What The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Tells Us About How We Manage Waste
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Nothing represents plastic in the water better than The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
It epitomizes the idea of all our waste traveling downstream and transforming into a giant island made of empty milk jugs and six pack rings.
This is the image I thought of as I watched hotel workers pile garbage next to a beachfront hotel in Thailand, plastic debris trickling into the ocean I had been swimming in moments ago. I thought about what kind of harm this malpractice does to marine environments or even the health implications for myself after swimming in this water.
I also thought about how much plastic is used in Thailand, as well as other low-income to lower-middle income countries, because it is cheap and disposable. Initially, I was angry at those hotel employees and their ostensible negligence towards the environment. However, as I researched sources of plastic pollution it became clear that the heart of the problem isn’t disdain for the environment or even issues with proper recycling, but a much broader problem related to waste management.
As I previously wrote in another piece on the history of single-use plastics, plastic producers and the packaging industry work to systematically suppress information and prevent policy reform, directly contributing to an overall mismanagement of waste. They marketed single-use plastics knowing the associated complications and limitations of recycling, but still pushed the blame onto consumers for being environmentally careless.
In the end, consumers have struggled to figure out those funny numbered triangles while a global average of 381 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated a year (Plastics In The Ocean: Statistics 2020, 2020).
But are plastic producers entirely to blame?
After all, they don’t physically put plastic in the ocean themselves.
What about those hotel workers on that beach in Thailand?
Should we blame them for the plastic in the ocean, even when they don’t have routine trash collection or state-run recycling programs?
In this article, I’ll attempt to disarm your fingers of blame and instead ask you to step back and take a look at the bigger picture. There’s no one solution to decreasing plastic waste—plastics have become too ingrained into our culture.
The problem we face requires a multifaceted effort from scientific organizations, government, and the public to facilitate a shift away from using disposable plastics to more sustainable products. Plastic pollution is a global crisis that carries with it a catalog of environmental and human health implications, starting from when they are first disposed of on land to when they eventually end up in the ocean.
For any number of solutions to be effective, we must first address the entire scope of the problem.
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The dangers of our mismanagement of plastic waste
A 2016 report found that humans generate about two billion tons of waste every day, with that number expected to increase 70% by 2050 due to population rise and urbanization (The World Bank, 2018).
In upper-middle income countries, waste tends to be collected and disposed of in regulated landfill sites.
Unfortunately, in underdeveloped countries it is estimated that 90% of total waste gets disposed of improperly, and is either sent to unregulated dumping grounds or it is openly burned, contributing both to water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere (Cole, 2018).
Unregulated dumping sites provide a breeding ground for pathogenic organisms and infectious diseases to grow and fester. Poor waste management has been linked to conditions such as diarrhea, cholera, respiratory illness, and other infections. In 1994 a flood in Surat, India spurred the outbreak of a plague-like disease when floodwaters picked up and carried pathogens originating from trash sites in poor communities (Basu & Yadavar, 2020).
Annual floods in East and West African cities are blamed in part to plastic bags and debris blocking drains (Ngalame, 2016). The possibility of unknown diseases lurking within piles of unregulated garbage has troubling human health implications, especially given the current pandemic. Although the exact origins of COVID-19 are still unclear, it’s unnerving to consider a pathogen that could start another pandemic-level outbreak possibly hiding underneath a plastic bag in some garbage pit in East Asia.
For marine plastic waste specifically, the heart of the problem lies in underdeveloped coastal communities.
Total plastic waste generation is mostly a function of population size, with the top waste-producing countries having some of the largest coastal populations and a geographic proximity to the ocean. Half of all marine waste derives from just five East Asian countries: China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka. Number six on that list is Thailand (Cole, 2018).
Moreover, coastal region communities located within 50 km of coastline account for 50-70% of all plastics in the ocean (CIWM and Waste Aid UK, 2018). It is also important to consider the economic class of the countries, with the 16 of the 20 largest contributors being middle-income countries, implying that while those contributors might be experiencing economic growth, waste management infrastructure is still lacking (Jambeck et al., 2015).
It is crucial that low-income and lower-middle income countries adopt new and better infrastructure to handle the expected increase in solid waste volume, therefore mitigating the potential for further negative effects on human health and environmental pollution.
Improper disposal and poor management of solid waste is associated with long-term impacts of enteropathy (a disease of the intestinal tract), stunted growth in children, educational underperformance, and even decreased life opportunities.
Scientists are mostly concerned with additives such as bisphenol A, commonly known as “BPA,” that are added to plastics during the manufacturing process. These chemicals have the potential to leach into our food supply and water resources. This poses elevated risks for children and will have an increasing impact on future generations (Science History Institute, n.d.).
