>A number of personal care product manufacturers have promised to cut microbeads from their products in the coming years, but dates vary. Unilever is aiming for 2015, Colgate-Palmolive in 2014, Procter & Gamble vowed to be free by 2017, while Johnson & Johnson and L'Oréal haven't given a date.
Do we need a law for this? So far, all action has been spurred by consumer and environmental groups. Sure, it may not happen at the same pace as if CA bans it and puts another law on their books, but if it happens soon, shouldn't we avoid lawmaking?
Something this ridiculously damaging needs to be banned outright. If I were a corporation making products of this sort I'd rather tell my shareholders "Sorry, environmental regulations prevent us from making that product" rather than "We decided to abandon a profitable product line because scientists told us to."
This is the same principle behind architecture review boards for cities. If the architect has peers to support their efforts, they're more likely to succeed than to be forced to cave into purely economic concerns.
There are some things corporations are very good at, but protecting the long-term interests of people is not one of them.
The damage is speculative so far. It remains to be seen whether any significant environmental damage has been done. The mere presence of plastic particles is not enough. Marine life has dealt with particles in the water for a billion years.
Particles, yes, but plastic particles? These didn't even exist a hundred years ago.
The damage is being documented, and it's far more obvious with larger contaminants, the most prevalent being plastic nurdles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurdle) that sometimes escape into the environment.
Marine life has dealt with particles in the water for a billion years.
Precisely, and that actually potentially works against the organisms' defenses. It's like the Trojan Horse, it looks okay on the outside. The particles being dealt with for a billion years I imagine have varied little in their molecular construction and bio-reactivity.
Your idea is that we can introduce tons of new plastic particles into the environment having all the disruptive properties plastics have been shown to have, but it's okay because there are already 'particles' in the environment.
Elsewhere you question what studies have been conducted to quantify damage done by these particles.
As you may know, the earth is an immensely complex system. Sometimes it is relatively easy to draw a causal line from A to B. Other times the effects of something are no doubt there, but the interworkings of so many factors make it hard to precisely quantify the effects of any one factor.(see Honeybees and Colony Collapse Disorder[1])
So your idea that we should go ahead and saturate the environment with this substance that has been shown in other realms and at other scales to be detrimental, and then if someone happens to take an interest in precisely quantifying damage that it is doing, then we can do something about it, seems wrongheaded.
Maybe you're just playing the reflexive contrarian like worklogin, "shouldn't we avoid laws?" This is precisely what laws are for, to protect the common good! And it isn't a stretch to infer damage being done based on what we know about plastic.
Group actions like this can fall apart pretty easily. One company feels some pressure and changes their mind, and then everybody else follows.
I think a good case can be made that a major purpose of law should be to codify the unwritten rules that people already follow, to ensure that everyone understands them and to make it easier to resolve disputes.
Looking at it from another direction, making a law like this can make it easier for everybody involved even if they're already voluntarily following it. I like to make the analogy to safety regulations in car racing. There's an inherent conflict between safety and speed (if nothing else, safety equipment adds weight) which puts drivers at risk and sets up hard choices for people who have to weigh their desire to win against their desire to die in bed. Regulating a certain level safety equipment settles the question and provides a fair playing field for competition without having to feel like a chump for trying to do the right thing.
"Often buoyant, the beads can soak up toxins like a sponge. And since they resemble the size of fish eggs, environmentalists fear the micro-plastics are making their way into the food chain via fish, birds and mammals."
Sure, I see there vague alarmist statements of what COULD be. With honest appraisals of the risks like "the full extent and consequences is hard to quantify" and "In theory, ingested POPs could remain on the surface of ingested microplastics and could be egested" but no numbers or attempt at measurement.
I just mean to suggest that the alarm is premature.
