Concluding Thoughts

Happy New Year to all! It has been tough juggling two blogs this term (GEOG3038: The Value of Water), but I have enjoyed every bit of it. 

My initial motivations for the blog were triggered from the senseless comments following a Facebook status on plastic bag charging, although during then I merely had a general impression of plastics being harmful in no specificity. Slowly, I started to doubt the continued marketing of plastic bags as "recyclable" or "biodegradable", as the sighting of bags in water bodies or shorelines obviously challenges these intentions by the manufacturer. The large releases of microplastics through sewage systems by fleece and exfoliating products took me by surprise, and I realised how ubiquitous plastic was in our lives. Consequently, I hoped to impart greater awareness on the impacts of plastic bags on marine life and even human health.

I became increasingly conscious of the plastic that comes in packaging - when I Clicked & Collected a new dress from Uniqlo, I was somewhat embarrassed that my dress was wrapped in its original plastic bag, which was wrapped in another bigger plastic, which was wrapped with another plastic envelope with my address written. I felt compelled to reuse the layers of plastic packaging as bin liners to justify the excessive purchase, and I suppose my blogging journey has definitely positively reshaped my mindset towards plastic packaging. Unfortunately, although alternative materials for packaging are popularly encouraged, they may not be ideal. I once mentioned that cotton reusable tote bags could easily substitute for plastic bags quoting what I usually did myself; it was then somewhat disconcerting for me to realise that the overall environmental demand from manufacturing a cotton bag or paper bags was way greater than a plastic bag (in response to Figure 4). Nonetheless, I will still try to reuse plastic bags, although admittedly single-use is unavoidable when it comes to collecting food waste and cooking oil as I avoid pouring them down the sink (in response to Figure 3). 

While global frameworks exist as guidelines, local enforcement is most important to fix the dumping problem. In the future, I do hope that I would get to observe local action plans to prevent dumping of plastic waste in Singapore’s waters, as I have personally witnessed mass overboard dumping of huge garbage bags containing styrofoam packaging and food waste by other ships, as a "future sailor" if you noticed in my biography. I hope my blog has reshaped your mindsets towards plastic as well, and that ignorant comments by lazy and selfish netizens (seen in Figure 2) should irritate you more now. 

If you happen to enjoy my writing, do read more on my personal blog. Hope you had a wonderful term!

Adaptation Measures: Beach Cleans

Hello all!

As mentioned, I will speak briefly about beach cleans this week. I recall myself going to mass beach cleaning activities in secondary school, having been instructed to pick up beach litter like bottles, plastic bags, food wrappers and drink cans before they were swept into the sea. However, it has struck me that large single-use garbage bags were used to store the beach litter as seen in Figure 14. 

Figure 14. Doing my part for the environment when I was 14 by cleaning up the shorelines of Singapore. Source: Author.

It personally brings to mind whether we will ever be able to completely eradicate plastic bag use, after developing such a form of dependence on it. I am personally still not able to avoid the use of single-use plastic bags for waste disposal at home, as they remain the cleanest and most efficient way to collect food waste and cooked liquids. How do we reuse and recycle these garbage bags? How do we make sure our mode of disposal ensures that they do not end up in water bodies?

In my next post after Christmas, I would conclude this blog. Have a great Christmas (and happy birthday to myself!)

Adaptation Measures: Legal Frameworks

Hello all!

In this post, I would be talking about how we may reduce negative externalities from plastic bags. Although there have been many abovementioned suggested measures, some technological measures have been well-discussed by a colleague (eg. Seabins, The Ocean Cleanup), and I would therefore choose to focus on the common measures - legal frameworks and beach cleanups.

Legal Frameworks

One agreement that has been particularly relevant for the control of plastic pollution is the London Convention 1972, later ratified as the London Protocol 1996. The former Convention aimed to control marine pollution by establishing a black-grey list approach to wastes, where items on the black list were prohibited from dumping and items on the grey list required a special permit before dumping could be carried out. The Protocol tightened the prevention of pollution even further by adopting a "reverse list", implying that all dumping is prohibited except otherwise indicated on the reverse list with a special permit. Incineration and export of waste products at sea were also disallowed. Both these frameworks indicate the prevention of dumping of plastics, and the ratification of the Protocol among states represent their move towards environmental consciousness. Extracted examples of these lists are seen in Table 4.

