Waste ban prompts rethink on plastic

Discarding plastic waste in landfills is also not ideal.

Recycling is seen as the best option, because it partially recovers both the material and the energy used to produce plastics. However, of the hundreds of different types of plastics and the 46 in common use, not all can be recycled.

This means sorting, a labor-intensive process that adds to costs. It is difficult, if not impossible, to produce recycled plastics of the same quality as their original polymer components. Because of contamination, quality is reduced with each phase of recycling.

The DHHS study comes to this conclusion: the environmental and health issues the "age of plastics" has thrust upon us stems from the fact that "the impact of the scale of plastic consumption and disposal were not considered until after mass-production was well underway."

Report author Brooks acknowledges the benefits plastics have brought to the world－access to clean drinking water, the increased shelf life of foods and many more.

But what concerns her and her colleagues are the increased levels of consumerism, especially in countries that are expanding rapidly economically but do not have the waste management infrastructure to handle all the trash their consumption is producing.

"So much of it is being leaked into the environment, and that which is collected may or may not be managed properly," Brooks said.

She said one thing she noticed in particular from their study was that 89 percent of historically exported plastic waste comprised polymers of plastics for single-use items.

"This says to me that reduced use of items such as plastic water bottles, plastic straws and plastic bags can make a difference in how much has to be collected and managed.

Jackie Nunez, who lives in Santa Cruz county, California, joined the war on plastic after she led an ocean kayaking and snorkeling expedition to Glover's Atoll, 72 kilometers off the Central American country of Belize.

A storm had hit the area the night before, and as her party was exploring the pristine reef, a "river of trash" washed from the mainland slithered by on its way out to sea. "I was so overwhelmed by this experience," Nunez said.

When she returned to Santa Cruz, she volunteered for a beach cleanup operation, Save Our Shore, and picked up scores of plastic straws.

She then learned, among other things, that plastic straws are one item that cannot be recycled.

Sitting at a beachside bar in Santa Cruz, she was served a glass of water with a straw in it－a straw she had not asked for. Looking around, she saw all those who had been involved in the beach cleanup sipping their drinks through straws.

She asked them, "Didn't you see what we just picked up?"

Nunez thought that if restaurants can be ordered to serve water only on request due to a drought, they could do the same with straws.

She founded the website Thelastplasticstraw.org, and when a video of a sea turtle having a plastic straw torturously removed from its nostril went viral in 2015, the site was inundated by people wanting to help.

Nunez said companies whose business operations depend on single-use disposable plastic items do not have sustainable systems.

She said change is needed. "And that's the great thing about the whole China ban－it's making us readjust and figure out what can work and what doesn't."

"I applaud China for not taking our crap."