By Jonathan Witte / For The Herald
Plastic! It’s everywhere: cups, bottles, jars, bags, eating utensils, and packaging material. Oh, and don’t forget micro-fiber plastic from which clothing and other fabric is made. The list is seemingly endless.
Compounding this, nearly half of all plastic products are made to be used just once, then thrown away. But there is no “away.” Plastic ends up littering our neighborhoods, our shorelines and our parks. We are being buried in plastic.
Most of us want to do the right thing, such as not buying plastic is the first place. However, that is nearly impossible, since often there is no viable alternative. Many of us try to be diligent recyclers. We look for the triangle with the number in the middle and put that item in the recycling bin. We feel good about that; however, even if a product has a triangle that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is recyclable. The triangle indicates the type of plastic it is, not that it is always recyclable. Furthermore, there may not be an active recycling market for that type of plastic, and it ends up being tossed anyway. Many plastic products are not recyclable at all. As a result, meaningful plastic recycling is extremely difficult, and is at the very least ineffective and confusing.
In 2021, Washington generated more than 800,000 tons of plastic waste, of which only 9.3 percent was recycled. Most of the rest was either buried in a landfill, incinerated, or ended up somewhere else in the environment. The problem is, plastic sticks around in the environment for an extremely long time; essentially forever. Not only that, plastics can be toxic and hazardous to our health.
Burning waste, including plastics, whether in commercial incinerators or elsewhere, releases an array of harmful chemicals and pollutants. These include particulate matter that can cause lung and heart disease and heavy metals such as lead and mercury which cause neurologic disease. Other toxic chemicals such as dioxins and PFAS (“forever chemicals” that make consumer goods resistant to water, stain, and grease) cause cancer and other health problems. These chemicals and pollutants enter the air, water and food supply near where they are burned and get into our bodies when we breathe, drink and eat these contaminants.
In general, plastic compounds are very stable. Their chemical breakdown is extremely slow. Instead, they primarily break down physically. As a result their particle size just keeps getting smaller and smaller, eventually becoming what is referred to as “microplastics.” These particles range in size from a few micrometers to a few millimeters in diameter, which is tiny. By way of comparison, a single human red blood cell is about 8 micrometers in diameter and a human hair about 40 micrometers.
Microplastics are everywhere. They are present in the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink. It is estimated that people in the U.S. take in between 74,000 to 121,000 microplastic particles each year. While the entire impact of microplastics on human health is still being studied, they have been shown to cause inflammation in the body, and have been implicated in a variety of neurologic, gastrointestinal, endocrine, respiratory, and cardiovascular diseases.
In a study published this month in Nature Medicine researchers reported that they found a 50 percent increase in the level of microplastics in the brain tissue of deceased individuals between 2016 and 2024. Also, in those individuals who had dementia, the levels were six times higher. Though no cause and effect between microplastics and dementia could be proven, it would seem prudent to minimize our intake of them as much as possible.
What else can we do? There is currently legislation in Olympia that, if passed, will begin to address some of these problems. It is called the Recycling Reform Act, House Bill 1150 and Senate Bill 5284 These bills would create a producer responsibility program that holds companies financially responsible for the waste their packaging creates. This would help fund statewide recycling services and ensure that the materials we put in our recycling bins will actually be recycled. It begins to shift the responsibility and burden of plastic waste from the consumer to the producer.
The Recycling Reform Act establishes a producer-funded recycling program for packaging that will:
• Incentivize producers to use reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging;
• Provide universal recycling services for Washingtonians;
• Reduce pollution-causing climate change;
• Reduce confusion and contamination by developing a clear common list of what can be recycled.
Support Washington’s economy by building local supply chains and recycling businesses and creating new, green jobs.
Please contact your state senator and representatives and urge them to support the Recycling Reform Act. If you are not sure how to do this, here is a link on how to send a message to your legislator: tinyurl.com/ContactWAlegislators.
Oregon and California have already passed similar legislation. It is time for Washingtonians to join our western neighbors.
Dr. Jonathan Witte is a retired Everett physician and member of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and serves on its Climate and Health Task Force.
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