Plastic (43 page)

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ten-million-square-mile
: Hohn, "Moby-Duck." For a good description of the gyre, see Ebbesmeyer and Scigliano,
Flotsametrics
.

129
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"
As I gazed from the deck
": Moore, "Trashed."

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cargo containers lost at sea
: It's estimated two thousand containers go overboard annually, down from ten thousand. Ebbesmeyer and Scigliano,
Flotsametrics,
205.

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an area that he estimated
: Moore, "Trashed"; author interview with Moore.

130
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a host of misperceptions
: One misconception has to do with a study by Moore in which he reported finding that the mass of plastic he'd pulled out of the vortex outweighed the mass of plankton there six to one. The statistic is often repeated, and yet experts point out that it's misleading. The vortex is an ocean desert—the particular features that form it deter an abundance of marine life, which means one wouldn't expect to find much plankton in the area. Moreover, plankton consist mostly of water; once dried out—as was done in Moore's study—their mass seems smaller than it actually is.

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an "eighth continent
": Editorial, "Our Plastic Legacy Afloat,"
New York Times,
August 26, 2009.

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as voyagers there have discovered
: These descriptions come from interviews with members of Project Kaisei, an expedition that journeyed to the gyre in the summer of 2009 to document the extent of debris and investigate possibility of cleaning it up. Author interviews with Miriam Goldstein, Andrea Neal, Dennis Rogers, Nelson Smith, and Doug Woodring, August 2009.

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vortex "is not a static environment
": Author interview with Sheavly.

131
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more harm than good
: The warning was made by Andrea Neal, who eventually overcame her reservations about the project and joined as one of its scientific advisers. Author interview with Neal, July 2009; author interview with Woodring, August 2009.

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There are at least five
: The number is subject to debate. Based on his flotsam studies and computer modeling, Ebbesmeyer calculates there are eleven distinct ocean gyres and eight high-pressure vortexes. Researchers Peter Niiler and Nikolai Maximenko tracked the paths of fifteen thousand research floats to trace ocean currents around the globe, and their resulting map shows just five areas where currents converge in a vortex. "Tracking Ocean Debris,"
IPCR Climate
8 (2008): 14–16; author interview with Peter Niiler, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, July 2009.

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One gyre can be found in the North Atlantic
: Author interview with Law. The 2010 research trip to the North Atlantic gyre by her organization, SEA, was the first backed by federal funding. Results of the trip were reported in Kara Lavender Law et al., "Plastic Accumulation in the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre,"
Science
329 (2010): 1185. See also Melissa Lang, "Fishing for Plastic in the Atlantic,"
Boston Globe,
July 14, 2010.

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where Ahab's crew
: Author interview with Niiler.

132
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"
in impaired movement and feeding
": Thompson, "Plastics, the Environment," 2155.

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How many are killed a year?: Author interview with Holly Bamford, director of the marine-debris program at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, July 2009. The figure seems to have originated from a paper by C. Fowler, "Status of Northern Fur Seals on the Pribilof Islands," submitted to the twenty-sixth annual meeting of the Standing Scientific Committee of the North Pacific Fur Seal Commission, in 2008. It stated
: "Debris entanglement is estimated to cause 50,000 to 90,000 deaths per year in the northern fur seal. At least 50,000 deaths are thought to be due to entanglement; the other 40,000 deaths possible entanglement or possibly some unknown factor such as disease." A 2008 article in the London
Times
described how a later misquote of the report, which never mentioned plastic bags, helped fuel anti-plastic-bag feelings. Alexi Mostrous, "Series of Blunders Turned the Plastic Bag into Global Villain," London
Times,
March 8, 2008. Accessed online at
http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/adj/news.timesonline.co.uk/environment;pos=sponsor;sz=143x50;tile=2;yahoo=No;ord=1274124758122?
.

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no documented basis
: Author interview with Bamford. See also NOAA marine-debris website Frequently Asked Questions, accessed at
http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/faqs.html#6
.

