Category: Circular Materials Management News

Since 1950, when 1.7 million metric tons of plastic was first produced worldwide, we’ve managed to pollute the entire planet with it: the oceans, fresh water systems, every continent, even the air. While you may envision plastic water bottles and bags floating in an ocean, even the stuff you can’t see could be killing marine life — and scientists are working to understand the health implications of microplastics on people, animals and Earth.

That was the message scientists shared during a panel discussion titled “Plastic: Land to Sea Connections,” held in November. Whether it comes as microscopic fibers emitted by your washer and dryer, or as larger items of trash, plastic hitches a ride, traveling through storm systems, streams, rivers and ultimately into estuaries and oceans, the panelists said.

“We, as a species, have an addiction to plastic,” said Branson W. Ritchie, a Distinguished Research Professor and Director of Technology Development and Implementation in the UGA New Materials Institute. “That plastic doesn’t biodegrade; it just breaks down. It doesn’t stop until it gets to some irreducible size, but we don’t know yet what that size is. As it gets smaller, it gets more and more dangerous to animals. A plastic water bottle, plate or fork breaks down to hundreds of millions of even smaller pieces and will kill some animal that eats it, but the plastic is still there to be eaten and kill again.”

Plastic may take decades or hundreds of years to degrade, but it persists as fragmented pieces that can become airborne and escape water filtration systems, the panelists said. Ritchie emphasized that plastic waste is killing whales, dolphins, birds and sea turtles in horrible ways, including choking, suffocation, gastrointestinal impactions, starvation and secondary systemic infections (called septicemia).

“Oceans are the ultimate transporter of plastic,” said Jenna Jambeck, an associate professor of waste management in the College of Engineering who has focused on plastics since about 2001. Jambeck directs the Center for Circular Materials Management (C2M2) under NMI. She also co-developed the Marine Debris Tracker app, used globally to report the location and type of debris found. Of the 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic produced in 2017, less than 10 percent was recycled; some 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean annually, she said.

Jambeck emphasized that it will take multiple solutions to rid the planet of its plastics problem. In some countries, bottled water is the only source for clean drinking water, and, many localities have no waste management system. Through the NMI’s C2M2 and utilizing Green Engineering principles, Jambeck works with organizations, governments and businesses around the world to promote collecting and containing plastic, preventing and redesigning waste systems, and converting existing plastic into other products before it becomes waste.

But greater awareness about the problem and a collective goal to be less reliant on plastic are key catalysts for global change, noted the panelists.

Panelist Katy Smith, the water quality program coordinator with UGA Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, teaches school children, college students and adults about the hazards of things they may view as benign — like balloons, straws and cigarette butts. “Marine debris is everyone’s problem. We can all take part in the solutions,” Smith said.

Maia McGuire, an extension agent with the University of Florida IFAS Extension and Florida Sea Grant, launched the Florida Microplastic Awareness Project in 2015. Volunteers collect and analyze coastal water samples from around the state, and teach others how to reduce their plastic dependence. Program participants are encouraged to take a pledge (http://bit.ly/plasticpledge) aimed at reducing the amount of plastic waste they generate. She follows up with program participants to find out what changes they have made and is already encouraged by her findings. “The more people learn, the more likely they are to make a change,” McGuire said.

The event was organized by Rebecca Atkins, a PhD student in the Odum School of Ecology, and sponsored by the UGA Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, University of Florida IFAS Extension and Florida Sea Grant, the UGA New Materials Institute, and the River Basin Center.

Story by Kat Yancey Gilmore, Senior Science Writer and Editor for the New Materials Institute

UGA Researcher Jenna Jambeck says that we need to know how much worldwide plastic waste there is before we can create a plan to tackle the problem. This is exactly what Jamback and her colleagues have done in there recent article in journal Science Advances.

ABSTRACT:

Plastics have outgrown most man-made materials and have long been under environmental scrutiny. However, robust global information, particularly about their end-of-life fate, is lacking. By identifying and synthesizing dispersed data on production, use, and end-of-life management of polymer resins, synthetic fibers, and additives, we present the first global analysis of all mass-produced plastics ever manufactured. We estimate that 8300 million metric tons (Mt) as of virgin plastics have been produced to date. As of 2015, approximately 6300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. If current production and waste management trends continue, roughly 12,000 Mt of plastic waste will be in landfills or in the natural environment by 2050.

Source: Science Advances – http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782.full

Two years ago, socially conscious entrepreneurs Rob Ianelli and Ryan Schoenike founded their company, Norton Point, to manufacture sunglasses made from the huge amounts of plastic cleaned up from ocean coastlines Their goal was to be a part of the solution to one of the planet’s greatest challenges: the 8 million tons of plastic entering Earth’s oceans each year.

Moreover, they wanted to reinvest their profits in research, education and development efforts that help reduce the impact of ocean plastic. Now, engineers and polymer scientists with the University of Georgia’s New Materials Institute are helping Norton Point, which is based in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, with testing of its “ocean plastics” products and finding new product applications.

“Packaging represents about half of all plastics produced, and single-use plastic items make up the majority of what is found on beaches,” said Jenna Jambeck, associate professor of engineering and director of Center for Circular Materials Management in the New Materials Institute. Her study of ocean plastics, published in the journal Science in 2015, quantified for the first time the amount of plastics flowing into the earth’s oceans, drawing worldwide attention to the issue.

Jambeck’s study was published at an opportune time for the Norton Point founders, who had been exploring the idea of manufacturing sunglasses from ocean plastics. “But we were concerned about doing it right,” said Schoenike. They connected for the first time with Jambeck last year at an Oceans conference, and since then, Schoenike said, the New Materials Institute has “moved our goals and the issue forward” together.

Jambeck explained that one of the plastics used in single-use plastic products is high-density polyethylene, or HDPE, which doesn’t biodegrade. “It only breaks down in the environment by creating smaller and smaller fragments,” she said. Jambeck said we need to ask how we can recapture the valuable resources in materials like littered plastics-that is, repurpose them into new products. “By changing the way we think about waste,” she said, “valuing the management of it, collecting, capturing and containing it, we can open up new jobs and opportunities for economic innovation, and in addition, improve the living conditions and health for millions of people around the world and protect our oceans.”

New Materials Institute researchers will work with Norton Point to help make “green” products from re-purposed plastics obtained from locations around the globe.

“Norton Point wants to know how the recycled materials respond to different manufacturing processes like extrusion and injection molding, and how they compare with virgin petroleum-based high-density polyethylene in terms of qualities like impact-resistance, toughness and durability,” said Jason Locklin, director of UGA’s New Materials Institute and associate professor of chemistry and engineering at UGA.

The institute also is looking to help Norton Point identify new types of products that make the best use of the material properties of ocean plastics.

In the same way that claims on other types of post-consumer waste are regulated, the New Materials Institute plans to explore the potential for certification and labeling of ocean plastics.

— Read the full article by Terry Hastings on UGA Today