Street roots
9
Aug. 3, 2012
PLASTIC, from page 8
Then there is Miguel. A chick born near
a Midway building, Jordan and his crew
capture the bird hatching from its egg.
Caught on film this past February, it’s a
sweet moment of emergent life.
But it s impossible to say what life will
hold for Miguel, Jordan said. A study from
1996, he said, found that 54 percent of the
seabirds stomach contents were plastic,
including rubber, foam and fishing line. ’
Statistically, Miguel has a low chance of
getting off the island,” Jordan said.
He plans to check on Miguel soon. On
June 28, Jordan and his crew will travel to
Midway for three weeks, the longest trip
he’s taken so far. He greets the trip with
some hesitation, as he calls this time of year
TRASH, from page 1
was notorious at the turn of the last century
for being such a sty, and that’s why some of
these advancements such as recycling and
the municipal dump were pioneered.
We like landfills in the U.S. more than in
other countries because we have so much
space. There’s always another hole to throw
your garbage into. Perversely, that
encourages us to be more wasteful. It doesn’t
make it a good model, but it’s become our
model because we have the space to do it.
Japan doesn’t have landfills because they’re
on an island, and they don’t have the space.
M.T.: Puente H ills in Los Angeles County is
on the island “the dying season.”
Fledglings prepare to take their maiden
sea voyage, though, Jordan said, many don’t
make it. Some die of starvation due to
stomachs full of plastic, while others lose
their lives from exposure to the elements.
Still, Jordan believes Midway is a spiritual
place, and finds the name evocative. “Here
we are at this crossroads,” he said, “where
everything that has ever happened has led
to this moment and everything we decide
now will decide the future.”
He believes the albatross, a central figure
in the Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem,
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” plays a
special role in humanity. “It’s like this spirit
bird, the messenger,” he said.
What Jordan wants the film to
communicate is that people can change the
E.H.: There’s a lot of potential for using
our trash for energy (when it can’t be
recycled or repurposed in some way).
Denmark succeeds on this score because
they decided that their waste is a local issue.
They built relatively small, low-cost facilities,
and they produce the heat and energy in the
communities that produce the trash. They’ve
chosen a more community-based model.
They don’t have these huge utility-scale
power plants that leave such a big footprint
and have such a high cost.
It’s been a big challenge for American
communities to pursue the waste-to-energy
model as a solution. One successful example,
though, is in Massachusetts in the Cape Cod
area. A series of small communities have
banded together to enact this model.
the largest active m unicipal dum p in the
United States. I t s
essentially a garbage
m ountain over 500
feet above the original
ground level. It
"W e have a lo t o f laceafives
contains about 130
and t a i p o licie s th a t
m illion tons o f trash.
Do you think that
eaeow age wastefulness»
Puente H ills is the
W hether It's subsidies fo r
future o f trash in the
jo n k m a ll o r c h a rg in g people
United States?
a fla t rate fo r th e ir trash
M.T.: You mention
plastic bags in your
book. They’re pretty
ubiquitous. For
example, most people
will grab a plastic bag
while in the checkout
line, even i f they only
have a few items to
carry. It seems like
elim inating plastic bag
waste might be a fairly
easy first goal?
E.H.: Puente Hills
Instead of c h a rg in g them b y
is actually fairly well-
run, despite being so w e ig h t — H I these th in g s
E.H.: Yeah, it’s a
mammoth. It does try u n d e rw rite w aste,"
good place to start. If
to control ground
you want to look at
water contamination,
single-use disposable
and it captures some
products made out of
of the methane it
materials that linger
produces to power
in the environment for hundreds, if not
the facility instead of letting it escape into
thousands, of years, disposable plastic bags
the atmosphere.
and wraps and single-use containers are a
Still, it’s a great big pile of garbage. But
great place to start because they’re such a
it’s the model that the U.S. has been
huge component of our waste stream.
pursuing, and landfills are where almost 70
Now, plastic bags all on their own? By
percent of all our trash goes today. We send
weight or volume they’re only a small
more recyclable material to the landfill than
percentage of the overall trash. But they’re a
we actually recycle. For all our decades of
highly visible one. They’re the kind of plastic
focus on recycling, we haven’t really been
that’s polluting our marine environment.
able to shift that paradigm away from
They’re a high percentage of wind-blown
landfilling.
trash and trash that gets into public
The most recent evidence suggests that
waterways. Plastic is really hard to recycle in
landfills produce more greenhouse gases
a cost-efficient way. Consequently, not a
than the facilities that burn trash for energy.
whole lot of it gets recycled. Only about 5
That’s kind of counter-intuitive - you’d think
percent of plastic bags get recycled. They’ll
that burning would be worse, but it’s not
still end up in the landfill.
because of all the methane coming out of
It’s a great target if you want to get people
landfills.
thinking about reusable solutions instead of
So, when looking at all these factors like
disposable ones. The trap is, you don’t want
landfilling and recycling and incineration, and
to create a ban or a tax on plastic bags that
what to do with our trash, the question that
then prompts people to use disposable paper
rarely gets asked is: How we can make less
bags instead. We should be urging people to
trash in the first place? And what are the
bring reusable bags.
economic incentives and environmental
Los Angeles County has a plastic-bag ban
benefits of being thriftier and less wasteful?
that’s been in effect for over a year now (as
The same goes for energy. We’re always
does Portland). Paper bags are available for
trying to find new ways of making it, when
10 cents. About 90 percent of customers
we should be trying to use less of it while
where this ban is in effect have started
still accomplishing what we need to
bringing their own bags rather than buying
accomplish. That’s really where people who
the 10-cent paper bags.
are thinking about the future of trash want
the debate to shift. Not where we put our
M.T.: A lot o f this plastic ends up in the
trash, but why we make so darn much of it.
