Author: Mihael Blikshteyn

By MIHAEL BLIKSHTEYN and HILDEGARD SELLNER

Originally appeared in the Juneau Empire on October 08, 2007.

The issue of fluoridation is behind us, and so is the flood of letters it solicited. “The Simpsons Movie” is long gone, too, leaving in the wake a bitter taste of no easy escape from every-day reality. Emerging from that world, we were wondering what would be next.

A week ago, we came across a letter written by the senior managing director of Progressive Bag Alliance, responding to our weekly Turning the Tides column, in which we encourage people to stop using plastic bags. We said recycling is not a solution to plastics, just an intermediate, short-term measure. The letter claimed that plastic grocery bags can be recycled.

Honestly, we were taken aback when an organization calling itself the Progressive Bag Alliance decided to challenge us, at the same time calling for “continu(ing) working with those that … reduce plastic waste.” It had too much of an Orwellian – G-W-Bushian ring to it.

A quick visit to the group’s Web site revealed that Progressive Bag Alliance’s members are leading plastic bag manufacturers with a board of directors composed of leading plastics manufacturing companies, according to www.progressivebagalliance.com. Aha! That made more sense.

Simply put, this group is just a nice publicity front for plastics companies. If you’re in the mood for an entertaining read, check out the group’s page-long treatise of tips on how to do a good job packing a plastic grocery bag – presumably to reduce the number needed.

Seriously, though. Most plastic grocery bags are made of a polyethylene plastic. More than 60 million tons of that plastic are produced worldwide every year, according to the Wikipedia article on polyethylene. According to the Algalita Research Foundation (algalita.org), only 3 to 5 percent of plastics are recycled, even though supermarkets, including ours, have bins for recycling them.

According to the Progressive Bag Alliance, “there is a thriving secondary market that recycles those bags into millions of pounds of new products including durable lumber substitutes for decking, railroad ties and new recyclable plastic bags.” About 100 billion plastic grocery bags are consumed in the United States (The Wall Street Journal, September 2001). If only 3 to 5 percent get recycled, how many millions of pounds of plastics must end up in landfills and oceans and not get turned into railroad ties?

And a word on the recyclability of plastic bags: Recycling implies that plastic bags that have outlived their usefulness could be turned into new plastic bags, and, in turn, could be converted into a new generation of plastic bags – and so on. What a beautiful myth!

The sad truth, however, is that “recycling plastic is different from recycling other products such as glass and aluminum that can be made back into the products they were before,” according to algalita.org. In the so-called recycling process, the purity of the material tends to degrade with each reuse cycle. Its quality degrades and the range of its usefulness shrinks, according to Wikipedia’s article on plastic and algalita.org. In addition, “Virgin-plastic is cheaper to use than recycled plastic, so most manufacturers opt for the virgin material. Most of recycled plastics become clothing or carpet that goes to the landfill once the second use of these plastics is finished. Some of the lower quality plastic that has been ‘recycled’ is actually shipped to Asia, where it goes into landfills,” according to algalita.org.

Having the Progressive Bag Alliance work on recycling and reducing plastic waste is like having cigarette manufacturers donate money toward research for lung cancer cures.

Mihael Blikshteyn is a conservation fishery biologist and a photographer. To see his latest work, visit http://www.mihaelblikshteyn.com

Mihael Blikshteyn and Hildegard Sellner are members of Turning the Tides, a Juneau grassroots nonprofit that promotes ocean-friendly technologies and alternatives to plastics. To contact the organization, call (907) 789-0449 or visit www.turningthetides.org.

By MIHAEL BLIKSHTEYN

Originally appeared in the Juneau Empire on September 23, 2007.

Let’s start with the good news: there are many things that can be done, and every bit counts. I am talking about one-time use plastics, in all varieties and colors – plastic shopping and kitchen bags, plastic utensils, plastic-wrapped merchandise, plastic bottles. The problem is serious, but the solutions are simple – albeit not quite as cheap and convenient as the problem.

Most plastics don’t biodegrade – over hundreds of years they break down into smaller and smaller bits, some releasing toxins. Tiny pieces of plastics, and their toxins, that find their way into oceans, become incorporated into food chains, and these toxins accumulate in toxic amounts in top predators, including humans.

The United States alone produces 100 billion plastic shopping bags per year, and 8 billion pounds of these bags are discarded – many ending up in landfills and the oceans. Half of all plastics that find their way into the oceans sink, covering miles and miles of the oceans floor. To me, these numbers are humbling and incomprehensible. So let me instead talk about simple things we can do. Acting together, as a community, we can have a profound effect reducing the amount of plastic waste we discard. And wouldn’t it make us a better community?