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cause of injury or death
: Derraik, "Pollution of the Marine Environment"; Study on southern fur seals cited in Charles Moore, "Synthetic Polymers in the Marine Environment: A Rapidly Increasing Threat,"
Environmental Research
108 (October 2008); on fulmars, see M. Malloy, "Marine Plastic Debris in Northern Fulmars from the Canadian High Arctic,"
Marine Pollution Bulletin
58 (August 2008): 1501–4.

133
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the Peruvian beaked whale
: "Exfoliating Scrubs Join List of Plastics Harming Whales,"
Scotland Sunday Herald,
March 9, 2008.

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Leatherback turtles
: "Leatherback Turtle Threatened by Plastic Garbage in the Ocean,"
Science Daily,
March 16, 2009. Reporting on study by N. Mrosovsky et al., "Leatherback Turtles: The Menace of Plastic,"
Marine Pollution Bulletin
58 (2009): 287.

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Endangered humpback whales
: Gregory, "Environmental Implications."

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British biologist David Barnes
: Barnes et al., "Accumulation and Fragmentation." Author interview with Barnes, June 2009.

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"
Plastic is not just an aesthetic
": Barnes, quoted in Thomas Hayden, "Trashing the Oceans,"
U.S. News and World Report,
November 14, 2002.

134
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The first conference
: The proceedings of the conference provide a good overview of the concerns about and knowledge of microdebris. See National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Occurrence, Effects and Fate of Microplastic Marine Debris,
September 9 to September 11, 2008, published January 2009. See also Murray Gregory and Anthony Andrady, "Plastics in the Marine Environment," in Andrady, ed.,
Plastics and the Environment,
381–82, and Richard C. Thompson et al., "Our Plastic Age," 1975.

135
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increase in pellets
: Moore, "Synthetic Polymers." In 1991 the Society of Plastics Industry created a program, Operation Clean Sweep, designed to prevent pellet losses. The measures recommended through Clean Sweep are effective at reducing by some 50 percent the amounts that get into the environment. Unfortunately it remains voluntary, and according to Moore, only a small percentage of companies participate.

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teensy plastic beads as scrubbers
: Author interview with Richard Thompson, University of Plymouth, September 2009.

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In one series of lab experiments
: Author interview with Thompson; Weisman,
World Without Us,
116.

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similar feeding study with mussels
: Described in Thompson, "Plastics, the Environment," 2156.

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In a 2008 return trip to the Pacific gyre
: The results were described on the website of Moore's Algalita Marine Research Foundation in "Update on Fish Ingestion Study," September 2009, at
http://www.algalita.org/bispap-ingestion-update-9–09.html
. Also in David Ferris, "Message in a Bottle,"
Sierra
magazine (May/June 2009).

136
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Japanese researchers
: Teuten et al., "Transport and Release of Chemicals," 2035–37.

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that's no surprise to scientists
: Author interview with Bamford.

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Indeed, Takada argues
: Author interview with Hideshige Takada, February 2009. See also Yuko Ogata et al., "International Pellet Watch: Global Monitoring of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in Coastal Waters. Initial Phase Data on PCBs, DDTs and HCHs,"
Marine Pollution Bulletin
58 (October 2009): 1437–46.

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I packed up a hundred and fifty pellets
: All but thirty-three of the pellets were polyethylene (the rest were polypropylene), and those were the ones he analyzed. Author e-mail correspondence with Takada, January 2010.

137
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More than 180 species
: Emma L. Teuten, "Microplastic-Pollutant Interactions and Their Implication in Contaminant Transport to Organisms," presented at the International Workshop on the Occurrence, Effects and Fate of Microplastic Marine Debris, September 2008.

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Thompson placed lugworms
: Author interview with Thompson. The studies are described in Teuten et al., "Transport and Release of Chemicals," 2038.

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Teuten fed sea birds pellets
: Ibid., 2040.

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Hans Laufer found alkyphenols
: Author interview with Hans Laufer, August 2008. Also see Abbie Mitchell, "Plastic in the Ocean Hurts Lobster,"
Nova News Now,
July 3, 2008, accessed at
http://www.novanewsnow.com/article-227641-Plastic-in-the-ocean-hurts-lobster.html
.

