Plastics’ threats to oceans gets attention from Reps. Honda, Farr

WASHINGTON — Two Bay Area House Democrats are seeking to highlight the menace that plastic has become to the world’s oceans, bringing together entrepreneurs from around the country who are trying to replace the ubiquitous material with plant-based substitutes.

An estimated 8.8 million metric tons of plastic are added to the oceans each year — or about five grocery bags full of plastic litter for every foot of coastline in the world — said University of Georgia environmental engineer Jenna Jambeck. She spoke at an event on Capitol Hill hosted Monday by Democratic Reps. Mike Honda of San Jose and Sam Farr of Carmel, both of whom are sponsoring legislation to reduce marine debris.

From throwaway plastic medical devices to the six-pack rings that hold together beverage cans, plastic becomes an “ugly and deadly” mass when it reaches the ocean, Jambeck said. In a study published in the journal Science last month, she found that most plastic debris comes from inland areas where it is improperly disposed of, winding up in streams and eventually the ocean.

Once there, it entangles birds and marine animals or is mistaken by wildlife for food. Plastic debris emits a wide range of toxic substances, Jambeck said, and eventually erodes to small sand-like particles that cannot be removed.

Honda said he first noticed the problem when he returned to El Salvador, where he served in the Peace Corps, and found that stands selling coconut milk had replaced coconut shells with plastic sandwich bags, which then were tossed along roadsides.

Later, visiting a beach in the Dominican Republic, Honda said he saw that “each wave had thousands of plastic bags.”

Honda, a member of the Appropriations Committee, said he hopes to fund federal research to find plant-based substitutes for plastic. This week’s event was designed to educate congressional staffers and showcase efforts by startup companies to reduce plastic waste at its source.

Rob Chase, founder of NewGen Surgical in San Rafael, is designing products made from the waste of sugar-cane harvests for hospital emergency rooms, where disposable plastic medical devices are the norm. He has designed a surgical stapler that is more than two-thirds plant-based to replace 35 million plastic staplers “used once for a minute or two” and then thrown away in hospitals worldwide each year.

Chase said the medical community is receptive, but that hospital purchasing systems often make it difficult to introduce environmentally friendly products.

Kevin L’Heureux, president of Fishbone Packaging in Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), showed a photo of a turtle whose girth was squeezed to the size of a soda can by the plastic six-pack ring that had ensnared it when young. He has designed a paper six-pack holder that can break down in a home composter.

Ian Wallace, president of Dispenser Amenities, laid out a bag of small bottles of toiletries that a single hotel room typically generates in a month.

“Multiply that by all the hotels rooms in the world, and you see what a huge environmental problem this is,” Wallace said. He has designed refillable dispensers that are being used on some cruise ships.

Daniella Russo, chief executive of Think Beyond Plastic, a Menlo Park business accelerator that helps startups working to find plastic substitutes, said as much plastic has been created in the last 20 years as was made in the entire 20th century.

“At these rates, collecting and recycling plastic is not sustainable,” Russo said.

As poor countries develop economically, she said, their use of plastic far exceeds their ability to dispose of it. “There is no recycling infrastructure in the world that can account for every piece,” Russo said.

The problem, she said, “is not so easy to solve.”