Let’s start with the most obvious – plastic bags. Once manufactured, recycling these bags is a great way to reduce plastic waste. However, plastics are not truly recyclable. The “recycling” process yields a lower grade, less flexible material of limited usefulness. The recycling process draws on valuable energy and produces pollution, including climate-changing gasses. A viable solution is to get canvas bags and use them. Just possessing such bags and leaving them behind – and I know some of you who do – won’t do the trick. If you keep forgetting them in your car, force yourself to walk back and get the bags, even if you’re already in the store with a basket-full of groceries. After doing so myself a couple of times, I rarely forget them now. Or, simply take the cart to your car and load up your bags there.

Paper bags are not a viable alternative. The production of paper bags takes much more energy, plus it involves cutting down trees. According to the Backpacker’s magazine (Sep ’07), using canvas bags will lower the CO2 output by 5 pounds per year per person. Just in Juneau, it would add up to 150,000 pounds per year!

There is no better time to start than now! Do you want to stand out from the crowd – maybe by getting your nose pierced or dying your hair green? Great! But add a couple of canvas bags to your arsenal. Look at arguably the hippest grocery establishment we have in town – Rainbow Foods. Kudos to them for discontinuing plastic bags and actually offering their customers canvas bags to buy or borrow! Our supermarkets have followed the trend of offering cloth bags for sale – an excellent first step in the right direction. It is up to us to take the next step.

The use of plastic bags for trash is even more widespread, seemingly without alternatives. But even there we have options. Before discarding anything, check if it can be composted, reused, donated, or recycled. According to the CBJ website, we gain one more day of landfill use for every 100 tons of garbage we recycle. Biodegradable trash bags are gaining popularity. Make sure that the bags of your choice will, in fact, biodegrade, and not just break down into smaller bits. The brand I’ve been using is Bio-Bags, sold on-line and at Rainbow Foods. These bags are 100% biodegradable and compostable, and contain no polyethylene. They are not quite as sturdy as regular plastic bags, thus I found it best to empty the whole garbage can into the dumpster, with the bag in it, instead of pulling the full bag out. If any spillage occurs, I just rinse the garbage can and, once dry, sprinkle some baking soda on the bottom. This surely is a small price to pay compared to the long-term negative environmental effects of plastics. Bio-bags are even available in small sizes for picking up such things as dog poop. Your dog poop is biodegradable, so why not lodge it in a biodegradable container.

Another issue is plastic water bottles. How convenient it is to buy bottled water and toss the bottle away? Unfortunately, these bottles don’t go away, but follow the same path as plastic bags. And the solution is as simple as with plastic bags: have a couple of sturdy reusable bottles with home-bottled tap water with you while you’re out. Our Juneau water is great for drinking, and it only takes a day for the chlorine to escape. I boil my water, not because I am worried about its safety, but to quickly remove oxygen and chlorine and get the “flat” taste I am used to from childhood. I always keep a bottle of boiled water in the fridge, and carry another one with me. Juneau’s tap water is magnificent, at the very least just as good as bottled water, and using it you reduce climate-changing gasses arising from the process of bottling and transportation.

Plastic utensils pose another challenge. Just carry a set of reusable utensils with you, and you can proudly do without the plastic ones offered at the eateries (which often come wrapped in plastic). See where I am going with this? You can take this type of reasoning as far as you wish – bring your own large bottle of shampoo and conditioner with you to hotels, instead of using their little bottles. Bring your own Tupperware for leftovers to restaurants. If you regularly buy salads at the same salad bar, and must use their own plastic take-out container, why not take it home, wash it, and re-use it over and over?

Mihael Blikshteyn is a conservation fishery biologist and a photographer and a member of Turning the Tides. To see his latest work, visit http://www.mihaelblikshteyn.com

(With contribution from Hildegard Regele and Dixie Belcher)

Turning the Tides (www.TurningTheTdes.org) is a non-profit grass-roots organization based in Juneau. Why do the tides need turning? What’s at stake? Hailed as a blessing for decades, the dangers of plastics to the environment and humans cannot be ignored any longer. We are people who, just like many of you, can’t sit still and watch passively. Our mission is to raise awareness about the deterioration of the Pacific Ocean through various projects. The reduction of one-time use plastics is one of them. Want to help turn the tides? Contact us and come to our meetings. Be creative! Be responsible! Be an inspiration! Let us know what you do. We want to hear from you!