Table 4: Black-grey list of London Convention 1972, and reverse list of London Protocol 1996.

Legal Frameworks	Item lists
London Convention 1972	Black list - Organohalogen compounds - Mercury and mercury compunds - Cadmium and cadmium compounds - Persistent plastics and other persistent synthetic materials* - Crude oil Grey list - Wastes containing matter such as arsenic, chromium, copper, lead (more in Annex II). - Containers, scrap metal and bulky wastes
London Protocol 1996	Reverse list - Sewage sludge - Fish waste, or material from fish processing operations - Vessels and platforms or other man-made structures at sea - Dredged material - Organic matter of natural origin - Inert, inorganic geological material - Carbon dioxide from capture processes for sequestration

There is great difficulty in obtaining dumping permits - (a) waste management audit to minimise the amount of waste to be dumped, (b) review all other modes of disposal including reuse and recycle before disposal, and (c) to consider for disposal on land before sea disposal, and these mean that sea dumping would be minimised. To ensure that parties comply with the protocol, it is essential for all parties to submit regular reports on dumping activities; unfortunately, the overwhelming efforts required mean that countries often opt out in favour of their continued convenience. Enforcement is also tough as curbing illegal dumping remains a challenge from the vast expanse of the unmonitored ocean waters.

On the bright side, I read a related article on a suggested local action plan for Singapore (where I come from) to reduce its marine trash and remedy its ugly shorelines following these global frameworks, arguably a nationalistic measure which may be more useful to encourage compliance within a country's own territorial waters.

In my next post, I will then talk briefly about beach cleanups. See you!

Mitigation Measures: Alternative Materials?

Hello all!

Two posts ago, I mentioned that a particular case study brought up "encouraging alternative bags" as a solution to forge greater environmental identity. In this post, I will discuss the problems of using alternative packaging materials based on research by the UK Environment Agency, which arguably displays an objectivity to adopt the best approach for the environment. Due to differing standards on the reference of LDPE and HDPE bags with the UNEP classifications, I will drop the abbreviations to avoid confusion and discuss them in terms of thickness, comparing between disposable thin bags and reusable thick bags.

Environmental Impacts of Different Carrier Bags (Source: UK Environmental Agency)

The study documented the environmental impact across its production, use and disposal. The bags considered were: a) conventional thin plastic bags, b) thicker plastic "Bags For Life", c) paper bags, d) non-woven polypropylene bags and e) cotton bags. There were five assumptions put in place in this study to derive the specific figures seen in Table 3:

1. Volume and weight of carrier bags were averaged across UK supermarkets.

2. Energy consumption was estimated by grid electricity.

3. Production waste from (a), (b) and (d) were taken to be recycled, waste from (e) was taken to be landfilled.

4. Transport distances were determined by industry experts, and were summed for the transportation of raw materials and the delivery of the finished bag to the site of retail.

5. IPCC 2007 characterisation factors determined the carbon footprint of each bag through its life cycle - summing resource use, production, transportation and end-of-life processes. A more detailed impact assessment using the CML2 Baseline method was used to calculate nine specific categorical environmental impacts, such as acidification and eutrophication.

Table 3: Characteristics and environmental burdens of each carrier bag, summarised and rounded off to 1 decimal place (Source: UK Environmental Agency).

Type of bag	Mass per bag (g)	Items per bag	Energy consumed per 1k bags (kWh)	Waste generation per 1k bags (g)	Typical total transport scenarios to UK	Carbon footprint per bag (kg CO2 eq)	End-of-life processes possible
Thin plastic bags	8.1	5.9	6.2	418.4	Lorry: 600km Sea: 16000km Rail: 270km	1.6	- Landfill - Incinerate - Mechanical recycling
Thick plastic bags	34.9	8	6.4	171.2	Lorry: 700km Sea: 21000km Rail: 560km	6.9	- Landfill - Incinerate - Mechanical recycling
Paper bags	55.2	7.4	-	-	Lorry: 1200km	5.5	- Landfill - Incinerate - Mechanical recycling - Compost
Non-woven PP bags	115.8	7.3	-	5850	Lorry: 600km Sea: 15000km Rail: 280km	21.5	- Landfill - Incinerate - Mechanical recycling
Cotton Bags	183.1	10.6	11	1800	Lorry: 680km Sea: 15000km	271.5	- Landfill - Incinerate