Maybe we are reading a different page, there are some papers showing what IS, not what COULD be :
> it was shown that over 663 different species were negatively impacted by marine debris with approximately 11% of reported cases specifically related to the ingestion of microplastics
> Increased oceanic microplastic debris enhances oviposition in an endemic pelagic insect
And so on. The rest aren't "vague alarmist statements", but sensible evidence based predictions. They may or may not turn out to be premature, but given that :
- the absense of microbeads isn't a serious issue for humanity or even quality of life
- there are known alternatives (listed in the article)
- if the predictions turn out to be true, it will be too late to do anything about it then as they can't be cleaned up
it seems sensible to take precautionary measures now.
I meant to suggest that plastic particles in the environment fill a similar niche to sand particles, as far as being indigestible and already being dealt with by marine life.
It seems to me like it would be better in the long run to invest money in developing better water treatment plants rather than getting on the ban-wagon.
It seems logical that we could skim these out as they are as the article attests "boyant".
Good point. Either way removing (possibly for recycling) during water treatment does seem like an obvious thing to do, since this seems unlikely to be the only source of such materials in future.
They're questioning if you have any relevant experience with the topic which informs your opinion, or you think that the solution to a complex environmental problem is the first thing that "felt right" or "made sense" to you.
Are there non-plastic alternatives on the books? I'm all for protecting nature, but these microbeads are useful as an abrasive element (meaning more thorough cleaning). Maybe sterilized sand?
You mean, aside from the ones mentioned in the linked article: "natural alternatives like ground almonds, sea salt or oatmeal" (which is, I believe, what was used before microbeads were available).
I use a brand called Bulldog that uses ground up coconut shell's. It feels like it works better...maybe because its not made up of perfect little spheres of plastic?
You can make your own with equal parts coconut oil and sugar. Searching for "sugar scrub recipe" yields dozens of homemade recipes for facial and body scrubs that are natural and relatively inexpensive. Depending on where the ingredients are sourced, they're fairly environmentally sound.
Salt. I poor kosher or sea salt in my hand, then dish soap on top and rub that around. And I discovered that when I started buying sea salt body scrub from the store[0]. I can get pretty damn stinky and this is the best I have come across for a deep revitalizing clean.
I hope this is satire. "It might royally fuck up the environment, but I've been so manipulated by marketing, that if I don't rub microscopic plastic on my body, I just feel so... unclean... guys, guys? Where are you going?"
The 'sterilized' sand bit at the end was a nice touch too, alluding to the dominant scorched earth policy we have in regards to shaping the environment in ways we (mistakenly, deludedly) think will be most conducive to our well-being.
People wonder what happened to great nations of the past. When you have men(you'll understand my assumption,) whining about cosmetic products instead of plotting courses to the moon, there's your answer.
Oh but the two aren't mutually exclusive you say? I beg to differ.
It was a serious question, and it received many excellent answers. Yours was not among them.
Abrasive elements are commonplace in soaps for auto shops and other places where most conventional soaps have a hard time with the gunk accumulated from automotive grease and such. The particulates help to actually scrape off that gunk (in a manner that doesn't cause skin injuries), rather than rely on the hope that soap's chemical properties alone will suffice.
>The highest concentration was found in Lake Ontario, with counts of up to 1.1 million plastic particles per square kilometre.
1.1 million 1mm diameter beads in 1 sq km doesn't seem like much, like 1 bead per million sq mm. But there shouldn't really be any of these. Kind of a ridiculous idea to begin with.
47 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 64.0 ms ] threadDo we need a law for this? So far, all action has been spurred by consumer and environmental groups. Sure, it may not happen at the same pace as if CA bans it and puts another law on their books, but if it happens soon, shouldn't we avoid lawmaking?
This is the same principle behind architecture review boards for cities. If the architect has peers to support their efforts, they're more likely to succeed than to be forced to cave into purely economic concerns.
There are some things corporations are very good at, but protecting the long-term interests of people is not one of them.
The damage is being documented, and it's far more obvious with larger contaminants, the most prevalent being plastic nurdles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurdle) that sometimes escape into the environment.
I'm not an industry apologist. But we can't spend billions on everything, and there are real issues that need addressing.
Surely the industry will survive if they use something like walnuts or pumice instead.
