It’s Plastastic! – Part 2

More bad raps against plastic wraps.

In the last essay I mentioned another neighbor of mine who once described how her own daughter was reduced to tears by her classmates for having the gall to use a plastic straw when so many turtles were dying in plastic strewn in the ocean.  Whatever pictures of turtles stuck in (or with) plastic kids are seeing in schools, odds are overwhelming that the picture were taken far from America, where we have strict laws against dumping anything in the oceans.

As Mark Shellenberger writes in his book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All:

One study found that just four developing nations, China, Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam, produce half of all mismanaged plastic waste at risk of entering the ocean. One-quarter came from China alone. The vast majority of plastic waste in the marine environment comes from land-based sources like littering, manufacturing materials, and waste associated with coastal recreational activities. The rest comes from ocean-based debris like fishing nets and lines.

I remember back a year or so ago when my daughter was in first and second grade.  For a while it seemed like half her school lessons revolved around recycling programs.  Then one day I realized our local government wasn’t even operating a recycling program anymore, even as people continued to put recyclables into separate recycling containers that were picked up by separate recycling trucks.  It turned out that recycling programs weren’t cost-efficient, so American recycling programs began gradually shutting down.  Chinese companies had jumped at the chance to take American taxpayer money in return for promising to take the recyclable materials and haul them back to China, where they would be recycled.  But then researchers made a startling discovery.  They found that most of the plastic garbage in the ocean was being dumped out by the Chinese ships in the middle of the ocean, garbage that was supposed to be transported to China for recycling. The Chinese ships were simply pocketing the money and dumping the plastic into the ocean.  How did the researchers find this out?  As they summarize in their paper:

Many oceanic islands suffer high levels of stranded debris, particularly those near subtropical gyres where floating debris accumulates. During the last 3 decades, plastic drink bottles have shown the fastest growth rate of all debris types on remote Inaccessible Island. During the 1980s, most bottles drifted to the island from South America, carried 3,000 km by the west wind drift. Currently, 75% of bottles are from Asia, with most from China. The recent manufacture dates indicate that few bottles could have drifted from Asia, and presumably are dumped from ships, in contravention of International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships regulations. Our results question the widely held assumption that most plastic debris at sea comes from land-based sources … In 2018, we examined 2,580 plastic bottles and other containers (one-third of all debris items) that had accumulated on the coast … Of the bottles that washed up during our survey, 90% were date-stamped within 2 [years] of stranding … The rapid growth in Asian debris, mainly from China, coupled with the recent manufacture of these items, indicates that ships are responsible for most of the bottles floating in the central South Atlantic Ocean, in contravention of International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships regulations.

As Howard Husock of the American Enterprise Institute writes:

[W]e’d be far better off sending plastic waste to America’s abundant landfill space. That’s because there is no realistic market for recycled plastic. It’s simply far less expensive to make new plastic than to refine existing stock. “Virgin plastics” are made from byproducts of oil and gas refining, which occurs anyway, and are of higher quality. Markets tend to reward products that are cheaper and better.  Even the author of [a] California bill [to charge fees to industries to subsidize recyling] concedes as much: “The cost of recycling exceeds the scrap value of the plastic material so the markets for plastic packaging that were previously considered recyclable have been lost.” That’s why the plastic recycling industry requires mandates and subsidies. In fact, any municipality that dispatches a special truck to pick up plastic is subsidizing a money-losing proposition. Ever since China, in what it calls Operation National Sword, closed its borders to American plastic in 2017, it has made economic sense for cities to send plastics to landfills — which these days are largely safe and sanitary.

And when it comes to plastic straws, they turn out to be a drop in the ocean bucket.  As Shellenberger writes:

Between 2007 and 2013, a team of nine scientists took twenty-four separate expeditions around the world to try to determine the total amount of plastic in the sea. They went to all five subtropical gyres, circular currents in the oceans that trap plastic waste. They towed nets behind boats 680 times to scoop up waste, which they separated from natural debris using microscopes, before counting and weighing to the nearest 0.01 milligram. They visually surveyed waste 891 times. And they even developed a model of how plastic waste spreads across the ocean, accounting for how the wind mixes plastic vertically. The scientists seemed shocked by what they discovered: “The global weight of plastic pollution on the sea surface, from all size classes combined, is only 0.1 percent of the world annual production.” Even more astonishing, they found a hundred times less microplastic than they had been expecting to find.

