A Plastic World Going Green

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors last week voted to ban the sale of plastic water bottles on city property, at events, and also food trucks regulated by the city.

The author of the legislation, Supervisor David Chiu, intended to not only help to 'green-up the city, but to remind people that for centuries people managed to stay hydrated without being addicted to the clear plastic beverage container. This is reflected on how people have gone from drinking about 5 gallons of bottled water per year, to over 30 since 1976.

Plastics, once touted for making life easier, are now clearly having negative impacts on our society and planet. Plastic shopping bags, first banned in Long Beach just a couple years ago, were washing up on shores, clogging storm drains, and killing fish and mammals in our oceans.

Justin Rudd, who holds the 30 Minute Beach Clean Up in Belmont Shore, says that 80-90% of the refuse picked up is plastic and Styrofoam by volunteers.

A viral video which has been circulating about a floating mass of plastic in the Pacific known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been bringing more awareness about how our 'throw away lives' are affecting the environment. Another video from TED in 2009 in Long Beach with Charles Moore gives an earlier insight of the damage plastics are having.

Bottles from Japan follow the current and wash up on shore on our West Coast as far South as the tip of Baja California. While bottles from California follow a slightly different current to Midway Island and the Philippines. 

Bottle caps which are mistaken as food are fed to fledglings by adult birds. Fish are caught, and still rendered for market, even having contained plastics in their digestive system.

After over 50 years of the use of plastics in our daily life, we are beginning to see some change. Legislatures are banning the most harmful items, that being the shopping bag. But recycling campaigns and CRV charges at the store are not going to help stem the tide of damage which has and is being done.

Decades ago, there was no market for bottled water, and soft drinks were sold in glass bottles. Children would often go in hunt to recycle bottles to get spending money. Kids with their wagons full of clanking glass have been replaced by small trucks stacked with aluminum cans. Rarely is one filled with plastic bottles because cans get many times more for their weight.

But as Supervisor David Chiu of San Francisco says, we are addicted to plastics.