Materials and Waste

So, No Plastics Aren’t Biodegrable

|

A common criticism of many plastics is that they are not biodegradable – if you drop a plastic water bottle on the ground it’s not going to be eaten by bacteria and other wildlife and rot away to be soil. The bottle will last on the ground indefinitely, unless it’s pick up off the ground by a human or animal, subject to mechanical or ultra violet degradation or burned in a fire, bonding the carbon atoms in the plastic to oxygen to become carbon dioxide.

I’ve always thought this to be somewhat silly criticism — as many things said to be biodegradable do not actually biodegrade in the environment they are disposed of. Many so-called biodegradable things like paper are imprinted with toner, which is a mixture of plastic and black carbon. In other cases, the environment is too dry or oxygen deprived to allow for biodegradation like compressed inside of a landfill.

Moreover, many products that are made of so-called natural materials, rather then plastics, come with a significant ecological cost because they have to be raised and harvested. It’s not saying that they are better or worse — it’s just pointing out that there is no free lunch in trying to reduce impacts by switching to natural and biodegradable products, even if they are just going to ultimately end up in the landfill.

Reducing toxicity of products consumed and discarded is more important, as is reducing the volume of products consumed and discarded. Promoting bottles and cups that can be washed is vastly superior to any natural or biodegradable product. If you get more use out of it before the landfill, the incinerator, or the burn barrel, the better for the environment. It’s just that simple.

Plastic Bottle Litter

Scientists Find Bacteria That Devours Cancer-Causing Pollutants

|

Scientists Find Bacteria That Devours Cancer-Causing Pollutants

While they were trying to find ways to clean the Passaic River Superfund site, a team of scientists discovered a new bacterium that might be able too do some of the heavy lifting on similar sites.

The bacteria was found thriving in toxic mud at the bottom of the river, where it was happily munching away on cancer-causing and otherwise dangerous toxins called dioxins, according to research published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. By giving it a little boost, the Rutgers scientists believe they could set the bacteria to work cleaning up the Passaic River and other toxic waste sites around the world.

Picky Eater Specifically, the bacteria pluck chlorine atoms out of Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, regarded as the most toxic dioxin out there. Without its chlorine atoms, the dioxin, which is a byproduct of chemical manufacturing plants that operated in the area, becomes far less dangerous.

“Our results showed that although the process is quite slow, it can be enhanced and may even have the potential to remove all toxic chlorines from the compound,” Rutgers Ph.D. candidate and lead author of the new research Rachel Dean said in a press release.

Tools Of The Trade Dean and her team are now hoping to figure out what’s going on at the molecular level when the bacteria strip the dioxin of its chlorine atoms.

By identifying what enzymes are responsible, Dean and her colleagues are hoping to develop a chemical treatment that neutralizes the dioxins at other waste sites.

NPR

|

Far More Microplastic In Atlantic Ocean Than Previous Estimates, Study Finds : NPR

Scientists are trying to understand how much plastic humans are pumping into the ocean and how long it sticks around. A study published this week says it may be much more than earlier estimates.

By some measures, the plastic trash that's floating on the surface of the water only accounts for about 1% of the plastic pollution that humans generate.

"If we are missing 99% of plastic that we thought we have put in, it has to be somewhere," says Katsiaryna Pabortsava, a researcher at the National Oceanography Centre in the United Kingdom.

Plastic Bag Ban Upheld, But Could the Details Change?

|

Plastic Bag Ban Upheld, But Could the Details Change?

A ruling by a state court on Thursday surrounding New York's ban on single-use plastic bags has all sides claiming some form of victory.

For the Department of Environmental Conservation and environmental groups: The bag ban was generally upheld. The plastic bag industry, however, pointed to language in the ruling that struck down a regulation limiting bags to 10 mils thick. One mil is one-thousandth of an inch.

Stop Tossing Your Banana Peel on the Trail

|

Stop Tossing Your Banana Peel on the Trail

Some folks seem to assume that fruits and vegetables left outside will shrivel, turn black, and disintegrate in a matter of hours, like a time-lapse video from middle school biology. In fact, an apple core can take two months to decompose; a banana skin or orange peel, two years, leaving plenty of time for animals who shouldn’t eat it to come along and eat it. Plus, while nature does its thing, that trash—and let’s not mince words, that’s what it is—is an eyesore. It’s also a visual cue to other passers-by that tossing their own trash isn’t a big deal. In other words: Litter begets litter.

While tissues and toilet paper are more of an annoyance to me, if you have a banana peel or apple core, at least bury it or toss it somewhere it's not going to cause a nuisance. But even so, it's probably not a great idea, as you are feeding wild beasts, although I guess it's better then it sitting in a landfill for a million years, the preferred solution of the urbanite.