Precisely, and that actually potentially works against the organisms' defenses. It's like the Trojan Horse, it looks okay on the outside. The particles being dealt with for a billion years I imagine have varied little in their molecular construction and bio-reactivity.
Your idea is that we can introduce tons of new plastic particles into the environment having all the disruptive properties plastics have been shown to have, but it's okay because there are already 'particles' in the environment.
Elsewhere you question what studies have been conducted to quantify damage done by these particles.
As you may know, the earth is an immensely complex system. Sometimes it is relatively easy to draw a causal line from A to B. Other times the effects of something are no doubt there, but the interworkings of so many factors make it hard to precisely quantify the effects of any one factor.(see Honeybees and Colony Collapse Disorder[1])
So your idea that we should go ahead and saturate the environment with this substance that has been shown in other realms and at other scales to be detrimental, and then if someone happens to take an interest in precisely quantifying damage that it is doing, then we can do something about it, seems wrongheaded.
Maybe you're just playing the reflexive contrarian like worklogin, "shouldn't we avoid laws?" This is precisely what laws are for, to protect the common good! And it isn't a stretch to infer damage being done based on what we know about plastic.
[1]http://cdn.billmoyers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/6729628...
I think a good case can be made that a major purpose of law should be to codify the unwritten rules that people already follow, to ensure that everyone understands them and to make it easier to resolve disputes.
Looking at it from another direction, making a law like this can make it easier for everybody involved even if they're already voluntarily following it. I like to make the analogy to safety regulations in car racing. There's an inherent conflict between safety and speed (if nothing else, safety equipment adds weight) which puts drivers at risk and sets up hard choices for people who have to weigh their desire to win against their desire to die in bed. Regulating a certain level safety equipment settles the question and provides a fair playing field for competition without having to feel like a chump for trying to do the right thing.
Edit: unlike sand.
http://beatthemicrobead.org/en/science
I just mean to suggest that the alarm is premature.
> it was shown that over 663 different species were negatively impacted by marine debris with approximately 11% of reported cases specifically related to the ingestion of microplastics
> Increased oceanic microplastic debris enhances oviposition in an endemic pelagic insect
And so on. The rest aren't "vague alarmist statements", but sensible evidence based predictions. They may or may not turn out to be premature, but given that :
- the absense of microbeads isn't a serious issue for humanity or even quality of life
- there are known alternatives (listed in the article)
- if the predictions turn out to be true, it will be too late to do anything about it then as they can't be cleaned up
it seems sensible to take precautionary measures now.
It seems logical that we could skim these out as they are as the article attests "boyant".
Or, is it because you have experience with bans?
They're questioning if you have any relevant experience with the topic which informs your opinion, or you think that the solution to a complex environmental problem is the first thing that "felt right" or "made sense" to you.
Perhaps it would be called "Czar Czar". Gah, a bore of a job it'd be, though.
These sorts of meta comments are very rarely more informative than name calling.
[0]http://www.amazon.com/Alba-Botanica-Revitalizing-Hawaiian-Sc...
The 'sterilized' sand bit at the end was a nice touch too, alluding to the dominant scorched earth policy we have in regards to shaping the environment in ways we (mistakenly, deludedly) think will be most conducive to our well-being.
Oh but the two aren't mutually exclusive you say? I beg to differ.
Abrasive elements are commonplace in soaps for auto shops and other places where most conventional soaps have a hard time with the gunk accumulated from automotive grease and such. The particulates help to actually scrape off that gunk (in a manner that doesn't cause skin injuries), rather than rely on the hope that soap's chemical properties alone will suffice.
1.1 million 1mm diameter beads in 1 sq km doesn't seem like much, like 1 bead per million sq mm. But there shouldn't really be any of these. Kind of a ridiculous idea to begin with.
Perhaps better expressed as "1 bead per square meter". :)
- 1.1 million plastic particles per square kilometre
- 1 bead per million sq mm
- 1 bead per square meter
And I agree, the article should have used the latter.