The effect on wildlife is also significant, with some countries reporting up to a third of their cattle and goats having significant amounts of plastic in their bodies (Cole, 2018). The amount of plastics in the ocean are affecting deepwater fish as well. Researchers found that 73% of deepwater fish in the North Atlantic Ocean contained microplastics. This raises significant issues for other marine organisms that eat them, including inflammation, reduced feeding and weight loss (Rice, 2018).
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The cost of “effective waste management”
Effective waste management is a fundamental aspect of any sustainable municipality. However, low-income countries remain challenged due to its expensive nature. Effective waste management accounts for 20-50% of a municipal budget, requiring integrated systems that are efficient, sustainable, and socially supported (The World Bank, 2018).
The continual increase of plastic and other waste is ultimately a core development issue that requires additional funding and support from high-income countries like the U.S. or Britain. Without any future improvements to waste management infrastructure, the cumulative quantity of plastic waste that may enter the marine environment from land is predicted to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025 (Jambeck et al., 2015).
Implementing an effective and economical waste management system would greatly improve the quality of life for many people in developing countries. It would reduce both the amount of air pollutants entering our atmosphere and the amount of plastics entering our ocean.
Successively, this would mean fewer greenhouse gases and improved health for those directly affected by waste pollution. Improvements to waste management systems require a joint effort from international groups, government entities, and scientific organizations to provide adequate funding and research to inform better infrastructure.
Unfortunately, this task will not be easy and it will not come cheap. It will require a multifaceted strategy to tackle the broad spectrum of enabling factors contributing to mismanaged waste, as well as participation from all members of society.
Plastics have become critical to modern life.
They facilitate inventions such as computers, cell phones, and advancements in modern medicine. They are lightweight and good for insulation, allowing for a reduction of fossil fuels used in heating and transportation.
Plastic is inexpensive, which allows for all economic classes to enjoy the improved standard of living we get through plastic products we take for granted.
Replacing natural materials with plastic has made many of our possessions cheaper, lighter, stronger, and better. However, the prevalence of plastic in our everyday life has come with a price. Our inability to effectively manage plastic waste has resulted in the infiltration of toxic chemicals into our oceans and atmosphere. This anthropogenic pollution is derived from the mismanagement of land-based waste and a lack of proper legislation to reduce single-use packaging products.
In order to reduce the negative effects on human health and our environment, there needs to be a complete paradigm shift in plastic usage. Recycling needs to be incorporated into our lifestyle while supervisory policies are implemented to better regulate plastic manufacturing.
Every human on this planet feels the repercussions of this negligence, so we must all do our part in contributing to a resolution.
+11 Sources
Jambeck, J.R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T.R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., Law, K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347, 768-770.
The History and Future of Plastics. Science History Institute. Retrieved from https://www.sciencehistory.org/the-history-and-future-of-plastics
(2018). From The Land To The Sea: How better solid waste management can improve the lives of the world’s poorest and halve the quantity of plastic entering the oceans. CIWM and Waste Aid UK. Retrieved from https://www.ciwm.co.uk/Custom/BSIDocumentSelector/Pages/DocumentViewer.aspx?id=vc5BRH8zGg0I5dc2rU7%252bx%252bbATxmTVi7RTfcAtUGwko9ndDl2Vi2EFreLW5BXUDMvNHgZk25dvHppFVhCKA%252fQVtSMtpaXNl49%252bGrGSe1gz9D1x%252fXa3FFB0RvAQOxRbiw%252f
Cole, C. (2018). Plastic crisis: divert foreign aid to dumpsites in developing countries. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/plastic-crisis-divert-foreign-aid-to-dumpsites-in-developing-countries-94341
(2018). Solid Waste Management. The World Bank. Retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/brief/solid-waste-management
Rice, D. (2018). Our trash is harming the deepest fish in the ocean. USA Today. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/science/2018/02/21/ocean-pollution-plastic-found-73-percent-deepwater-fish-north-atlantic/359174002/
Tackling Increasing Plastic Waste. The World Bank. Retrieved from https://datatopics.worldbank.org/what-a-waste/tackling_increasing_plastic_waste.html#:~:text=In%202016%2C%20the%20world%20generated,million%20tonnes%20from%20North%20America.
Basu, M. & Yadavar, S. (2020). 1994 Surat plague has many lessons for India on how to Beat coronavirus. ThePrint. Retrieved from https://theprint.in/health/1994-surat-plague-has-many-lessons-for-india-on-how-to-beat-coronavirus/379531/
Ngalame, E. (2016). Cameroon fights flooding by turning plastic waste into jobs. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/cameroon-recycling-floods/cameroon-fights-flooding-by-turning-plastic-waste-into-jobs-idUKL5N17P50K
(2020). Plastics In The Ocean: Statistics 2020. The Condor. Retrieved from https://www.condorferries.co.uk/plastic-in-the-ocean-statistics
What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Retrieved from https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html