Home » Posts tagged 'plastic' (Page 2)
Tag Archives: plastic
Toxic ‘Reform’ Law Will Gut State Rules on Dangerous Chemicals
The Senate’s version has some significant differences from the House bill — the TSCA Modernization Act, which passed in June — and the reconciliation process is now underway. If the worst provisions from both bills wind up in the final law, which could reach the president’s desk as soon as February, the new legislation will gut laws that have put Oregon, California, Maine, Vermont, Minnesota, and Washington state at the forefront of chemical regulation.
Plastic baby bottles, sippy cups, and bowls. Photo: Getty Images
Toxic Sippy Cups and Baby Bottles
For Mike Belliveau the passage of Maine’s chemical law in 2008 felt like the crowning moment in his career. The environmental advocate had spent years working on the Kid Safe Product Act, which is one of the strongest protections against dangerous chemicals in the country. Since it was passed, Maine has used the law to come up with a list of more than 1,700 “chemicals of concern.” The state has also required manufactures to report the use of a handful of those chemicals, and has banned them altogether when there are no safer alternatives.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Taking a Bite Out of Plastic Waste: New Research Offers Unexpected Promise as Permaculture Hack
Taking a Bite Out of Plastic Waste: New Research Offers Unexpected Promise as Permaculture Hack
Reducing plastic pollution has seemed a daunting prospect, until now. Can the tiny Mealworm bite off more than we can chew?
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans alone throw away 25 billion Styrofoam cups each year. Styrofoam is a common polystyrene product, which is a type of plastic. These materials pose a significant challenge to environmental health because they are created with robust molecular chains that tend to give them an unusually durable life span of between 500-1000 years. That means the Styrofoam coffee cup you just threw out this morning will be sitting in a landfill or floating on an ocean 500 years from now, potentially endangering ground water and animal life well into the future.
More plastic has been produced in the last ten years than during the entire last century, resulting in enough such waste thrown away each year to circle the earth four times. According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, annual global consumption of these materials has soared from an average 5.5 million tons in the 1950s to roughly 300 million tons in 2013, with an average four percent per annum increase in recent years.
Paradoxically, the key to solving one of the largest challenges to good environmental health – and promoting sustainable waste management practices in general – could be held by the tiny mealworm, the larvae form of the darkling beetle. A pair of research papers just published in Environmental Science and Technology reveals groundbreaking findings that offer both progressive recycling solutions and regenerative potential to even the most micro-permaculturalists.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Microplastics at ‘alarming levels’ in Canadian lakes and rivers
Microbeads just tip of plastic iceberg floating in Canadian waters
Tiny plastic pellets called microbeads have gotten a lot of attention as a major water pollutant, but less-discussed microplastics are equally concerning, according to new research being done in Canada.
“In recent years, they’ve been detected in a growing number of lakes and rivers worldwide. They’re everywhere, and often in alarming levels,” said Anthony Ricciardi, a professor at the McGill School of the Environment, who is working on a study about microplastics.
- Push to ban plastic microbeads from facial scrubs gains momentum
- Plastic microbeads: small bits with a big impact
Microplastics are small particles of plastic less than five millimetres in size that are often found in bodies of water near large urban populations. Microbeads, which are used in toothpastes, makeup and body cleansers, are one part of the broader category of microplastics.
Biologist Lisa Erdle points out a tiny fake leaf made of plastic hidden in her sample of sediment from Lake Ontario on July 15, 2015. Her team is searching for plastics smaller than 5 mm in diameter to study the level of microplastic pollution in Canadian fresh waters. (Micki Cowan/CBC)
Microbeads are “getting all the attention, but they’re only one component to this,” Ricciardi said. “As time goes on, people are going to realize the importance of the other pieces, too.”
A 2014 study of the U.S. Great Lakes by the 5 Gyres Institute found an average of 43,000 microplastic particles per square kilometre. Near cities, the number jumped to 466,000.
Dislodged from clothing in the wash
The plastic particles in the Great Lakes include microbeads, but also come from other sources, such as bits of polymer that detach from clothing when it is washed, as well as granules from industrial abrasives.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ocean Plastic Estimated at 5.25 Trillion Pieces — But Where’s the Rest? – Our World
Ocean Plastic Estimated at 5.25 Trillion Pieces — But Where’s the Rest? – Our World.
The deluge of plastic detritus — from the large to the microscopic — swirling about in our oceans weighs in at 269,000 metric tons, according to the most comprehensive research on marine plastic hot off the press yesterday. One of the researchers, Dr. Marcus Erikson, visualizes it like this: “Two liter plastic bottles stacked end-to-end forming a column to the moon and back TWICE.” That’s roughly 6 billion bottles afloat on the high seas.
But as devastating as these numbers are, Erikson says they’re way too conservative. Given that we produce 300 million tons of plastic every year and the National Academy of Sciences estimates 0.1 percent of it ends up in the ocean, he says he knows there’s more. Way more.
So exactly where is the rest?
Especially the most toxic and chemically laden fragments — microplastics — which numbered 100 times less than expected.
There are two mechanisms accelerating the marine plastic phenomenon: gyres, which pulverize plastic, and ocean currents transporting it to the ends of the earth.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Plastic Society – Moving Towards Plastic Independence
The Plastic Society – Moving Towards Plastic Independence.
We all know about society’s over-consumption of plastic. We’ve heard again and again that it takes up to a millennia for plastics to bio-degrade (1), and consumers worldwide are using approximately 500 billion single-use plastic bags per year (2). And the issue of micro-plastic in our oceans in the past few years have gained awareness via social media. With all this data perpetually smothering our faces on a regular basis, it really begs the question why aren’t governments providing effective immediate solutions on a macro-scale to combat society’s rampant plastic consumption? If plastics are so costly in terms of energy consumption and environmental impact, then action has to be undertaken promptly, and in this article are practical solutions as to how you can build and begin successful projects.
Sure, we have recycling plants, wonderful appropriate technology like Ubuntu Blox, that re-uses plastics to create useable bricks for house construction, Upcycling, bio-plastics and the like — truly, these are all practical and amazing ideas and technologies, but they have minimal impact on, when looking at the broader scale, the impact of plastic consumption on our planet and measures aren’t being implemented fast enough on a broad scale.
Social paradigms are certainly the major issue. Plastics are convenient, cheap and durable – so much so that they have become deeply engrained in the psyche of the consumer. The solution for shifting the paradigm and reducing consumption is twofold: local councils and governments need to introduce incentive schemes to entice consumers to reduce their personal consumption; and, education programs need to be expanded and improved upon.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
