Throwing the baby (fish) out with the (ocean) water

Concerns about oceans plastics first focused on just the existence of a trillion pieces of plastic floating around. Now concerns are switching to the impact of the plastic on the ocean environment and the entities living there. A recent report in Science which got a lot of free publicity (since it was in Science after all) found that ocean perch hatchlings prefer microparticles to their regular food, gain less weight and don't respond as well to danger signals, meaning they are more likely to be eaten by predators. And this is all on top of have a reduced hatching rate in the first place.

Rather than studying fish in the natural environment, this was all done in a lab. Ocean water was filtered and put into 1 L bottles that had an aeration system. Plastic particles were added at a low concentration (10,000 particle/m³) and high concentration (80,000 particle/m³). Water without any particles was the control.

I'm amazed that all the results can be attributed to a physical entity - a microplastic particle. After all, a plastic particle is too large to induce much in the way of a (bio)chemical reaction, and even plastic molecules themselves are too large to induce a reaction either. So how does this happen strictly via physics?

It doesn't. There is some chemistry involved, but it is not chemistry with plastic as a starting reagent. Something else such as unreacted monomer, residual catalyst, etc. is the real culprit and that rogue actor was never identified. Since we are now talking chemistry, the universality of the results is called into question.

Surprisingly, the researchers used polystyrene microspheres that they got off the shelf from Polysciences. Why?

Why polystyrene, with a specific gravity of 1.04? In the Supplemental Information (SI), the researchers noted that about 60 - 70% of the particles settled to the bottom. First off, how did they come up with that number? No information is provided. But secondly, is that value the same for both the high concentration tanks and the low concentration tanks? Really? Because as an engineer, I seriously question how a simply designed tank could achieve that same degree of flotation/separation across a multitude of concentrations.

In the main article, the authors infer that the low hatch rates with higher concentration of plastic is due to an unnamed chemical:"

"This suggests that polystyrene particles may be chemically affecting larvae in both average and high concentrations, as exposure potentially reduces hatching rates of fertilized P. fluviatilis eggs."

But then they remark in the SI:

"Thus, fertilized eggs may have been in direct contact with some of the polystyrene microparticles and that is why the authors are unable to say that the reduced hatching success of larvae exposed to microplastic particles are solely due to a chemical effect."

In other words, the reduced hatching results may be due to nothing more than the eggs being buried by the settling particles?

Would the results be different with polyethylene and polypropylene, both of which are far more common in oceans (having been produced in much larger quantities and more often as single-use articles) and both of which have an specific gravity less than one. Flotation would eliminate the burying-the-eggs-alive problem and any leachates from the olefin plastics would be quite different chemically than that of the polystyrene.

And why not run a set of experiments with unfiltered ocean water - a real control (adding more plastic as needed). Then there would be some idea of how well these results mimic reality.

Sorry, but I'm just not impressed much with this report. The authors took a rather complicated system and threw out so much of it that there is likely little chance that the results will ever translate back into the real world. Reducing a complicated system is often a good idea, but you have to take care to not overly reduce it. Unfortunately, that is what happened here.

Previous Years

June 15 - 2015 - Is a Vegan Tesla even Possible?

June 15, 2011 - Sustainability

June 15, 2007 - PVA - Err, is that alcohol or acetate?

Shocking News! Biodegradable Plastics don't Biodegrade in the Ocean!

Just as Captain Renault was "...shocked! - shocked! - to find that gambling is going on in here!", the announcements surrounding the newest United Nations Environment Programme report that biodegradable plastics don't biodegrade in the ocean is as equally unshocking. But you would not know that from the much of the hullabaloo around the web.

"The enemy of the environment" screams one such headline. For me to call that an overstatement is equally as much of an understatement. Biodegradable plastics make up such a small proportion of all plastics (keep in mind that the Big 6 are high density polyethylene, low density polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyester and polyvinyl chloride, they comprise 76% of all plastics produced and they all are non-biodegradable), that their lack of biodegradability in the oceans is an equally small concern.

Besides, I really have never seen much potential for biodegradable plastics, at least as an approach to pollution elimination. No matter what the material, biodegradability is a slow process and yet the creation of pollution is instantaneous. Newsprint is one of the most biodegradable materials available, but newspaper pages blowing around in the park is still considered an eyesore and an example of pollution for the weeks that the paper is still undegraded.