And of course plastic straws are only a tiny fraction of the plastic waste the scientists did observe.  Yet there continue to be boisterous campaigns against plastic straws, even as such bans will do little good while ignoring the lost benefits of plastic straws, especially to the disabled.  As the Center for Disability Rights reported:

The latest push to ban single-use plastic straws is well-intentioned but does not take into consideration that such straws are a tool disabled people rely on … For many individuals with mobility and strength issues, they cannot lift cups high enough to drink from them. Some individuals with poor motor coordination cannot safely hold a drink steady without spilling it. Certain medicines must also be taken via straw. Bendable plastic straws allow individuals to nourish themselves and avoid spilling things on themselves, and others.  In some cases, reusable straws can be substituted for a single use one but that isn’t always the case.  Such straws must be properly sterilized after every use. For those whose disability or living situation makes this impractical, if not downright impossible, reusable straws are simply not an option. Additionally, metal, bamboo, glass and acrylic straws pose injury risks, especially for those with tremors, spastic episodes, and temperature sensitivity conditions. Paper and pasta straws also put individuals at risk of choking. Compostable straws made of other natural materials increase the likelihood of allergic reactions, which can be deadly, and often require special processing to compost safely and correctly.  Reusable and/or alternative straws are also significantly more expensive for consumers and can be cost prohibitive.

And alternatives to fossil-based plastics aren’t just a tricky issue for the disabled.  As Shellenberger writes:

[A]re the alternatives to fossil- based plastics really better for the environment? Certainly not in terms of air pollution. In California, banning plastic bags resulted in more paper bags and other thicker bags being used, which increased carbon emissions due to the greater amount of energy needed to produce them. Paper bags would need to be reused forty-three times to have a smaller impact on the environment. And plastic bags constitute just 0.8 percent of plastic waste in the oceans. Glass bottles can be more pleasant to drink out of, but they also require more energy to manufacture and recycle. Glass bottles consume 170 to 250 percent more energy and emit 200 to 400 percent more carbon than plastic bottles, due mostly to the heat energy required in the manufacturing process … A study of the life cycle of bioplastics made from sugar found higher negative respiratory health impacts, smog, acidification, carcinogens, and ozone depletion than from fossil plastics. When sugar-based bioplastics decompose, they emit more methane, a potent greenhouse gas, than fossil plastics. As a result, decomposing bioplastics often produce more air pollution than sending ordinary plastics to the landfill. And because bioplastics come from crops grown, rather than the resin waste product from the oil and gas industry, they have large land use impacts, just like biofuels have … Plastics are made from a waste by-product of oil and gas production and thus require no additional land to be used. By contrast, switching from fossil plastics to bioplastics would require expanding farmland in the United States by 5 to 15 percent. To replace fossil plastic with corn- based bioplastic would require thirty to forty-five million acres of corn, which is equivalent to 40 percent of the entire U.S. corn harvest, or thirty million acres of switchgrass … The plastics parable teaches us that we save nature by not using it, and we avoid using it by switching to artificial substitutes. This model of nature-saving is the opposite of the one promoted by most environmentalists, who focus on either using natural resources more sustainably, or moving toward biofuels and bioplastics.

Not only did California’s plastic ban lead to an increase in carbon emissions, it also resulted in an increase in the amount of plastic thrown away. As the New York Times reported in February, 2024:

Almost a decade ago, California became the first state in the United States to ban single-use plastic bags in an effort to tackle an intractable plastic waste problem. Then came the reusable, heavy-duty plastic bags, offered to shoppers for ten cents. Designed to withstand dozens of uses, and technically recyclable, many retailers treated them as exempt from the ban. But because they didn’t look much different from the flimsy bags they replaced, lots of people didn’t actually reuse them. And though they came emblazoned with a recycling symbol, it turned out that few, if any, actually were recycled. The unhappy result: Last year, Californians threw away more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed, according to figures from CalRecycle, California’s recycling agency.

