Using Oranges to Break Down Polystyrene?

Is breaking down polystyrene (more commonly known under the brand name "styrofoam") as easy as leaving your fresh squeezed cup of orange juice from Jamba in the hot sun? Well not exactly and perhaps we can for now file this story in "don't believe everything you read on 'the internets,' " but the Jakarta Post reports that high school students have discovered a way to break down polystyrene into a non-toxic safe to dispose of solution that "can be decomposed by microorganisms in the air and soil." Apparently orange peels contain limonene, a substance that is used an an industrial degreaser and is found in those "orange cleaners" that have become all the rage. This "breakthrough" bears further investigation, the result of which will be reported here.

We're being watched... (good)

I was cruising around the blogosphere and found "PlasticsNews.com." It's "A weblog about the global plastics industry news, businesses trends and markets". 

Soooo, it's an industry blog. It's a "Please don't rise above plastics" blog.

The post that caught my eye was "Some blogs to watch" where they list this blog.

We're being watched. 

Um... excellent.

We want the "global plastics industry news, business trends and markets" to know that we are collectively NOT satisfied with the state of affairs. In fact we demand alternative practices, products and use. We are not anti-plastic per se we are anti-single use plastic. We do not accept that a person should go to the store and buy something... like a bottle of water in single-use plastic (that will be used for 15 minutes but last forever) and then have the cashier put the bottle into a... plastic bag (that will get used for 4 minutes but last forever). 

This is not acceptable. 

It's not acceptable because we don't want our collective legacy to our children to be that of single-use plastics landfills and plastic soup islands. 

Please keep watching us. Listen to what we're saying. I'm guessing your children will be, if they aren't already, saying the same thing. This isn't an "us versus them" mentality as we all use plastics at some level... but it is an "us versus them" mentality when we're fed silly marketing campaigns like the Poland Spring water one above.

We're talking about the earth here... we're not just talking about "industry news, business trends and markets".

Earthrace Visits the "California Rubbish Dump"

Earthrace, the effort to circumnavigate the world in a 100% biodiesel powerboat and educate on renewable fuels, recently visited what they called the "California Rubbish Dump," in the Pacific. This from the Captain's log, Day 23,

" 'There’s a lot of crap in the water here', Adam says, as we dodge around another plastic bottle in the water. Our course is more like a drunken student weaving his way home after a bender, rather than a race boat in a straight line. It seems every hundred metres or so there’s another bit of crap in the water, and anything resembling a buoy (like a plastic bottle), we need to skirt around.

Prof Sharma in Scotland had warned us about this area. Actually so had Bob McDavitt, our forecaster back in New Zealand. It is a giant rubbish dump of plastic and polystyrene, that unbelievably, is the size of Texas, and we’re currently on the southern tip of it.

What actually happens is the current that passes down the West Coast of America picks up rubbish and debris along the Californian coast, and then drags them all the way out here, some thousand odd nautical miles away. The current here then drops under the surface, leaving behind all the rubbish. It joins the giant Californian rubbish dump that remains here year after year, and gradually increases in density as more crap drifts in."

As we have learned recently, the garbage patch (or both of them) is much larger than originally thought. As a Californian who's trying to make a difference and reduce our plastics use, I'm not sure how great I feel about the name "California Rubbish Dump," however it's a shoe that fits squarely on all of our feet as the majority polluters on this side of the Pacific.

Pilgrim's Progress: Sustainable Plymouth Pushes Bag Ban

Plymouth Rock

Sustainable Plymouth, an environmental organization in Plymouth, MA, the historic town that was the landing spot for Pilgrims escaping religious persecution in England, is working on a plastic shopping bag ban. The Boston Globe reports on the proposed ban in "America's Hometown." Plymouth banning plastic bags would set a great example for this author's home area of New England and could provide innumerable gains in public education through outreach to the thousands of families and children who visit Plymouth yearly to tour it's historic sites.

The Enormity of the Garbage Patches

At tonight's meeting of Surfrider Foundation San Diego County Chapter, I showed a copy of the graphic from the Toronto Globe and Mail depicting the garbage patches in the Pacific Ocean. At least one person asked "Isn't there some way we can clean this up?" And, later during our break and discussion period, I was asked why I thought it the trash could not be picked up. I replied "Because of the enormity of it all," explaining that these patches were so large and plastics of varying sizes are spread throughout the patches at depths up to 10 meters. Anna Cummins, Eduction Advisor of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, had a guest blog post in the LA Times just the other day and wrote,

" • The garbage does indeed exist. HOWEVER it is not a "patch" of garbage, nor a trash island. It's more like a huge bowl of dilute plastic soup, from California to Japan.

• We can't clean it up, net it away, or sieve it out. It's an area twice the size of the United States, and the debris is too spread out. Imagine a handful of plastic cornflakes sprinkled over a football field. Now imagine 9 million football fields in the Pacific Ocean."

Possible the devastation to the marine environment has gotten even worse than before, Cummins writes, "What we found this year: the problem has gotten much, much worse. Though our samples are still being processed, Captain Moore guesstimates a fivefold increase in 10 years, bumping plastic to plankton ratios up to 30:1."

In order to raise awareness, Cummins and two others are sailing Junkraft, a raft made out of 15,000 plastic bottles, an old airplane and other junk materials from Long Beach to Hawaii. One June 1, they set sail from Long Beach Aquarium and will be carrying hundreds of messages about plastics debris to be delivered to Congress in Washington DC. You can write your own message here.

A Sea of Synthetic Trash

The Toronto Globe and Mail's Unnati Gandhi wrote an excellent piece about plastics in the oceans and essentially a long awaited updated to some of the groundbreaking work done by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation on the North Central Pacific Gyre, also known as the Eastern Garbage Patch. One of the best graphic representations I've ever seen is below. Read the entire piece here and click "Yes" to recommend the article so more folks are educated about this problem.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

Dionne Warwick wasn't sure she wanted to record the eventual hit song "Do You Know the Way to San Jose," written specifically for her by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The San Jose City Council isn't sure that they want to ban plastic bags but took steps to study doing so.

The council agreed to work with grocers to study the effects of a plastic bag ban. City staff also will explore charging fees to grocery customers who use plastic bags, as well as a city citywide program to encourage reusable cloth bags.

"We need to eliminate plastic bags, but paper is not the answer," said councilwoman Nora Campos.

The city plans to analyze the options over the next few months, and changes could come as soon as January.

Hopefully by January, San Jose will find itself ready to join the growing list of cities all over the world who are rising above plastic. Read the entire article here.

FDA: BPA is A-OK!

A Food and Drug Administration official told Congress that

[A] large body of available evidence indicates that food contact materials containing BPA currently on the market are safe, and that exposure levels to BPA from these materials, including exposure to infants and children, are below those that may cause health effects.

FDA's stance runs counter to the National Toxicology Program, Health Canada and scientists including David Feldman, of Stanford University, who published findings as long ago as 1993 regarding the effects of Bisphenol A.