Biodegradation is a long-term solution to immediate pollution, and this new report simply confirms what has been known for decades. Plastics has no business being in the ocean - do your part to keep it out.

Previous Years

May 25, 2012 - My Favorite Toxic Chemical

May 25, 2011 - A New Variable in Polymer Degradation Chemistry

May 25, 2010 - Exhibits that I liked at ANTEC

May 25, 2007 - Why I hate polyurethanes

You can't push back the tide

Despite all the flaws in the new World Economic Fund/Ellen MacArthur Foundation report about plastic packaging in the ocean, someone is buying it - literally. To the tune of �500,000:

Looks like they are going to beat me to the punch in developing that new super-polymer.

It's commonly said that lotteries are taxes on stupidity, but in this case, stupidity is a tax on the lottery. There are many, many more legitimate causes than this one that can do real good with this money. But having a good PR campaign and reinforcing peoples' perceptions rather than realities goes far. Trying to fight this nonsense about plastic is like trying to push back the ocean tide.

Previous Years

February 2, 2011 - Nitrogen Filling Tires

There's something Fishy about so much Plastic in the Oceans's future

A long time reader of the blog, Alan Blayney, first brought to my attention the "splashy polymeric headline of the day" (his words, not mine) about the report released by the World Economic Forum/Ellen MacArthur Foundation (WEF/EMF) regarding ocean plastic. It's been all over the news, usually under the headline of how by the year 2050, plastic in the ocean will outweigh the fish.

You can read a summary or the full report if you so desire, but I really would recommend against it. I found it very difficult to go any further than 2 sentences without grunting, slapping my head, rolling my eyes and otherwise expressing frustration. That this report took three years to put together is mindboggling. It really looks like a cut-and-paste job by a 7th grader. Seriously. While the vocabulary is well above a that of a 7th grader, the logic might even be below that level.

I cannot even begin to start with a detailed response, so let me give you a couple of high-level arguments which should be enough to support my previous comparison.

1) On page 14 of the full report, they have Figure 5:

Let's just focus on the oil barrels, showing that plastics consumption of oil growing from 6% to 20%.

My fist thought was Wow! Plastics are really going to explode like that? How come no one else is expecting such a boom? So then I looked into the details. The WEF/EMF relied on an IEA report for future oil production. The IEA report is actually fairly involved and looks at multiple scenarios for future oil production, including one called "New Policies Scenario", which is described as

"The New Policies Scenario � the central scenario in WEO-2015 � takes into account the policies and implementing measures affecting energy markets that had been adopted as of mid-2015 (as well as the energy-related components of climate pledges in the run-up to COP21, submitted by 1 October), together with relevant declared policy intentions, even though specific measures needed to put them into effect may not have been adopted."

There is also a "Current Policies Scenario" which is based on, you guessed it, current policies, rather than the wishful thinking of what politicians have promised. The New Policies Scenarios then assumes that less oil will be used for energy production, hence the relative increase in the percentage of oil used to make petroleum. No boom at all. It's all just slight of hand that may or may not happen.

But even if this does happen, the question remains: so what? Let's carry out the "New Policies Scenario" to an extreme and imagine that in 2050, all energy is petroleum-free (we're all driving Teslas and heating our homes with bio-methane, etc..), in which case plastics will consume about 50% of all the petroleum extracted (the other 50% going into non-polymeric chemicals as currently happens). Why is that a bad outcome? Or even if plastics consumes 100% of the oil produced, why is that bad?

The point of this figure is to create the illusion that plastics are growing like made and the reality is that they aren't.

A further argument against this illustration is that they are playing fast and loose with future policies and changes in consumer behavior. Because it helps their cause, the WEF/EMF assumed that changes will occur within oil production (the "New Policies Scenario"), but then rather than using a "New Policies Scenario" for the future of plastics, they use a "Current Policies Scenario" for plastics use. What wonderful logic. The mind reels.

2) The report is largely focused on plastic packaging, although there are plenty of examples where the distinction is not clear at all. But let's focus on the packaging aspect. On page 12 of the full report is Figure 3:

While you can argue with the 95% number, an even bigger counter argument can be made regarding this illustration. Consider again petroleum production. 100% of it ends up in a combustion reaction and would anyone consider this an economic loss? Or is this energy consumption a basis for having an thriving economy in the first place?