138
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the Bradford, Pennsylvania, company
: Author e-mail correspondence with Pat Grandy, communications manager, Zippo Corporation, September 2009.

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collectors have little interest
: Author interviews with Judith Sanders, On the Lighter Side; Ted Ballard, National Lighter Museum, June 2009.

6. Battle of the Bag

141
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"
there is simply no justification
": Achim Steiner, UN undersecretary-general and UNEP executive director, press release for issuance of UN report on marine debris, June 10, 2009;
http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=589&ArticleID=6214&L=EN&T=LONG
.

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more than two hundred anti-bag measures
: Mike Verespej, "Plastic Bag Industry in Fight of Its Life,"
Plastics News,
March 16, 2009.

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an emblem "of waste and excess"
: Belinda Luscombe, "The Patron Saint of Plastic Bags,"
Time,
July 27, 2008.

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"
the plastics industry has helped turn us into
": Stephanie Barger, executive director of the Costa Mesa-based Earth Resource Foundation and founder of the Campaign Against the Plastic Plague, quoted in Steve Toloken, "Plastics' Image Problem,"
Plastics News,
August 6, 2007.

142
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"
Not a single solid market
": "No Easy Years Ahead,"
Modern Plastics
(June 1956): 5.

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About half of all goods
: Mike Verespej, "Even Going Green Requires Cutting Costs,"
Plastics News,
December 22, 2008.

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one of every three pounds
: American Chemistry Council,
Resin Review 2008,
51.

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"
bag panic
": Meikle,
American Plastic,
249–50.

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the head of the Society of the Plastics Industry
: Mildred Murphy, "Plastic Industry to Warn on Bags,"
New York Times,
June 18, 1959.

143
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As Jerome Heckman
: Jerome Heckman, "Heckman Shares Plastics Past,"
Plastics News,
April 17, 2000.

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Mobil began eyeing
: The account of Mobil's development of T-shirt bags comes from author interview with Bill Seanor, now with Overwraps Packaging, Inc., September 2008.

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the classic brown paper bag
: According to Diana Twede, a packaging scientist and historian of the field, the paper shopping bag appeared in the mid-nineteenth century when an enterprising grocer in Bristol, England, figured out he could glue together some paper to make a bag and gain a valuable twofer: a convenient way for his customers to carry their goods home, and a free space to advertise his store. Until the process became automated, after the Civil War, shopkeepers passed their off-hours sitting in the backs of their stores gluing paper together to make bags. Still, it wasn't until the rise of car culture, suburbs, and self-serve grocery stores in the decades after World War II that the brown paper bag became a staple at the checkout stand. Author interview with Diana Twede, Michigan State University at Lansing, August 2008.

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mainly in Europe
: Europe was more open to plastic bags than the United States, which, owing to the abundance of timber, has always enjoyed lower paper prices.

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Sten Thulin had come up with a design
: "Design Landmarks,"
European Plastics News,
October 1, 2008. Author interview with Chris Smith, editor of
European Plastics News,
September 2008. Inventors had long been trying to do the same, but Thulin was the first to develop a workable method of folding, welding, and die-cutting a flat tube of plastic. Or one of the first—there was a Finnish patent issued around the same time.

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company's early foray into the production
: Mobil brought a small factory in Florence, Italy, that was producing T-shirt bags and sent Seanor there to rev up production for the American market.

144
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shoppers were underwhelmed
: Another problem was the polymer Mobil used for its bags: a linear-low-density polyethylene that easily stretched and tore. After a few years, bag manufacturers switched to a hardier plastic, high-density polyethylene (HDPE), that was better suited to carting heavy loads. The switch to HDPE "cut the legs out from under" Mobil's bag business, said Seanor. The company was too invested in LLDPE to make the change, and eventually it ceded the T-shirt-bag market to a crop of new companies that were using HDPE to make bags.