Environmental Law
Envt'l Law News Spring 2014, Vol. 23, No. 1
Content
- 2013-2014 Environmental Law Section Executive Committee
- Advancing Producer Responsibility To Control Land-based Sources of Marine Plastic Pollution
- Alternatives to Litigation to Address Climate Change
- Articles from the 2013 Environmental Law Conference at Yosemite Panel "Dire Gyre: Is the Problem of Ocean Plastic Pollution Insoluble?
- As Jurisdictions Like California Sort Out Regulation of Hydraulic Fracturing, Nimby Approaches Pop Up in Other Jurisdictions
- Big Things Come In Small Packages: Ninth Circuit Issues Nation's First Decision on Nanotechnology
- California Supreme Court Decision Expands Public's Right to Access Government-Held Digitally-Formatted Data
- California's "Magic" Number: Nine Goals for 2020 and Where We May Go From There
- Editor's Note...
- Environmental Law News Publications Committee
- Introduction: Is the Problem of Ocean Plastic Pollution Insoluble?
- Ocean Plastic
- Table of Contents
- The 2013 Environmental Legislative Recap: a Break in the Perpetual Gridlock
- The Problem of Plastic Debris
THE PROBLEM OF PLASTIC DEBRIS
by Steven Moore, P.E., State Water Resources Control Board, Sausalito*
Accumulation of plastic debris in the world’s oceans and waterways has become an environmental and economic problem of global proportion. Plastic litter was once considered an inert substance and therefore ignored by current generations, but over the past forty years it has slowly built up in the oceans because of its physical properties
that create persistence in the environment. Today, plastic debris appears to outweigh the natural biomass of the upper layer of the gyres of the world’s oceans.1
Besides its obvious aesthetic impact, plastic debris may be undermining the fitness of organisms at all levels of the marine food web through malnourishment (fooling organisms into believing they have ingested food), entanglement, and accumulation of toxic pollutants in plastic pieces that are ingested. Communities in California spend millions of dollars to remove plastic debris from waters and beaches, and the aesthetic impact can harm tourism. In the long run, people should have an interest in addressing the discharge of plastic debris to waterways and the ocean because reduction of ocean productivity and harming of marine life affect the carrying capacity of the planet for human habitation.