Like almost all generic complaints against plastic packaging, the arguments always focus on the "single-use" aspect of it. And why it is certainly true that most plastic packaging is not reused, by focusing on just the very last activity, the bigger picture is lost. Plastic packaging is required to meet a very large list of requirements for a number of customers, not just the final consumer. Consider the hated PET water bottle:

• It needs to seal the water in and all other contaminants out. That's pretty obvious, that's on the top of everyone's list, but for some people, they think the list stops there. It doesn't.
• It needs to be made from materials that will not leach unsafe levels of chemicals into the water, or react with the water. The FDA monitors this, but some people are still not happy with the results.
• It needs to not have any structural failure:
  • during shipment from the bottles' manufacturer (who is often someone different than the company filling the bottle) to the filling plant
  • while it is in the filling equipment
  • while the bottle is put into
    • the secondary packaging (often shrinkwrap)
    • into the tertiary packaging (a cardboard box)
    • additional packaging (such as to secure it to a pallet)
  • or during shipment via (multiple) trucks or boats
  • while on the shelf or rack, particularly when multiple layers of filled bottles are stacked on top of it
  • during the "normal" lifespan that the consumer has it
• It needs to withstand temperature extremes from below freezing temperatures to 140 ^oF or more, as well as UV light which can degrade polymers.
• The water needs to diffuse very slowly through the bottle's walls. Once too much water has evaporated, the bottle no longer holds the volume stated on the label, say 500 ml. Now it's mislabeled, and cannot be sold, so into the wastestream it goes.

Consider the consequences of just one bottle failing these requirements and leaking. At the very least, that water is lost. But depending on the location of the bottle within a shipment, additional bottles may be lost if the cardboard becomes wet and weakens, perhaps even and entire pallet full of water bottles. That is a true loss of economic value.

I could go on (and on. And on. And on.) but you get the point. If you want a good laugh, look at the "moon-shot" (yes, they used that word) technical innovations that they propose on Page 26. I can't wait to get started working on that new "super-polymer". Who's in with me? Maybe a Kickstarter project. We'd only need $50 million or so.

Lastly, I found the following comment in the report to be as filled with irony as any I've ever read:

"Society�s perception of plastics is deteriorating and perhaps threatening the plastics industry�s licence to operate. According to Plastics Europe, an industry organization, 'There is an increasingly negative perception of plastics in relation to health, environment and other issues'."

I wonder why?

Previous Years
January 28, 2014 - Dynamic Mechanical Analyzers - Male or Female?
January 28, 2011 - Miscellany
January 28, 2011 - Designing a Crematorium
January 28, 2010 - Holy Grail Projects
January 28, 2009 - Chemical Security
January 28, 2009 - So that's what it's called...

Ocean Plastic Greenwashing

While the concern over ocean plastic continues to grow, a new threat associated with it that needs our more immediate attention: greenwashing. There is an ever growing list of companies and publicity-seeking celebrities that are trying to leverage this problem into cash in their pockets by giving the illusion that they are solving or helping to solve the problem.

Adidas is the latest to join in this hoax with an ocean plastic shoe. The Huffington Post has a nice takedown on this scam so I won't go any further. Just last week there was a Dutch engineering group that proposed making roads out of ocean plastic. Last year Pharrell Williams proposed making blue jeans from ocean plastic. Before that there was also the Elexctrolux vacuum cleaners (a grand total of 5 were made and were never for sale to the public), surfboards and the Method hand soap bottle. These are all the items that I am aware of, so there could be more.

The common thread through all of these is that the "Ocean Plastic" that they are using is really "Beach Plastic", plastic gathered on beaches while it is still in large pieces that have suffered minimal degradation.
Method's comments::

"The framework that we're using is that there are a number of beach cleanup organizations that work here in California and that work in Hawaii that are regularly cleaning up this plastic..."

And Pharrell said

"The PET bottles are collected from the coastlines after washing in from the ocean."

(Bottles that haven't washed out into the ocean will apparently be overlooked for this project.)

