The North Atlantic Sea: Vast Plastic Garbage Dump

The "great Pacific garbage patch" lying between Hawaii and California has been well documented. Now it is joined by a North Atlantic dump after a 22-year study revealed an area of the ocean north of the Caribbean is just stuffed with plastic garbage. 61,000 sweeps of the North Atlantic recovered nearly 65,000 bits of plastic debris which started life onland in factories and shopping malls and worked their way through human hands into the sea. The maximum density of little seagoing pieces of plastic was an astonishing 200,000 bits per square kilometre. Once there they remain in the water year after year, choking fish and seabirds and polluting the sea around them. The results of the study were outlined at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland in February 2010.

Dr Karen Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association described the plastic garbage retrieved far from land: "bottle caps, shotgun shells, crates, toothbrushes, a boxer's mouthpiece, and myriad unidentifiable chunks floated by, gently pulsating with the ocean's currents." Since the plastic pieces were often small, about one centimetre across, she explained that "many marine organisms are consuming these plastics and we know this has a bad effect on seabirds in particular."

Over a third of the fish collected from the North Pacific patch in the study were found to have been polluted by swallowing plastic fragments.

The problem of plastic pollution is horribly well highlighted by the study. Plastic has built into a huge environmental problem for the world and much more pressure needs to be put on manufacturers to drastically limit its production and use in favour of biodegradable materials. Apart from the obvious problem of marine and other creatures literally choking to death on the world's plastic trash, plastic is leaching contaminants into our homes and bodies every day.

We've come a long way from the early naive welcomes given to the beginnings of this toxic material in the 19th century. The first man-made plastic was presented by British inventor Alexander Parkes at London's Great International Exhibition in 1862. It was called Parkesine and Parkes proudly announced his new material could do anything rubber could do - but at a much lower price. The floodgates for plastic were open. Celluloid, Bakelite, Rayon, cellophane, nylon, acrylic, polyethylene, pvc, Teflon, Velcro, Silly Putty and other plastics all came streaming through.

Many of them were and are undeniably useful and relatively cheap. But plastic is overwhelming the environment with heaps of garbage and toxic waste.

The website Americanchemistry.com says this of plastic: "Since the 1950s, plastics have grown into a major industry that affects all of our lives - from providing improved packaging to giving us new textiles, to permitting the production of wondrous new products and cutting edge technologies in such things as televisions, cars and computers. In fact, since 1976, plastic has been the most used material in the world." The pioneers of plastic "made it possible for us to enjoy the quality of life we do today."

But where's the joy in our new TVs and laptops if we're powerless to stop the old ones leaching poison into the air, soil and oceans? Where's the quality of life in knowing the oceans, air and soil are being clogged with plastic packaging and widgets, spreading pollution around them?

The website answers the question "Are Toxic Chemicals Included in Plastic Products?" like this:

"The simple answer is 'not intentionally'. The more thorough answer is that toxiciy is a complicated subject. Salt, and even water, at too high an intake are toxic to humans....To be a risk, any toxic material must be delivered to sensitive organs in sufficient quantity to create an adverse result."

Well, quite. And plastic is with us in vast quantities. Alan Weisman, researching his book "The World Without Us," (St. Martin's Press, NY, 2007) found that since the 1950s a billion tons of plastic have been made, used and chucked away. It will remain in the environment for hundreds and possibly thousands of years, steadily dispersing contaminants. Biodegradable plastics are still plastics - they end up in the air, land and sea. And recycling plastic still means the world's full of the stuff. A British company is building family homes using tonnes of recycled plastic trash. Want to live in one? Wouldn't it be better to reduce the mountains of plastic garbage produced rather than house people in it?

We don't have to be fundamentalist about plastic. We don't need to stop producing every plastic product - some, such as some medical applications, may justify the disadvantages. But plastic's production should be drastically curbed in favour of other materials and often in favour of nothing - we can sling fruit and vegetables in straw shopping bags. There's absolutely no need to wrap lettuce in plastic. We need to use existing materials, and develop new materials, that won't poison the planet. Action is certainly needed globally at government levels and we should all do what we can to raise the issue and apply pressure. On an individual level, we can shun the sandwich wrapped in clingfilm, refuse to buy the six white plastic garden chairs, demand paper bags instead of the zillions of plastic ones that somehow never got phased out... If demand for plastic stuff falls, we know we'll see less of it produced.

Alexander Parkes was clearly intelligent and industrious and may have been a very nice guy. He was pretty pleased to invent a product which he said didn't cost the earth. He couldn't know how wrong he'd turn out to be.