... "not the National Academies itself, but the members of the “Committee on the United States Contributions to Global Ocean Plastic Waste”, have stated plainly and upfront:
“In the United States, ocean plastic waste has become a top public concern, but the developing plastic waste crisis has been building for decades.”
And of what is this crisis of ocean plastic waste made up of?
“Sampling on the ocean’s surface has allowed scientists to assess the large-scale accumulation of floating debris across ocean basins, which occurs in ocean gyres in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
These accumulation zones, commonly referred to as “garbage patches,” are mainly composed of microplastics that have broken apart from larger items,
although large floating debris (especially derelict fishing gear, including nets, floats, and buoys) is also found.”
... The “large scale accumulation” is not “of floating debris across ocean basins” at all, though the report expressly makes that claim,
while simultaneously clarifying that the non-existent (but ever so popular in advocacy propaganda) garbage patches “are mainly composed of microplastics that have broken apart from larger items”.
... microplastics ... are bits of plastic that are 4 to 120 micrometers in size.
... From one and a half ten-thousandths of an inch all the way up to five one -thousandths of an inch.
To see microplastics, you generally need a microscope.
Your eye can discern a grain of fine sand, if you place it on a sheet of paper with a contrasting color and you would be able to see a bit of microplastic at 120um if similarly displayed ...
But even the young cannot see something only 4um in diameter without the aid of a microscope.
Almost all of the created-crisis-creating plastic pollution in the oceans is so small that you cannot see it.
This admission aligns well with my personal experience.
Until I retired five years ago, I had spent one half of my adult life living on the sea on boats and ships, both as a professional mariner and as Captain of my own vessels.
I have a lot of sea miles under my belt.
To actually see something floating on the surface of the sea is so very rare that it invariably calls for closer inspection at least by binoculars or at other times by a brief divergence from one’s intended course to “go have a look”.
Failing to investigate an object large enough to be seen at any distance was considered negligent by the Captains I have served under and I have followed suit when I was the Captain.
The “garbage patch” is a fraudulent invention – a fantasy.
...You can read the entire 211-page National Academies’ report “Reckoning with the U.S. Role in Global Ocean Plastic Waste (2021)” in .pdf format by downloading it here: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/26132/reckoning-with-the-us-role-in-global-ocean-plastic-waste
The truest thing in the report is represented in this image (originally from Law 2017):
Plastic are not forever as they wish you to believe, but are broken down into smaller and smaller pieces and then into simpler and simpler chemical compounds, they are literally eaten by microbes and itty-bitty living things in the sea.
... The biota eating the plastic bit from the outside in eventually end up consuming the entire little bit.
In every ocean basin, as particle size decreases through natural fragmentation, especially when the size drops below 0.5 mm, the number of findable plastic particles rapidly approaches zero.
Plastic Waste Crisis advocates simply don’t mention this glaring scientific fact – it doesn’t contribute to their agenda.
... If you read the Academies report, you will discover that the whole crisis is based on the new and developing ability to detect such small bits of plastic – the amount of plastic entering the oceans used in the report are, even by the most lenient scientific standards, mere wild-ass guesses.
These SWAGs are then used in over-confident computer models to create further alarming estimates of total number of microplastic bits and potential harms, despite very few documented cases of any real harm at all
(Creatures can become entangled floating masses of discarded fishing nets and the like, but not with microplastics).
As with other invented crises, the presence of a thing alone is defined as harm.
Bottom Lines:
1. There is no crisis of any kind whatever involving plastics.
Any claims to the contrary are fantasies.
2. Plastics are just another type of hydrocarbon compound, many created and used because of their ability to survive intact under many conditions and survive for long periods of time. Both are features, not bugs.
3. It is not true that “Plastics are Forever”. Plastics degrade, breakdown, and are literally consumed by Earth’s lifeforms, which are all carbon based.
4. Plastics are made from petroleum and its byproducts. The petroleum converted to plastics instead of being burnt for energy sequesters that carbon for long periods of time just like trees ….and eventually is broken down by Nature into other chemical compounds, such as methane.
5. ... Pick up after yourself — clean up your own messes. Thus, we need to do all we can to keep every sort of trash, including plastics, contained and disposed of in a responsible manner – this keeps it out of the oceans and the rest of the natural environment.
6. Plastics are valuable and should be recycled whenever possible into useful and valuable commodities, such as replacements for lumber in decking, shipping pallets, etc. Plastics that cannot be recycled are valuable sources of energy when burnt in properly designed clean Waste-to-energy plants."
None of our society’s waste belongs in the ocean – or on the roadside or in the woods. But creating a crisis from almost nothing is not helpful.
... By the way, while floating masses of discarded fishing nets and plastic ropes are a hazard to maritime shipping because they can become entangled in ship’s propellers – which I know from sad personal experience
– they are also floating reefs and make wonderful habitat for innumerable sea creatures on the high seas. "