The reason that all these efforts are using Beach Plastic and not Ocean Plastic is that collecting ocean plastic and doing anything with it is (other than burning it as fuel) is not going to happen. This is what plastic in a gyre looks like:

Tiny, tiny pieces of degraded plastic. The degradation pretty much ensures that even if recovered (How? Filtration would simultaneously collect a tremendous amount of living creatures from the ocean, arguably "killing the wildlife in order to save them"), the plastic would not be strong enough to make anything useful. Additionally, the recovered plastic would be a mixture of many types which would need to be sorted prior to recycling, something that cannot be done economically with such small pieces.

Sorry, but ocean plastic is going to remain as ocean plastic, and no company or celebrity should give you any impression otherwise. That is why prevention is to key. Plastic has no business being in the ocean, so do your part to make sure it doesn't end up there. Supporting these businesses in their greenwashing efforts is not part of the solution.

Previous Years

July 23, 2012 - Wrap-Up on the Nylon-12 Shortage

July 23, 2010 - A New Nano-Clay for Polymer Reinforcemen

July 23, 2010 - Isn't this Obvious??

Plastic Roads

While I'm all in favor of plastics displacing traditional materials in most applications, I have some serious doubts about this one - a Dutch company, VolkerWessels, wants to replace traditional asphalt and concrete roads with plastic. And not just with a layer of plastic, but a construct that has a hollow inside so that pipes and other utilities can be run through it. Take a look at this concept drawing:

My immediate thoughts were how much this looks just like another picture that I recently discussed:

This is a cross-section of the infamous Morrison Bridge that was recently installed in Portland Oregon and has begun to fail very quickly.

Similarity in shape doesn't mean similarity in failure, but the article does little to allay my fears.

"VolkerWessels, is collaborating with the city of Rotterdam to start prototyping plastic-built roads in a �street lab� provided by the city...The idea is to recycle plastic from oceans into a tough aggregate that could be poured and molded into pre-fabricated �bricks� and installed on site quickly." (Emphasis added)

Ocean Plastic?!? Don't they know that nobody has an effective means to recover ocean plastic, certainly not on the scale that would be needed to make a road of any decent length? But since we are in the pre-prototype stage, you can dream all you want. Or at least until "the rubber meets the road" (sorry, couldn't resist) and the surfaces are tested. Somehow I think there will be lots of failures setbacks "learnings".

"VolkerWessels�...has years, even decades, of research and development ahead of it, if it survives."

Quite the understatement if you ask me.

Previous Years

July 15, 2014 - An Unlikely Combination: Thiol-Ene Chemistry and Isocyanate-Free Polyurethanes

July 15, 2013 - Closing the Door after the Horse has Gone Tilting at Windmills

July 15, 2011 - A New Polymer Blog

July 15, 2010 - Blow Molding on a Small Scale

Using Drones to Find Ocean Plastic?

Hardly a day goes by without someone suggesting a new use for drones. But using them to study ocean plastic? I doubt that that will work well at all.

Glancing at the article, you would think otherwise, especially with a picture like:

leading off the article. If the plastic pieces were actually that visible, drones would be helpful.

But the reality of ocean plastic is quite different. A researcher from the Scripps Research Institute recently took a picture from the middle of the eastern Garbage Patch. This is what she saw:

Quite a different perspective, isn't it.

This is not a denial of the Garbage Patches and Ocean Plastic. The plastic is there alright. But you have to look closer and concentrate to see it since it looks like this:

It's mostly small particles and not very closely clustered together. Which is most unfortunate, as that dilution prevents the plastic from being recovered.

Unless these new drones have super powerful magnification and a smooth ocean surface, they aren't going to useful at seeing much of any except the big stuff. Certain groups of people are okay with finding just the big stuff, because that can then be used to paint the evocative images of "Garbage Patches" and "Floating Islands" "the size of Texas". But that is not the least bit representative of reality.

Previous Years

April 27, 2011 - Closing the Loop in Biotechnology

April 27, 2010 - Adhesives vs. Rivots

April 27, 2010 - Strange Math

Waste Plastic in the Oceans - A Comparison of the Inputs from Two Countries

The journal Science published last month a new report ($) that attempted to quantitate the various global inputs that going into making up ocean plastic, perhaps better known as the "Great Garbage Patches". The major media outlets focussed on the fact that the amount of plastic in the patches is quite a bit less than expected. But the American media overlooked (by and large) this chart:

Source

This chart alone goes a long ways towards suggesting that the US isn't contributing as much garbage to the ocean as other countries. (Are you surprised as I am to see that impoverished North Korea contributes more? How does that happen?) As I read this chart, China contributes about 4.8 billion pounds per year, while the US contributes about 0.2 billion pounds, about 24 times less.