As seen in Table 3, the thin plastic bags have shown to demonstrate the lowest carbon footprint and the lowest environmental impacts in 8 out of 9 categories not displayed here; cotton bags, on the other hand, showed shockingly large environmental burdens. In  the consideration of every step of this life cycle in the production of one bag, it creates a carbon footprint much greater than the other carrier bags: (a) Process of growing cotton requires large land areas, year-round irrigation, and application of fertilisers and pesticides for soil cultivation, leading to large abiotic resource depletion, (b) Transportation to cotton mills with other required raw materials drove vehicle pollution, as well as the final transportation to consumers, and (c) Conversion of cotton into cotton yarn consumes large amounts of energy and water.

Assuming that 40.3% of thin plastic bags were reused as bin liners (a figure averaged across all respondents), reusable thick plastic bags, paper bags, PP bags and cotton bags had to be reused 5, 4, 14 and 173 times respectively to bring their carbon footprints below that of thin plastic bags.  These figures unfortunately greatly challenge the flow of this blog thus far by showing that alternative packaging materials may help plastic pollution, but probably not the Earth overall - arguably, there may be issues more pressing than the current concerns about aquatic biodiversity, showing greater complexity of the issues around plastic pollution. It is obvious that bags intended to last longer should use a greater amount of resources and therefore in its production cause greater environmental impacts - however, is this (exceedingly large) amplification of environmental impact justifiable?

I hereby adopt the view that our actions should be in taken for the best interests of our Earth, rather than the sole issue of plastic pollution. My purpose is not to drive pessimism, neither is it to continue encouraging single-use thin plastic bags, but to highlight that the key to reducing the overall environmental impact from packaging is to reduce our uses of plastic bags, and to reuse them for secondary applications as much as possible. Reduce, reuse, recycle. In my next post, I will be talking about the other branch of legislations: adaptation measures when plastics have already found their way into the Earth system.

See you!

Trivia: It's Black Friday!

Hello all,

Before I move on to talk more about legislations, it would be highly seasonal and appropriate to talk about Black Friday as the weekend sales come to an end with Cyber Monday.

Black Friday

Figure 13: The tweet that nicely summarises this post (Source: @squeezyjohn on Twitter)

Plastic toys and large electronic goods are among the most popular items promoted during Black Friday, and in their manufacturing process large amounts of plastic have been used. The largest problem lies in the excessive and wasteful behaviour that Black Friday encourages amid the rush to get items at a marked-down rate. These reduced prices are often compensated by the price paid by our oceans, forests and wildlife as the plastic that feeds our shopping habits becomes waste within a year or less, eventually contributing to our plastic ocean as succinctly stated in Figure 13. 

No amount of recycling or incineration may ever stop the harmful effects from such excessive consumerism. Therefore, do we really need these plastic products? Does that need justify the environmental damage, mainly plastic pollution and vehicle air pollution in transportation? Using these thought processes, we would be doing much more with less.

Mitigation Measures: ↓ Supply and Demand

Hello all!

Following up from the list of legislations I collated (recall: Table 1), I will elaborate about the mitigation measures over two blog entries and my personal thoughts.

↓ Supply

Mitigation measures such as taxing suppliers and prohibition of plastic manufacture and distribution aim to target plastic waste at the forefront of its life cycle, where manufacturers respond by reducing supplies when the quantity demanded by consumers fall. Examples include the Recycled Plastics Rules implemented by India in 1999 and the SB 270 implemented in the States where grocery stores and pharmacies were banned from distributing single-use carrier bags (defined as <40μm). Environmental groups backed these moves, although they sparked outrage from manufacturers arguing against it for weak reasons such as: a) jeopardise thousands of manufacturing jobs, b) does not help the environment, and c) line the pockets of grocery shareholders. 

