Can we get rid of plastics - or is it really needed?

Lauantai 20.1.2018 klo 13.08 - Mikko Nikinmaa

When I was a child there was practically no plastic material. Fruit and other foods were placed in paper bags. Water was carried in metal buckets. Now everything is put is plastics - all the clothes are in plastic covers, candies are first in plastic bags and then in individual plastic covers. It can actually be said that we have moved from iron age to plastic age. Plastics are oil-based, cheap, light and durable materials. Further, they are good insulating material. Therefore, when I look around, covers of computers, printers, TVs, phones etc. are made of plastics. The same is true of wastewater pipes. For this reason, replacing plastics in manufacturing is very challenging. Or is it really needed?

The real problem with plastic waste is the material that is thrown in the environment. That is the material generating the big marine garbage gyres. Most of their material is plastic waste thrown to the environment. It is funny that people picknicking in parks do not collect their plastic cups, plates and utensils and put them in garbage bins. If that were always done - all the plastic wastes placed in the collected carbage, there would not be any garbage gyres, and the sea and the coasts would be beautiful and trash-free. I have sometimes wondered if people, who throw the wastes around in the environment do that also in their homes.

So what to do with the plastics? The first thing is that they have to be collected. Thereafter much could be recycled, used for new plastic products. Currently only a few percent of plastics are recycled largely because recycling containers are quite rare. If societies really want to solve the plastics pollution problem, the collection of plastics must be improved - the percentage of plastics that is recycled  could easily be increased to over 50%. For the rest, energy use is probably the best. Since plastics are made of oil, burning them for heat production of towns instead of oil, which continues to be used for a long period of time, would be advisable. Instead of burning oil, one could first carry shoppings home in a plastic bag, thereafter use the bag in collecting trash, whereafter it would be burned. Since the same material would be used for several times, the carbon dioxide footprint of the bag would become smaller. This is more or less the same as instead of using wood to produce energy, it is used to produce paper for a newspaper which is afterwards burned in a fireplace.

If plastics were either recycled or burned for energy production, most of plastic pollution would disappear. The remaining problem would be microplastics. Much of it, which is caused by the slow breakdown of big plastic materials to microplastics as a result of mechanic tear, solar radiation and oxygen, would disappear with the collection of plastics. The remaining sources are plastic microbeads of cleaning liquids, tooth pastes and cosmetics, the small fibres given up whe washing clothing containing synthetic materials, and the dust from tyres, paved roads, artificial turfs etc. The first of these could be avoided already today, since there are more and more products, which do not contain plastic microbeads. The choice is the consumer's: he/she only needs to read the contents or ask the shop assistant, and buy products without plastic beads - if products with plastic beads were left unsold, the manufacturer would soon change their contents.The fibres from washing clothes containing synthetic materials is a more difficult problem, as most pieces of clothing have some synthetic fibres. Fleece clothing has recently gained a lot of attention, but actually most shirts, trousers, Goretex clothing, other outdoor apparel  etc. contain synthetic material, and are thus a source of microplastics. The problem with replacing clothing with synthetic materials by cotton actually causes as big environmental (and social) problems as it solves. Water and pesticide  use of cotton production is unacceptable. Further, the use of child labour in different stages of making cotton clothing is also unacceptable. The third major source of microplastics: the tear of tyres, dust from roads, and dust from artificial turfs is probably quantitatively the most important. There are no easy ways to decrease the amount released from traffic, unless people give up cars, and use rail traffic instead.

Thus, I think that the use of plastics can continue, if measures are taken not to allow the release of plastics to the environment. For a large part this can already be done, but requires actions both from the consumers and the society.

Blue Economies - The Seas Affect Our Lives in Many Ways

Keskiviikko 14.6.2017 klo 10.21 - Mikko Nikinmaa

Blue economies are another recent catchword, which indicates economical activity associated mainly with marine environments. From the environmental point of view there are a couple of things that need to be realized.

First, marine pollution is a huge problem. It is probably the biggest single factor behind climate change. Because of the large sea area, algae, largely unicellular microalgae, contribute 40-50 % of the total photosynthesis of the earth. Although in certain areas microalgal growth has increased, it has been estimated that owing to marine pollution the overall amount of carbon dioxide fixed by algae has decreased 10-20 %. This decrease of carbon dioxide sink is greater than that caused by recent rainforest cuts. An important component of marine pollution which has recently got much attention is plastic pollution. A lot has been talked about microplastics, but the weathering of plastics generates even smaller components, nanoplastics, which affect phyto and zooplankton. Their effects can be direct, but additionally they can result in hydrophobic environmental pollutants to become concentrated and available to organisms.

Second, world's seas are overfished. Environmentally, the use of cultured fish would be better than supporting fishing that can cause extinction of the most popular food species within 100 years. However, the problems with aquaculture are the present marked use of antibiotics and pesticides. Both should be diminished. Also, at present the feed is mainly fish flour, which means that overexploitation of natural fish is not reduced by aquaculturing, only changed to species with less human consumption. So, environmentally friendly aquaculture would require development of feeds that are not based on fish flour.

These are two things that need to be considered when developing blue economies. 

Trash in sea bottom

Tiistai 14.2.2017 klo 18.16 - Mikko Nikinmaa

The sea bottoms are increasingly covered with trash. And much of it is just thrown by people on boats or ships. This kind “there isn’t any contamination, since we cannot see it” attitude s very dangerous. Using it, the compounds for chemical warfare have been dumped in sea bottoms in barrels, which are now rusting and starting to leak. It is possible that some of the unexplained mass deaths of marine animals have been caused by dumped, now leaking poisons planned to be used in chemical warfare. The exact locations in, e.g., Baltic Sea are poorly known, as quite a lot probably was dumped from Soviet Union, where transparency in such things was not important. The problems with trash in sea bottom is that sea currents such as the Golf stream can move the objects far from where they have initially been thrown away. So, it is good that one only sees the beautiful sea scenery, and not the trashy bottom.

Plastics should not end up as trash in the environment

Keskiviikko 8.2.2017 klo 7.11 - Mikko Nikinmaa

Plastics are a major component of the present day "use once and throw away" culture. Plastic thrash ends up in the wayside and oceans. However, plastics should not end up in the environment.

Plastics are made of oil. Currently, most plastics do not have the acutely toxic oil components. Thus, they could be used in energy production instead of oil itself. It is an immense waste to use oil to make plastics which are then thrown away instead of even been used for producing energy.

However, a better solution would be to recycle plastics. Since a lot of work has gone to produce the material, it is an immense waste that it is thrown way and not reused. The biggest problem for recycling is the small number of collection places. They should be as common as paper recycling boxes. This is something that could easily be done, and in the name of savings, which is presently a catch word. As an analogy to paper - since having paper recycling units in Finland is very common, hardly any paper ends up in the environment.

So let's demand that we increase get the possibility to recycle plastics to help the environment.