Keep in mind that these are absolute numbers for entire countries. Let's play around with them some.

You could arguably rerun the numbers on a per capita basis. China's population is about 1.4 billion while the US's is about 320 million, a factor of 4.4. This means that the per capita contribution of China to ocean plastic is about 5.5 times worse than the US's (24/4.4). For every one bag that someone in the US lets loose into the ocean, someone in China is letting loose 5.5 of them.

Another way to look at the numbers would be to scale them for the total plastic consumption of each country.

Source: http://www.pardos-marketing.com/hot03.htm

I had a surprisingly hard time finding total plastic consumption by country in a tabular form, but the chart on the right does shows plastic consumption per capita for various countries and regions, so we can work with that. The US consumes about 130 kg per capita (the scale is logarithmic) or about 92 billion pounds for the entire country while the per capita consumption in China is just under 8 kg, which works out to about 25 billion pounds, 3.7 time less.

So of the 92 billion pounds the US consumes, only 0.2 billion pounds make it into the ocean, which is 0.22%. For China, of the 25 billion pounds consumed, 4.8 billion make it into the ocean, which is 19.2%, 87 times as much. Which means the US is 87 times more efficient at preventing ocean plastic from occurring.

These calculation are not ideal. There are a number of geographical inputs that I wish I had access to. Such as numbers for the population that lives near the coast (and therefore more likely to have their loose waste end up in the ocean). And the size of the coastline would be another factor. (I doubt that a doubly landlocked country like Uzbekistan contributes much to ocean plastic). And then there is the whole breakdown of durable versus consumable plastics as well.

The point of all this is not to point the finger at China or anywhere else or to say that the US can sit back and feel pretty good about itself. 200 million pounds a year is 200 million pounds too much. Plastic waste has no business being in the ocean. But it does raise the question of how important it is to identify the sources of the US's ocean plastic contribution and once that is known, finding effectively solutions to it. Plastic bag bans make great political hay, but are the really effective? Particularly ones that are in cities remote from the ocean such as Iowa City.

Previous Years

March 11, 2014 - Be Gone, Heater Bands!

March 11, 2013 - What's Wrong With This Picture?

March 11, 2010 - Qualitative Science

March 11, 2009 - The "Most Admired" Chemical Company

March 11, 2009 - Dow and Rohm & Haas - The Last Word?

March 11, 2009 - Yet another rant

Martin Sheen and His Hypocritical Hate of Plastics

Last Friday I wrote of Lindsay Lohan's love of plastics. Her feelings are not shared by all of Hollywood however. Martin Sheen is a good example. On Saturday, he had a new boat christened after him. The boat is a research vessel for studying ocean plastics. While I've written many times that plastics have no business being in the ocean (or polluting any other part of the natural environment for that matter), the importance of ocean to plastics to mankind's survival is...open to debate. Sheen says

"The biggest risk and danger to the world today are plastics in our oceans."

The biggest danger? Bigger than nuclear proliferation? Climate change? Chemical weapons in the hands of terrorist? Starvation? Disease? Poverty? These are all less of a danger than plastics?

Psst. Martin, take a look at the pictures of the new boat you're standing on.

You know what I see? Plastics. Lots and lots of plastics everywhere on that new boat. The blue and white paint on the side - plastics. The unpainted wood - coated with plastic. The ropes going every which way - plastics. The sails - plastics. The microphone that you are speaking into? Wires that are coated with plastic insulation (as are many of the wires carrying the electricity from the powerplant to the microphone.) The ink that was used to print your speech? Plastics are in that. The paper that your speech was written on? Plastics are in that too.

Looks to me Martin like your boat is only adding to the problem, not solving it. You better drydock it ASAP and help save the world.

Previous Years

October 20, 2011 - Who Invented Kraton?

October 20, 2011 - The Inventors of Kraton...

October 20, 2009 - Patent Quality and Value