The City of Seattle has chosen not to recycle bottle caps less than 3" in diameter.
This, despite the availability of a wholesale plastic recycler at the Port of Tacoma that accepts these major components of ocean plastic. An estimated 4,850 pounds of bottle caps arrive on Midway Atoll (Pihemanu)
within the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument each year. They kill hundreds of albatross and other seabirds each year when the caps are mistaken for squid and other natural foods.
When I learned that our county, Jefferson, contracts with JMK Wholesale Recyclers in Tacoma,
I started contacting other area recycling centers and discovered that few US communities recycle caps.
There is a misconception that plastic mills won't enter them into the recycle stream. As a consequence, many of the caps wash into the sea.
Bottle caps are a major component of marine debris I pick up twice daily on Marrowstone Island.
To test the hypothesis that small bottle caps (those under 3 inches) make up a greater percentage of marine debris than caps 3 inches or larger, I collected all caps recovered from the north end of
Marrowstone Island during January 2010. I pick up all plastic and styrofoam, mainly in the vicinity of
Marrowstone Point, a convergence zone where drift cells from the south and northwest come together to form a prominent spit that accumulates natural woody debris as well as a wide variety of our throw aways and some fishing and aquaculture debris. I know from drift card recoveries, that currents bring debris to the island from Seattle and other points to the south as well as from Port Angeles and Vancouver Island. The majority of debris settles on Marrowstone's eastern shores just after south winds wash debris onto the accretion beach that terminates at Marrowstone Point.
Historically, this point received only sand and logs, natural materials that have formed the graceful spit at the north end of the island. Some debris accumulates from north wind driven wave wash, but the majority comes from the south where high human populations contribute fewer logs due to shoreline clearing and tons of garbage, some of which can be recovered when it settles on the beach. Far more simply moves offshore and adds to the estimated 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in every square mile of ocean on earth (U.N. Study you can find in links at this site).
RESULTS:
The photo above includes some of the bottle caps recovered in recent beach cleanups.
I picked up 111 bottle caps less than three inches in diameter during January 2010, the majority of which are from water or soda bottles.
I picked up one cap three inches in diameter and no caps greater than three inches in diameter.
In addition to caps, I recycled or landfilled more than two pickup loads of styrofoam, Tevas, flip flops, toys, crab buoys, boat mooring buoys, and other large non-recyclable debris. Small recyclable debris that I track for many purposes included 148 shotgun shells and shotgun shell wadding/shot cups; 38 straws; 21 firework rocket tops; 11 lighters; and 4 pens.
CONCLUSIONS:
Based on January beach cleanups at Marrowstone Island, it appears that recycling matters a great deal. Small bottle caps contribute greatly to the vast amount of plastic in the ocean. Small caps accounted for nearly 100% of the plastic I recovered on Marrowstone beaches in Janauary 2010. Only one cap of a recyclable size was recovered in January, suggesting that people do place these in recycle bins in Seattle and other locations that contribute to Marrowstone and vicinity marine debris.
I have talked with many people about their own community recycling and have discovered few locations with small bottle cap programs. Sadly, most if not all of the main Hawaiian Islands do not recycle bottle caps. Signs at island recycle centers clearly indicate that bottles can only be recycled when caps are removed.
Based on my findings in January, I went back to the sorted plastics reported for December 2009 for Marrowstone Island. During that time period, I collected 193 bottle caps, all of which were less than 3 inches in diameter. This brings the two month total of small caps on island beaches to 304. Even if Marrowstone receives more than its share of Seattle area trash, this is an amount that suggests Puget Sound communities contribute many millions of small caps to the world wide ocean plastic problem. 304 bottle caps on about a mile of beach. I will attempt some math to estimate total Washington State contribution to world ocean plastic pollution.
SUGGESTIONS:
Contact your local recycler and urge them to learn more about the threat to ocean life from bottle caps. Urge them to contract with wholesalers who accept caps, no matter their size. Even if your recycler can not enter the caps into the profitable plastic stream, they might accept the caps to keep them out of the ocean. You can only try, keeping in mind the more than one million seabirds dying each year due to plastic debris, much of which is in the form of small caps not accepted in cities like Seattle.
Malama i ke kai
Ron Hirschi
Project SOAR
Posts
4 comments:
Great post. Check out my photos of plastic beach collections from the Elwha River and along that section of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
http://elwhaproject.blogspot.com/2010/01/beach-garbage-collected-at-elwha-river.html
Rob Casey
Thanks for bringing awareness to this topic. I would like to mention it on my blog (ourkidsearth.blogspot.com), but I want to make sure I understand one issue. Is this a problem with recycling or littering? I understand the benefits to recycling the bottlecaps, but if that isn't available in your area, and you dispose of them through the garbage, shouldn't that at least keep them off the beaches? I'm just wondering if this is a case of people tossing their trash off boats or if this is proper disposal of trash somehow winding up in the ocean. Would love your thoughts...
To respond to Erika Parker...the problem is urban litter created by people who either don't care or don't have a clue how their actions affect the environment. There may be some litter from boaters but my guess is that it would only amount to a small percentage of the total litter count. I volunteer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and pick up litter on my way to the Aquarium. My route is just over a mile long and I do it at least once a week. As of July 2009 (when I stopped keeping track of the litter because it became too discouraging) I had picked up over 8,000 gallons of litter in just over 4 years. The Monday after "World's Oceans Day" I picked up four 13 gallon bags of litter before my shift. Less than 5 hours later I rewalked my route and picked up approximately 10 gallons of "new" litter. I have talked to municipalities and organizations about stopping urban litter before it becomes marine debris. Their silence says just as much about them as the litter says about those who create it.
Beach litter photos are always disturbing but remember what the photos show is only that litter which makes it back to the beach. Most of the litter probably never makes it's way back to the beach. In addition to plastics being ingested by wildlife the litter that does wash up on a far shore may have become habitat for small organisms that are "invasive" when (and where) they finally settle out of the ocean's currents.
Anyone in the Seattle wanting to see the effect they are having on the environment need only walk down to the Seattle Aquarium and start looking at the litter accumulation under the wharfs. It was bad 4 years ago and I doubt it has gotten better.
I totally agree with Robert Scoles point about PREVENTING urban litter. That is the key! No matter how much litter we pick up, it will keep appearing on a daily, tidal, hourly basis until litterers become aware of what they're doing and consciously decided to put trash in it's proper place. www.MuseumofLitter.org
Post a Comment