machinery to jam.
Since this type of material is used widely beyond the marine industry, COA began to look at the bigger picture around this issue, and engaged 11th Hour Racing to take a deep dive into plastic recycling, to research a viable and sustainable solution to this ocean health challenge.
The first phase of the grant awarded to COA by 11th Hour Racing involved collecting shrink-wrap waste from local marinas to establish a “feedstock” – a large enough quantity of plastic film to make it worthwhile for a recycling company to process it. That turned out to be the easy bit, with 6.4 tons of plastic wrap collected from a few local marinas last year and a target of collecting 50 tons in 2021. ‘It’s easy to scale up,’ McLaughlin explains, ‘by collecting plastic film from other industries, like local farms and construction sites which use enormous amounts of it.’ The second phase of this pilot programme involved sending the plastic wrap collected to the nearest recycling facility that would take it – in Illinois, compared with a much longer trek across the globe to China – but after this phase things get difficult. ‘Lots of manufacturers would buy our recycled plastic,’ McLaughlin says. ‘But most of them want to mix it with 70 per cent virgin plastic.’ It’s not a sustainable cycle unless the end products contain more than 50 per cent recycled plastic, so the search continues for either a suitable manufacturer or an easily marketable product that COA could produce.
‘We can’t go back in time, as plastic has brought so many improvements to our lives,’ McLaughlin says. ‘But it comes with an immense responsibility, something we are playing catch-up on and hopefully not too late.’
Polystyrene
All plastic pollution is bad for ocean health but some types are much worse than others. One of the most destructive is polystyrene (styrofoam). Not only does it break down rapidly into pieces that are a perfect bite size for many birds and fish, it also contains highly toxic, carcinogenic styrenes and easily absorbs other environmental pollutants. A grant from 11th Hour Racing allowed a UK-based wildlife conservation organisation, Fauna & Flora International (FFI), to start scoping out the source of polystyrene pollution. ‘Research shows that expanded polystyrene can have a greater toxicity than other microplastics,’ says Hazel Akester,
Above: the common practice of shrink- wrapping boats for
winter storage generates at least 3,750 tons of plastic waste every year in New England
alone. A local environmental group, Clean Ocean
Access, is working on a viable and sustainable recycling solution. Right: most of the poly- styrene that pollutes our oceans seems to come from the fishing industry. A grant from 11th Hour Racing has enabled
Flora & Fauna International to research and scope out the problem and start looking into potential solutions, such as switching from poly- styrene to less toxic
polypropylene
programme officer for marine plastics at FFI, ‘and also a greater ability to aggregate toxins.’ ‘A huge amount is used in construction, and takeaway food containers,’ Akester says, ‘and there are already big efforts to minimise those sources of pollution. But nobody was looking at its use in the marine industry and we saw a gap that we could fill.’
Polystyrene breaks down quickly, and gets dispersed by the wind and drifts with the ocean currents, making it hard to track to its source. However, FFI’s research has identified some regional trends. FFI has found that very little polystyrene found in the ocean comes from construction and takeaway containers, as most appears to come from fishing floats, pontoon floats and fish boxes. While uncovered polystyrene seems to have been mostly phased out by the aquaculture and leisure boating industries in the UK and parts of Europe, it’s still heavily used in other sectors such as fisheries, and in
other parts of the world.
Akester says tackling the issue requires a collaborative approach. ‘We never apportion blame,’ she says, ‘and the fisheries and aquaculture sectors have an incentive to avoid doing things that affect the quality of their catch, so plastic pollution is an area of mutual interest.’
One potential solution is making polypropylene foam floats and boxes available as an alternative. It may cost more, but this material is less fragile so it lasts longer than polystyrene. It’s more inert, and while it is susceptible to UV degradation, it is more easily recycled.
The next steps of the project that FFI is implementing include investigating how much microplastic pollution enters waterways from the use of polystyrene in the marine industry and sailing communities, and producing an analysis, a set of recommendations, and a strategy to inform broader interventions by businesses, NGOs, and policymakers on the use of this material.
SEAHORSE 73
DOWNWIND DOCKSIDE SERVICES
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