I would refute opinions (a) and (c). Recyclable and reusable bag production create an alternative packaging market, fulfilling a positive brand image at the same time by exercising CSR as a strategic move. They are even provided with assistance in transition to greener production methods. Although the higher cost of recyclable bag production has controversially allowed large grocery stores (eg. Sainsbury) to cut costs by reducing their share to charity, I am in support. The stoppage in distribution of single-use carrier bags, the replacement with thicker 'Bags For Life', and one-for-one exchanges when the bags wear out - these create economic incentives for consumers to use and reuse their plastic bags, changing consumer behaviours with regard to thinner plastic bags over time. In my opinion, they are way ahead in this battle against plastic bags, compared to other stores that continue to charge for thin brittle plastic bags and justify it by donating the proceeds to charity.

For opinion (b), the manufacturers argued that the legislations were passed to affect them undesirably under "the guise of environmental stewardship". I argue that these bans were actually politically difficult to make for its unpopularity to businesses, as they affect not just the plastic bag industry but the entire retail scene by increasing their costs.

↓ Demand

A reduction in demand works through consumers, where they decrease their use of plastic through motivations such as saving money by avoiding the plastic bag charge. Using a case study from Portugal, a plastic bag tax saw a 74% decrease in number of used plastic bags and extensions on the life of reusable plastic bags for up to 2 months. There was a trade-off however, as there was a 12% increase in the purchase of garbage bags - overall, this is still likely to be in favour of the charge, as economic disincentives by a cost on garbage bags will control the purchase of plastic bags by consumers.

On many occasions, it is likely that a coupling of these approaches take place; there have been qualitative studies in Portugal where the implementation of the plastic bag tax has been cited to increase awareness of environmental problems related to plastic bags. It was also mentioned that there is room for improvement in forging a greater environmental identity by encouraging alternative bags, although I am ambivalent about this statement at present. I will explain why in the next post.

See you!

List of Legislations

Hello all!

If you recall, my first entry was inspired by a legislation implemented back at home that was not well-received by some. Since then, I have come across recommendations by several authors for the reduction of plastic waste and I have collated them in this post, categorised by the familiar terms of mitigation measures (see Table 1) and adaptation measures after plastic has emerged within the Earth system (see Table 2).

Table 1: Mitigation measures through reducing supply or demand of plastics.

Mitigation Measures	Methods	Description/Example
↓ Supply	Prohibition	- Ban single-use carrier plastic bag production. - Ban the use of plastic containers.
	Pay-as-you-throw taxation	- Charge tax on manufacturers.
↓ Demand	Plastic bag charge	- Decrease usage by consumers.
	Alternative materials	- Paper bags and cotton bags to replace plastic bags. - Non-plastic exfoliating substances to replace microbeads.
	Expanding use of plastic	- Increase life of plastic by enhancing reusability and durability (circular plastic economy), reducing overall demand.
	Public awareness campaigns	- Discourage use of plastic consumption.

Reduction of negative externalities in adaptation measures can come in the form of preventing their output into coastlines, oceans and sewage systems, or by extending the social benefits from plastic bags.

Table 2: Adaptation measures through reducing negative externalities arising from plastic bags.

Adaptation Measures	Methods	Description/Example
↓ -ve externalities	Legal frameworks to prevent dumping	- UNCLOS 1982 - International Convention for Preventation of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) - Convention on Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (London Convention) 1972
	Beach and waterway cleans before discharge	- The Plastic Bank. - Volunteer beach cleans.
	Technology to clean up water bodies	- The Ocean Cleanup (1, 2) - Seabins (blog post by fellow colleague) - Remora.
	Technology to prevent discharge of plastics	- Guppy Friend preventing microplastic fragments from fleece
	Technology to boost recycling	- Agylix - BioCellection - CadelDeinking - Separatec
	Energy recovery from plastics via incineration	- Increase social benefits, but done in conjunction with development of C capture and storage to balance trade-off with greenhouse gas emissions.

As with climate change, both types of approaches are needed. I will conclude this entry here after several weeks of relatively longer posts, and I will elaborate on these legislations and their usefulness as mentioned previously in the following weeks.

See you next week!