(Jointly authored with Meena Miriam Yust)
If a warm glow of satisfaction descends upon us on occasion, perhaps when doing something of benefit to our community, it might not be as deserved as we assume when we go about sorting plastic waste, unscrewing colored tops from clear bottles and so forth, for the weekly visit of the recycling truck.
Plastic is more of a nuisance than we realize. From washing ashore on beaches to the heights of
Everest and the depths of the Mariana Trench, plastic is everywhere. And it is not just the ubiquitous transparent bottle ... cups, plates, straws, food wrappers, cigarette butts, single-use bags are some other items, even our toothbrush or the dish we rest the soap on or ... . Some 275 million metric tons of plastic was generated in 2010 of which up to 12.7 MT entered the oceans.
There the plastic bottle breaks down into microplastic pieces but these are estimated to take four-and-a-half centuries to decompose. Ingestion by animals of micropieces or larger endangers health and can be fatal.
Turtles
mistake plastic sheeting or bags for jellyfish. If the plastic gets
lodged in their digestive system, they may have a sense of fullness and
no longer feed, leading to starvation and death.
With sea birds like the albatross, the plastic can get stuck in their gizzard and they begin to lose weight because they cannot eat efficiently.
Marine mammals are also affected including baleen whales which filter large amounts of water whence the plastic gets in between the baleen plates. Toothed whales, seals and manatees ingest the plastic with subsequent digestive problems eventually resulting in early death.
Why do we not recycle the plastic that was being sorted assiduously at the beginning of this short article? Well, it is not as easy as it seems. Take the transparent bottle. Once it's been melted and reconstituted, it is no longer colorless. The name for this plastic is polyethylene terephthalate or PET and when it is melted, its consistency changes voiding usage. So it has to be mixed with HDPE or high density polyethylenes, the kind used in detergent containers or milk jugs. Melting it together with PET, a sturdier plastic results, and it can be used for products like park benches or garbage bins.
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