The problem of plastic garbage is intensifying globally. An estimated 269,000 tons of plastic are floating in the ocean. The average square mile of seawater has 46,000 pieces of plastic. This is killing fish, tortoises, marine mammals and even destroying coral reefs. The worst are the micro plastic pieces (less than a micron) which are 49 times greater in volume than the more visible plastic and which are being ingested by all marine life.
The pieces are toxic and they clog the digestive tracts of the animals, slowly killing them by starvation. This is occurring to small larval fish fry all the way up to blue whales. Plastic is real, it is serious, and it is not going away.
The first step in the remedy should be to reduce consumption. Yet this is complicated by the huge web of industries reliant on disposable low-cost plastic.
As such, to truly address this problem we must charge the industries that profit from plastic the full cost of using plastic, which must include ecologically and economically sound end-of-life disposal.
Plastic makers cannot simply gain profits while society pays for the mess left behind. Right now, it is the taxpayers that pay for plastic clean-up or it is simply not cleaned up at all. In Ireland a 15-cent tax on plastic bags increased the government coffers and reduced consumption and pollution by 90 per cent.
Secondly, we must ban the sale of water in PET bottles and use vending machines that sell Reverse Osmosis (RO) water. This reduces both the price of RO water and the garbage associated with pure water, and it delivers higher quality water.
A litre of RO water is sold in Asia for as low as US.03 cents from a vending machine and people generally purchase their water using multi-use containers.
This means water becomes more affordable and far less environmentally destructive. PET bottles are not only polluting the land and sea, they emit harmful chemicals and are difficult to recycle.
The plastic we cannot reduce we must recycle. The problem with plastic is that sorting it can be a major headache without effective regulations that compel individuals and businesses to sort their own plastics effectively (you don't really want to do it at the dump).
Germany has very excellent regulations where not only plastic must be sorted, but it must be sorted by type–polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene (and bottle caps removed). This makes plastic recycling instantly more practical and affordable and keeps it out of the landfills.
All countries that use plastic must have governments that ensure effective and enforced recycling regulations. In an island with limited land space this is a must.
Thirdly, the Government should provide training and SME (small and medium enterprises) loans and tax breaks for urban mining, so that a credible and economically sustainable culture of recycling evolves. This is especially true on an island. In places like America, England, Russia, and Australia DIY (decorating, building and making fixtures) fuel-makers with small machines make their own diesel from waste plastic and waste engine oil as a hobby, for as little as 17 US cents a litre, with basically home-made machines.
DIY fuel can evolve from a hobby to an effective grassroots business employing a myriad of entrepreneurs on the collection side, to the pyrolysis oil manufacturing side, to the actual refining side. Pyrolysis oil manufacturers can sell their products to refineries or they can make a lower grade fuel themselves.
While pyrolysis plants are usually large and expensive, I believe the technology can work on a small local scale with a few entrepreneurs attached to a garbage dump turning PE and PP plastic waste into bunker oil or actual kerosene, diesel, and gasoline.
While large oil companies may not like this, the fact remains plastic makes a high-performance, low-polluting fuel if distilled correctly.
Jessie P Clyne
Diego Martin