Push to ban plastic microbeads from facial scrubs gains momentum
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
1.1 million 1mm diameter beads in 1 sq km doesn't seem like much, like 1 bead per million sq mm. But there shouldn't really be any of these. Kind of a ridiculous idea to begin with.
Perhaps better expressed as "1 bead per square meter". :)
- 1.1 million plastic particles per square kilometre
- 1 bead per million sq mm
- 1 bead per square meter
And I agree, the article should have used the latter.
Do we need a law for this? So far, all action has been spurred by consumer and environmental groups. Sure, it may not happen at the same pace as if CA bans it and puts another law on their books, but if it happens soon, shouldn't we avoid lawmaking?
This is the same principle behind architecture review boards for cities. If the architect has peers to support their efforts, they're more likely to succeed than to be forced to cave into purely economic concerns.
There are some things corporations are very good at, but protecting the long-term interests of people is not one of them.
The damage is being documented, and it's far more obvious with larger contaminants, the most prevalent being plastic nurdles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurdle) that sometimes escape into the environment.
I'm not an industry apologist. But we can't spend billions on everything, and there are real issues that need addressing.
Surely the industry will survive if they use something like walnuts or pumice instead.
Precisely, and that actually potentially works against the organisms' defenses. It's like the Trojan Horse, it looks okay on the outside. The particles being dealt with for a billion years I imagine have varied little in their molecular construction and bio-reactivity.
Your idea is that we can introduce tons of new plastic particles into the environment having all the disruptive properties plastics have been shown to have, but it's okay because there are already 'particles' in the environment.
Elsewhere you question what studies have been conducted to quantify damage done by these particles.
As you may know, the earth is an immensely complex system. Sometimes it is relatively easy to draw a causal line from A to B. Other times the effects of something are no doubt there, but the interworkings of so many factors make it hard to precisely quantify the effects of any one factor.(see Honeybees and Colony Collapse Disorder[1])
So your idea that we should go ahead and saturate the environment with this substance that has been shown in other realms and at other scales to be detrimental, and then if someone happens to take an interest in precisely quantifying damage that it is doing, then we can do something about it, seems wrongheaded.
Maybe you're just playing the reflexive contrarian like worklogin, "shouldn't we avoid laws?" This is precisely what laws are for, to protect the common good! And it isn't a stretch to infer damage being done based on what we know about plastic.
[1]http://cdn.billmoyers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/6729628...
I think a good case can be made that a major purpose of law should be to codify the unwritten rules that people already follow, to ensure that everyone understands them and to make it easier to resolve disputes.
Looking at it from another direction, making a law like this can make it easier for everybody involved even if they're already voluntarily following it. I like to make the analogy to safety regulations in car racing. There's an inherent conflict between safety and speed (if nothing else, safety equipment adds weight) which puts drivers at risk and sets up hard choices for people who have to weigh their desire to win against their desire to die in bed. Regulating a certain level safety equipment settles the question and provides a fair playing field for competition without having to feel like a chump for trying to do the right thing.
[0]http://www.amazon.com/Alba-Botanica-Revitalizing-Hawaiian-Sc...
The 'sterilized' sand bit at the end was a nice touch too, alluding to the dominant scorched earth policy we have in regards to shaping the environment in ways we (mistakenly, deludedly) think will be most conducive to our well-being.
Oh but the two aren't mutually exclusive you say? I beg to differ.
Abrasive elements are commonplace in soaps for auto shops and other places where most conventional soaps have a hard time with the gunk accumulated from automotive grease and such. The particulates help to actually scrape off that gunk (in a manner that doesn't cause skin injuries), rather than rely on the hope that soap's chemical properties alone will suffice.
Edit: unlike sand.
I just mean to suggest that the alarm is premature.
> it was shown that over 663 different species were negatively impacted by marine debris with approximately 11% of reported cases specifically related to the ingestion of microplastics
> Increased oceanic microplastic debris enhances oviposition in an endemic pelagic insect
And so on. The rest aren't "vague alarmist statements", but sensible evidence based predictions. They may or may not turn out to be premature, but given that :
- the absense of microbeads isn't a serious issue for humanity or even quality of life
- there are known alternatives (listed in the article)
- if the predictions turn out to be true, it will be too late to do anything about it then as they can't be cleaned up
it seems sensible to take precautionary measures now.
It seems logical that we could skim these out as they are as the article attests "boyant".
Or, is it because you have experience with bans?
Perhaps it would be called "Czar Czar". Gah, a bore of a job it'd be, though.