Blinded by Science

Two and a half years ago, I sorted my first bag of beach debris -- categorized, photographed, tried to make sense of what I was finding. I then came up with questions to ask, and tried to come up with ways to test those questions.

In short: I tried to bring science to the problem.

But the trouble with science is, there's always more, deeper, better science that can be done. Questions can be revisited, looked at from different angles. Newer, more precise tests can be devised and performed. Even the best, most-tested scientific theories today are only approximations of reality. Newton's laws of gravity work on Earth but completely fail to predict where Mercury should be. Einstein's gravitational theories get Mercury right, but don't play well (or at all) with quantum mechanics. Meanwhile, quantum mechanics doesn't work in black holes, or the Big Bang.

Every question "answered" just brings still more questions.

It is an endless loop.

And the plastics industry knows this. They refuse to put any real skin in the plastics pollution game, claiming that there needs to be "more science" done on the problem first. "More science" can always be done on a problem; at some point a responsible society has to act against a problem before all the "science" is in.

This happened in 1969:

The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, on fire
Source: http://www.oftimeandtheriver.org/resources/
modern/images/BurningCuyahoga.jpg

This happened in 1972, just three years later:

The Clean Water Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Water_Act

In the US, when there was public & political will, it took only three years to go from a river on fire to the Clean Water Act. Three years.

Ironically, 1972 was also the year that plastics were first extensively studied in fish populations (link opens as PDF file). Yet 40 years later, where is the Plastic Pollution Act? It keeps getting pushed back and off the plate, as there's a need for "more science." Across the US, this very day, industry lobbyists have stymied plastic bag bans/fees. They insist that cities pay for costly scientific "lifecycle analyses," or they try to ban towns from choosing less pollution on fuzzy -- or junk -- science.

Sometimes you don't need a lifecycle analysis. You just need to look up into the trees:

Source: http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/files/2011/
12/plastic-bag-caught-in-tree-branches-275x183.jpg

or gutters:

Source:  http://mikesbogotablog.blogspot.com/
2011/05/bogotas-plastic-bag-problem.html 

or inside the bellies of sea creatures:

100 plastic bags pulled from stomach of dead sperm whale
Source:  http://oceanwildthings.com/2012/06/
sperm-whale-death-by-100-plastic-bags/ 

Sometimes you just have to say, "This is wrong, it doesn't have to be this way, it should stop."

I enjoy the scientific approach to my beach collections. I like being able to look at the problem, learn to ask questions, make hypotheses, test those hypotheses, ask better questions.

But for me, the biggest questions were answered long ago: What is the biggest source of physical pollution in the ocean? Consumer plastic. What is the way to clean the ocean? Use much, much less plastic.

No more amount of science is going to change that. It's time to stop letting industry play the "needs more science" card. It's time to change the game.

Plastic Bag Recycling Hype

Hilex Poly makes plastic bags. They make a very large amount of money from making these "free" bags that you find at supermarkets, Big Box stores, and your local take-out shop. They wish to keep making this money.

They know people are sick of seeing littered plastic bags in parking lots, gulleys, roadsides, parks, playgrounds, and wrapped around (or inside) dead creatures.

A dead, starved pelican, beak wrapped tightly in plastic bag

Plastic bag caught around endangered loggerhead turtle

So Hilex Poly has decided that by promoting "recycling," they will win the day over bag bans.

Hence their latest volley in the spin wars: "Hilex Poly Co. leading by example in battle against plastic bag bans."

In it, their PR firm says, with straight face, that "Legislation doesn’t address the plastic waste problem." They describe a system that uses ~32% recycled content (meaning 68% is brand-new virgin plastic) as "closed loop." Among much else.

I've asked them questions, repeatedly. Oddly, they haven't responded. So I'm asking them here:

• As you well know, industrial film has a very different use history from a consumer shopping bag, in terms of potential contaminants encountered. You say your recycled bags are made of both industrial film & end-user bags. What is the ratio? How much of the recycled resin in your bags is from post-end-user consumers (i.e. actual supermarket bags) and how much from industrial, pre-end-user sources?

• What is your yield loss due to "kick-out"? What percentage of the post-end-user consumer bags returned from supermarkets ends up unusable for recycling into supermarket bags?

• Do you recycle bags that already use recycled resin a second time into new food-grade supermarket bags? Or has the resin broken down too far after 1 recycling to use as food-grade again?

• What percent of your used bags are unrecyclable thanks to post-supermarket user activity (use as trash-basket lining, school lunches, dog-poop containers)?

• A related question: How clean and untouched by any contaminant must an end-user plastic bag be in order to be recycled as food-grade material?

• What is the cost of creating a recycled bag compared to creating a virgin-plastic bag? What does a consumer pay in terms of inflated grocery prices to pay for "free" bags? Is that price increased when recycled bags are used?

• If your average bag has ~1/3 recycled material, then 2/3 of each bag is made with virgin material. If consumers recycled 1 million bags, to use them all in new bags you'd have to make 3 million bags. If those 3 million bags were recycled, to use them all you'd have to make 9 million bags. If 100 billion bags were recycled, to use them all you'd have to make 300 billion bags. Where is the saturation point? At what point do you start getting back too many bags to use in new bags?

I'd like answers. As a consumer, as someone who values the cleanliness & health of the planet, we all deserve the truth. Not spin.

If you would like answers also, please share this blog post with your friends, or on FaceBook, Twitter -- however else you like getting questions answered. I'd be honored for the help.