M.T.: Cities like Copenhagen, Denm ark, use
almost 100 percent o f their trash as a renewable
energy source (through incineration). D o you
think that something like this could catch on in
the States?
ocean in sm all pieces. What do experts know
about this “oceanicplastic,’ and is there any
hope fo r removing it?
E.H.: It is hard to get rid of. There’s this
common misconception that there’s this
giant floating island of garbage in the ocean.
way they live and alter the fate of
albatrosses of Midway. “It’s a message of
horror, but also beauty and hope,” he said.
“And love.”
To view the trailer fo r “M id w a y ” a n d donate
to the film on line, visit m idw ayfilm .com
Below, another in C h ris Jo r d a n ’s series o f
photographs show ing decomposed bodies o f
albatross revealing the plastic content o f
their stomachs.
P H O T O B Y C H R IS J O R D A N
This just isn’t true. It might be easier to
clean up if it were true.
In reality, oceanic plastic consists of tiny
particles. They’re diffuse, but plentiful in
certain areas of the ocean. The particles
tend to absorb chemical toxins. Because the
toxins aren’t water soluble, and because the
ocean plastic becomes weathered and
porous, it’s very easy for the toxins to attach
to the plastic.
Fish eventually ingest these plastics and
the toxins thereby enter our food chain.
According to data accumulated over a period
of 30 years, the plastic in the ocean has
increased 100-fold over those years. The
ocean is a big place. It’s not like the entire
ocean is becoming plasticized. But there’s
enough of it to start having a significant
effect on the food chain.
And it gets concentrated the farther up
the food chain it goes. For example, there’s
this study by Scripps (University) that
observed these plankton-eating fish called
lanternfish. Ten percent of them had plastic
in their gut. We don’t eat lanternfish, but
other fish do. And they don’t eat just one,
they eat hundreds of them. So now you have
this concentrating effect, where a little
plastic eaten by many lanternfish gets
concentrated into a smaller number of bigger
fish. And yet other, bigger fish, eat those
fish, and it works its way up the line. So now
you have these toxins built up in the food
chain as the fish gets bigger. Then it gets to
the fish we eat. And the chance of them
ingesting harmful substances in significant
quantities is really alarming.
M.T.: What notable discoveries did William
R athje’s Garbage Project yield?
E.H.: It’s really just a testament to how
revealing our garbage is. It reveals how we
behave and what we consume. For example,
just by studying garbage, Rathje was able to
discover which of the homes in his study
were single parent or two parent. If you look
at the trash from any household, you can
really tell the demographic of that
household.
The Garbage Project also did core samples
of landfills. They could essentially go back in
time 40 or 50 years to see what was
happening with the trash. And one of the
surprises was that a lot of the material in the
landfill wasn’t breaking down at all. Organic
material was still intact. Newspapers were
still readable after 50 years. There was this
popular idea that everything broke down into
this decomposing soup, and that was proven
to be incorrect.
This material does biodegrade, but much
more slowly than we thought. Rathje
discovered 25-year-old guacamole in one of
the core samples, and when he wiped away
the outer crust, it was green inside! Not that
you’d want to eat it, but it just illustrates how
long waste can stick around. It’s this weird,
anaerobic environment in there. But that’s
also one of the reasons it generates so much
methane. It’s the perfect environment to
generate massive amounts of greenhouse
gases.
M.T.: Bea Johnson is a Bay Area resident
and owner o f “The Zero Waste” home. Alm ost
everything her fam ily o ffo u r throws away in a
year fits in a mason jar. She buys in bulk
(bringing her own containers to the store to
refill) and uses cloth napkins and
handkerchiefs. D o you think that this type o f
m inim al lifestyle is possible fo r anyone?
E.H.: Just to be clear, their mason jar is
only their trash waste, separate from what
they recycle and compost.
They gradually worked their way to this
point; it’s not something the Johnson family
did overnight. They started because they
moved to a smaller house for financial
reasons, and they needed to downsize. That
started them on the path to find out what
they really wanted and needed and how that
compared to what they had accumulated.
They approached it very logically.
Bea systematically went through the
house and identified opportunities to be both
thriftier and less wasteful. She started
buying used and refurbished things, because
often they’re indistinguishable from and
almost always cheaper than their brand-new
counterparts. And in terms of reducing your
environmental footprint, using refurbished
things is a great goal. There’s a lot of energy
that goes into the transport and resource-
extraction to make new things, so if you can
use something that already exists, that’s
best.
M.T.: What changes do we need to make -
policy-wise — to reduce the am ount o f waste
Am ericans produce?
E.H.: We have a lot of incentives and tax
policies that encourage wastefulness.
Whether it’s subsidies for junk mail or
charging people a flat rate for their trash
instead of charging them by weight — All
these things underwrite waste. If we could
just change one thing, I think it should be
removing incentives that promote waste and
creating incentives that discourage waste.
M.T.: What about the personal level?
E.H.: That’s easier to change. There are
often added benefits when reducing waste,
like cost savings. Processed food is also
highly packaged while fresh food is generally
not packaged at all. In that case you’re
making a healthier choice and a more
environmentally sustainable choice
Republished from R eal Change News, Seattle,
Wash. © Street News Service, www.
streetnewsservice. org