August 15, 2005

Artists Sculpt What the Oceans Can't Swallow

By Erica Gies
Special to the Neighborhood Newswire

Milk containers, a toothbrush, a flip-flop, plastic cutlery, bottlecaps, shotgun wadding, prescription bottles: the flotsam and jetsam of our daily lives dance their way down a 70-foot-long cord strung along a bright, windowed corridor.

It's shocking to see so much trash lined up at waist level. And that's the point: to get the viewer to think about what happens to our garbage after we’ve thrown it away. "Lunch" was created by husband-and-wife artists Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang from trash they picked up while strolling the Crissy Field beach for just 90 minutes last February. The installation was part of this summer's Eco Visions Exhibit at The Gallery at Thoreau in the Presidio. Both Langs have art-related day-jobs to support their habits – Judith teaches art and Richard owns Trillium Press in Brisbane – and each creates their own art with environmental themes.

The Langs' art projects draw attention to an alarming problem: plastic never biodegrades. And according to Captain Charles Moore, founder of Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF), as much as one-fourth of all plastic ever manufactured ends up in the world's oceans. "We think we can dump it in the ocean and it disappears," said Richard. "But there's so much of it now that it's not disappearing. Nor did it ever."

While there’s plastic throughout the world's oceans, gyres -- where high pressure zones swirl currents together "like a toilet that never flushes," according to Moore -- are particularly dense collection points. Scientists now give gyres nicknames like "Eastern Garbage Patch." Moore has lead several research trips to the world's largest, the Great North Pacific Central Gyre, an Africa-sized gyre that spans 10 million square miles. Because these areas were traditionally rich in zooplankton and other food, wildlife visit them to feed. But given their current sullied state, this allure now makes them dangerous.

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who’s spent 40 years studying plastic in oceans and who publishes the newsletter Beachcombers Alert, explained, "Plastic does not biodegrade. After a while, it becomes pieces that can't be caught in Charlie Moore's nets. His nets have a mesh the size of 1/3 of a millimeter…. But it's still there.… It gets into the food chain. Charlie has found places in the Pacific where there's six times more plastic than plankton. That's pretty horrific."

Hannah Nevins, beachcomber coordinator with Moss Landing Marine Laboratories at the California State Universities, has studied dead fulmars, a pelagic seabird, and found many have stomachs stuffed with plastic. Scientists don't know whether the plastic is poisoning the birds or if they’re simply starving to death because the material is blocking their access to prey. Moore said laysan albatross chicks are also frequent victims of plastic-bounty starvation. "They die from false feelings of satiation which result from being fed bottle caps, cigarette lighters, and toys which they cannot regurgitate, so they stop begging their parents for food," he said.

There's little doubt of plastic's toxicity. "There's a whole bunch of chemicals in plastics that mimic estrogen," said Ebbesmeyer. "… PCBs, DDE, and DDT…so if a male mammal ingests them, you're altering the balance between testosterone and estrogen…. You wind up with populations worldwide where the males are becoming less male. In Deborah Cadbury's book Altering Eden, she suggests that these chemicals are lowering the human male's sperm count. Worldwide, the human males’ sperm count has gone down 50 percent in the last 50 years."

Marine debris has adversely affected at least 267 species worldwide, including 86 percent of sea turtle species, 44 percent of sea bird species, and 43 percent of marine mammal species, primarily through ingestion, starvation, suffocation, and entanglement, according to D.W. Laist in the book Marine Debris–Sources, Impacts, and Solutions. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that 6.4 million tons of litter enters the world's oceans each year. Globally, plastic accounts for 60 to 95 percent of that waste, according to a 2002 report in the Marine Pollution Bulletin by J.G.B. Derraik. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, only 5.5 percent of the plastic consumed in the United States in 2001 was recycled.

Increasingly products are made of composite materials and plastics, making them even harder to recycle. Once in the ocean, cleaning up the mess is impossible. "It's like trying to put dust back into a bottle. Once it's out, it's out," said Ebbesmeyer. "The only way we have is to control the source."

A three-year test study in Southern California conducted by the AMRF and funded by the California State Water Resources Control Board is examining ways to drastically reduce the amount of municipal waste flowing down rivers into the ocean.

But the ultimate solution may be to change the way plastic is formulated. Steve Mojo, executive director of Biodegradable Products Institute, said in three to five years, "… there will be plastics that will serve as a food source for animals and microorganisms in the marine environment that will biodegrade safely, much like natural materials." However, these products are planned for shipboard applications and to break down in cold, wet environments. They will differ in composition from the compostable plastics already on the market, which decompose in warm, damp environments. Because 80 percent of trash in oceans was intended for landfills or recycling bins, targeted use isn't effective; compostable plastics intended for municipal compost bins don't break down in the way they’re designed to when they end up in the cold ocean. Regardless, Mojo said the world will eventually move away from petroleum-based plastics as oil prices continue to rise.

But for now, Moore said, "A 'plastic curtain' of ignorance exists about plastics' chemical constituents and environmental impacts."

It’s that curtain the Langs hope to lift with their art. "Beauty and making interesting things to look at is an effective way to create an environmental message," said Judith. "… instead of pounding people over the head, by creating something that's curious, we're actually inviting people to join us on the adventure."