As Our World in Data reports:

In general, plastic tends to be cheap and has significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions, energy, water and fertilizer inputs than alternatives such as paper, aluminium, cotton or glass … In the charts here we summarise one life-cycle analysis (LCA) study of environmental impacts by grocery bag type. This is based on results from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. These figures present the number of times a grocery bag would have to be reused to have as low an environmental impact as a standard LDPE (Low-density polyethylene) single-use plastic bag. For example, a value of 5 indicates a bag would have to be reused 5 times to equal the environmental impact of a standard single-use plastic bag … Results show that some plastic bag alternatives have high environmental impacts, and would require many reuses to make them worthwhile as a substitute. For example, an organic cotton bag would have to be reused 149 times to equal a LDPE’s greenhouse gas emissions, and 20,000 when impacts such as eutrophication, water and ecosystem impacts are included.

And as the Wall Street Journal reports:

In a fit of virtue-signaling, New Jersey passed a law in 2020 that banned single-use plastic and paper bags in all stores and food service businesses starting in May 2022. It’s a major inconvenience for state residents, and now a report suggests it has also been an environmental dud. Freedonia Custom Research put together the “market assessment” of the plastic-bag ban. It found that New Jersey’s consumption of plastic for bags increased three-fold after the ban. How could this be? Commissioned by the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance, the report acknowledges that the total number of plastic bags declined by 60% since the ban—as its backers hoped. But because shoppers still had to carry their groceries home, they needed alternatives. Mostly that meant switching from the thin plastic film bags to the heavier, reusable bags now sold in many supermarkets. The problem is that most of these alternative bags are made of non-woven polypropylene, which takes much more plastic to make and isn’t widely recycled. And what about the supposed climate benefits? Well, the study finds that, owing to the larger carbon footprint of the heavier, non-woven polypropylene bags, greenhouse gas emissions rose 500%. The problem is compounded by the way people use these bags. Though intended to be reused many times, the report says 90% of the new reusable bags are used a mere two or three times. So they are piling up in landfills and homes. Think of your own behavior in misplacing bags around the house or forgetting to bring them when heading out for groceries.

Also, a 2024 study in the Environmental Science & Technology Journal reported that:

This article examines the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission impact of plastic products versus their alternatives. We assess 16 applications where plastics are used across five key sectors: packaging, building and construction, automotive, textiles, and consumer durables. These sectors account for about 90% of the global plastic volume. Our results show that in 15 of the 16 applications a plastic product incurs fewer GHG emissions than their alternatives. In these applications, plastic products release 10% to 90% fewer emissions across the product life cycle. Furthermore, in some applications, such as food packaging, no suitable alternatives to plastics exist.

My own city of Alexandria, Virginia, joined other urban areas in taxing plastic bags and giving out free reusable bags to people on low-incomes.  But researchers have found that the use of reusable grocery bags come with a heightened risk of passing along food-borne illnesses.  As the researchers summarized:

Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase.

Indeed, the COVID pandemic has also caused the rationale on prior bans on disposable plastic bags to be revisited.  As reported in the Wall Street Journal:

In 2007 San Francisco proudly became the first city to ban plastic bags. But last Tuesday the city’s Department of Health issued new guidelines, which now ban people from going to stores and coffee shops with “their own bags, mugs, or other reusable items from home.”  The department was responding to fears that the reusable bags are more prone to carrying coronavirus than the disposable plastic bags that were standard before the 2007 ban.

As John Tierney writes:

Banning single-use plastic grocery bags has added carbon to the atmosphere by forcing shoppers to use heavier paper bags and tote bags that require much more energy to manufacture and transport. The paper and cotton bags also take up more space in landfills and produce more greenhouse emissions as they decompose. The tote bags aren’t reused nearly often enough to offset their initial carbon footprint, and they’re breeding grounds for bacteria and viruses because they’re rarely washed properly. Researchers have repeatedly found these bags to be responsible for gastrointestinal infections, but the warnings got little attention until the Covid pandemic suddenly revived respect for disposable products.  As stores and coffee shops banned reusable bags and mugs during the pandemic, Americans relearned the lessons of the early twentieth century, when public-health authorities promoted Dixie cups and other disposable products to counter threats like tuberculosis and the Spanish flu. This marked the beginning of the “throwaway society,” and the term wasn’t originally used pejoratively. Americans welcomed plastic products and packages because they were so much better than the alternative.

Something to consider when you clean up after everyone opens their presents this year.

Posting note: The Big Picture will go on hiatus for the holidays, with the next post scheduled for Monday, January 2.  Until then, Happy Holidays!

Links to all essays in this series: Part 1; Part 2.