revealed that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is also a breeding ground for a water parasite called Halobates sericeus. Not only has the mass of plastic increased by 100 times over in the past 40 years, but it has led to changes in the natural habitat of animals such as the marine insect Halobates sericeus. These ‘sea skaters’ or ‘water striders’ – relatives of pond water skaters – inhabit water surfaces and lay their eggs on fingernail sized pieces of plastic.
These insects may be a food source for crabs and sea-birds, but they’re also a predator in their own right, feeding on plankton and fish eggs, and they
threaten to upset the fine balance of the ocean’s ecosystem.
It’s not just the Pacific Garbage Patch that contains plastic litter. A year-long study of Auckland’s storm-water discharges found that each day 28,000 pieces of litter, much of it plastic, ended up in the Waitematā Harbour.
Since its inception in December 2002, the Watercare Harbour Clean Up Trust has removed more than 1.9 million litres of waste.
The trust estimates that approximately 80 to 90 per cent of the litter that its contractors remove is plastic – mainly bottles and their lids and bags. This litter creates a significant hazard for birds and marine and freshwater fish species and causes direct damage to the environment through leaching and degradation of habitats.
