plastic litter

Eliminating plastic shipping pillows

July 17, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Anyone who gets packages from Amazon is familiar with the plastic air pillows used to keep products safe in transit. Amazon uses almost 15 billion of them a year in North America.

Environmentalists have been urging Amazon and other vendors to cut down on the use of plastic packaging. The air-filled plastic pillows are made from plastic film, which is the most common form of plastic litter found in the sea and in seabeds along the shore. Plastic film can be deadly to wildlife such as sea turtles and sea birds. Plastic film generally can’t be composted or recycled either.

Recently, Amazon announced that it will replace its plastic pillows with recycled paper filler in all its North American markets – the United States, Canada, and Mexico – which together account for more than 70% of the retailer’s global sales. It is already making the switch in a big way and is working towards fully removing the plastic materials by the end of the year.

Replacing plastic packaging with paper is a definite improvement. Paper is recyclable and biodegradable. It isn’t perfect: if it ends up in landfills, it can contribute to methane pollution as it biodegrades. But, on the other hand, paper packaging is more likely to be recycled.

Stemming the tide of plastic waste is an ongoing effort by environmental and consumer groups. There is pending legislation in New York that aims to reduce the use of plastic packaging by 50% over 12 years by requiring manufacturers to either replace it or pay fees. The bill cleared the State Senate but has not come up to a vote in the Assembly. Similar legislation has already been passed in California, Oregon, Maine, and Colorado.

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Amazon Says It Will Stop Using Puffy Plastic Shipping Pillows

Photo, posted November 20, 2018, courtesy of Todd Van Hoosear via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The Hunt For Marine Plastic | Earth Wise

December 21, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Estimates are that about 10 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every year. This is equivalent to a truckload of plastic being dumped into the sea every minute and the stuff is not easy to keep track of. Some of it ends up in the infamous ocean garbage patches. But overall, researchers only know what happens to about 1% of it.

The European Space Agency has decided to find out whether it might be possible to detect and track floating plastic in the oceans using satellite monitoring. Researchers have a variety of ideas about how best to do this and now the agency is testing some of those ideas.

The ESA maintains something called the Atlantic Basin Facility which is a 7000 square-foot tank equipped to simulate various types of waves and tidal currents. It is the largest facility of its kind in the world.

Researchers place plastic in the basin consisting of typical items found at sea, such as bags, bottles, marine nets and ropes, plastic cutlery, and Styrofoam balls. The plastic used in the study included material previously recovered from the sea through ocean cleanup campaigns. Multiple research groups from European universities used specialized instrumentation to monitor the basin from above. Techniques included radar remote sensing, something called GNSS reflectometry, and specialized optical instrumentation.

Initial results look promising in that under some circumstances teams received useable signals. It will take further analysis to determine the ultimate utility of space-based monitoring of plastic entering the ocean. Marine litter is a large and growing problem. Figuring out where it all is and where it is going is a necessary part of any solution.

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Hunting for marine plastic

Photo, posted March 24, 2017, courtesy of Holly Richards/USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Young Fish Eat Microplastics

July 15, 2016 By WAMC WEB

We have talked before about the increasing problem of microplastics polluting the oceans. Much of the small plastic particles result from the breakdown of plastic litter such as plastic bags, packaging and other materials. Another source is microbeads, which are often found in health products such as face scrubs and even some toothpastes.

Microplastics And Salt

December 10, 2015 By WAMC WEB

Today, thousands of personal care products – such as facial scrubs, body washes, and toothpastes – are known to contain minuscule balls of plastic called microbeads. When we shower or brush our teeth, these microbeads are washed down the drain and travel undetected through wastewater treatment plants. When they reach their final destination — our lakes, rivers and oceans — they mix with other sources of microplastics, including industrial waste and degraded plastic litter.