Plastic cigarette butts line the cracks in the street, plastic bags get caught in the trees, plastic encases our food...but what happens after it hits the pavement?

On Our Streets

Plastic has been continually visible in the past decades as litter in our cities, yet many do not understand its pervasive and disruptive nature.

The litter that escapes limited city cleaning crews is usually washed into storm drains and carried in both natural and man-made water channels to the ocean. The United Nation Environment Program has stated that roughly 80% of marine debris originates from land-based sources and activities. In addition, plastics make up 90% of floating marine debris.

In Our Waters

A presentation at the 2005 Plastics Debris Rivers to Sea conference by the National Marine Debris Monitoring Program, maintained under Ocean Conservancy, reported that for 2002-2004 data, the top debris from general sources included plastic bags (with seams), and plastic bottles (beverage and other). Other reports also cite expanded polystyrene and cigarette butts for their disproportionate contributions to litter. The unifying trait to much of the debris, though, is that it is made of plastic materials.

One fact that helps some to mentally grasp the sheer mass of plastic out there was presented in recent research by Charles Moore, from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, California. His studies in 2001 found that there is now six times the mass of plastic debris than zooplankton in the North Pacific Gyre (of the North Pacific Ocean).

The abundance of plastic in the oceans is harmful to marine habitat and wildlife, and in turn affects land-based ecosystems. Every year, plastic debris kills animals through entanglement, suffocation, starvation and ingestion. In the 1980s it was estimated that plastic rubbish caused the deaths of over 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles a year in the North Pacific alone. The amount of rubbish in the oceans has increased substantially since then, however. According to research presented by Haruo Ogi and Yuri Fukumoto, the density of plastics in the marine environment appear to have increased tenfold every 2-3 years in the 1990's.

Plastics have been found in the digestive tracts of over 100 species of seabirds. In fact, by 1998, the Marine Mammal Commission reported that marine debris had affected at least 267 animal species around the world. It is also important to note that one piece of rubbish can kill more than one animal in its litter lifespan. Why? Because it lasts "forever."

Well, maybe forever is too strong a word. Researchers estimate that it may take plastics several centuries, perhaps a millennia, to fully biodegrade. That means if some plastic bag had blown into the ocean the day the Magna Carta was signed, that plastic could still be in our waters today.

Of course, the plastic bag would no longer look like a bag. Over time, plastic breaks down into increasingly smaller pieces, eventually forrming a plastic dust that may be consumed by filter feeders and enter the food chain. This has potentially negative consequences to our health which we are only beginning to understand…

In 2006, President Bush signed the Marine Debris Research, Prevention, and Reduction Act (S. 362) into law. The bill will establish a marine debris program within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for prevention, monitoring and removal of marine debris. It will also increase the efforts of the Coast Guard in prevention and enforcement, improve coordination of different federal agencies, and establish a federal information clearinghouse on marine debris.

Read more in Plastic and Our Bodies

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