Plastic Pollution Archives - Seattle Aquarium

Two new policies to reduce packaging waste and plastic pollution

Posted on February 17, 2023February 9, 2024 by Emma Leiser

The Seattle Aquarium has been working to reduce sources of plastic pollution in the environment—in 2020 we helped pass the Reusable Bag Bill to eliminate thin, single-use plastic bags in Washington state and in 2021 we worked with our partners to ban certain expanded polystyrene foam products like recreational coolers and packing peanuts.

This year, two of our top priorities for the 2023 Washington state legislative session aim to address the problems of recycling and packaging waste (SB 5154/HB 1131) and plastic pollution (HB 1085).

Modernizing and transforming our recycling system

The Washington Recycling and Packaging (WRAP) Act (SB 5154/HB 1131) will establish a producer responsibility program which will reduce unnecessary packaging and paper, fund statewide recycling services, and ensure that materials are actually recycled. Under producer responsibility, companies that make packaging are responsible for the costs, environmental impacts and end-of-life of their products, so the burden doesn’t fall on the end-customer or local government. It’s a proven, successful approach to increase package recycling and the norm in Canada and much of the European Union.

In 2021, Maine and Oregon became the first U.S. states to pass packaging producer responsibility legislation, and Colorado and California joined in 2022. Now, Washington has an opportunity to join them.

Walking the talk in our gift shop

The Seattle Aquarium’s gift shop, operated by our partner Event Network, has been working to reduce the hard-to-recycle packaging and unnecessary packaging waste they receive by reaching out to their individual vendors to collaborate on more sustainable alternatives. Here are a few examples of packaging switches that our gift shop has made so far:

Eliminating and replacing plastic bags and plastic foam with eco-friendly or reusable alternatives.
Removing plastic windows from cardboard boxes that are then recyclable.
Eliminating “box-within-box” packaging—smaller, lighter-weight packages reduce emissions and pollution associated with transportation.
Requiring items to be shipped between layers of recycled paper sheets instead of individually wrapped in plastic bags.

We’re so glad to have Event Network as a partner and sustainability champion, and we’re excited that they have managed to convince producers to switch more than 70 gift shop items to more sustainable packaging. But they have found this way of making change to be time-consuming and resource-intensive. That’s where the WRAP Act can help! The policies in the WRAP Act will address this problem more efficiently statewide by establishing incentives with graduated fees and requiring packaging producers to meet targets associated with things like reusability and recyclability.

Reducing sources of plastic pollution

HB 1085 will make tangible improvements in reducing plastic pollution by addressing three sources of unnecessary and hard-to-recycle plastic waste: single-use water bottles, mini plastic toiletries and thin-walled or soft-shelled foam-filled floats for docks. Read more about the sustainable alternatives required by this bill in our previous blog post on our 2023 Washington State Legislative Session policy priorities.

Take action!

If you live in Washington, find your WA legislative district and urge your legislators to transform our recycling system by supporting the WRAP Act (SB 5151/HB 1131) and reduce plastic pollution by supporting HB 1085 in the 2023 session.
Choose products with less packaging. Buy used instead of new whenever possible. Buy in bulk rather than singly packaged snacks and other items. Reward corporations that package responsibly.
Check out our Act for the Ocean page for additional ways you can help the ocean and marine wildlife!

Thank you to the Washington state legislators who are fighting ocean plastic!

We thank Sen. Rolfes, Rep. Berry and Rep. Mena for being the lead sponsors of these bills to transform our recycling system and reduce plastic pollution, and we also extend our thanks to all of the co-sponsors.

Microplastics pollution along Seattle’s waterfront: Effects of pandemic detected

Posted on September 24, 2021February 9, 2024 by Emma Leiser

This story was written by guest writer Lyda Harris, Ph.D., microplastics fellow at the Seattle Aquarium.

The Seattle Aquarium’s unique location and ongoing monitoring efforts enabled us to publish the first long-term monitoring of microparticle concentrations in an urban waterfront of the Salish Sea as a scientific paper. Our paper, titled Temporal variability of microparticles under the Seattle Aquarium, WA: Documenting the global Covid-19 pandemic, is available online.

Human-generated (or “anthropogenic”) debris on the ocean’s surface, within seabeds and on the beach is up to 80% plastic. Microplastic, or small plastic less than 0.2 inches (five millimeters) in size, is widespread in the marine environment and within every group of marine organisms that has been studied. Once ingested, microplastics can cause multiple health issues in marine animals, such as lower birthrate and increased susceptibility to disease. It isn’t just the physical properties of microplastics that negatively affect animals, however. Due to plastic’s petrochemical origin (fossil fuel), plastic particles act as a sponge and transportation method for persistent organic pollutants and other chemicals that are toxic.

We define “microparticles” (less than 0.2 inches, or the size of a sesame seed) as a single umbrella term to encompass all suspected micro anthropogenic debris, including microplastics.

We still don’t know what the baseline concentrations of anthropogenic debris are and how they shift seasonally, which is critical information for researchers to determine how local species, including humans, are impacted by shifts in microparticle loads. Thus, it’s important to measure long-term microparticle concentrations to establish a baseline across time, document anomalies and help researchers understand if there are certain times (e.g., seasonal rains, combined sewage overflows, tourist seasons, etc.) when the Salish Sea is more at risk from microparticle pollution.

Initially, the Seattle Aquarium set out to establish baseline microparticle concentrations and seasonality in Elliott Bay through ongoing water column sampling. Our study period, 2019–2020, occurred prior to and during the global COVID-19 pandemic with associated reductions in human activity, presenting an unprecedented opportunity to capture pre- and mid-pandemic contamination baselines.

Our goals were two-fold:

Describe long-term microparticle contamination data, including concentration, particle type and particle size.
Determine if seasonal microparticle concentrations are dependent on environmental or tourism variables in the Salish Sea’s Elliott Bay.

We sampled 26 gallons (100 liters) of seawater at depth (approximately 30 feet) under the Seattle Aquarium every two weeks in 2019 and 2020. Environmental and tourism data from public sources such as precipitation, Duwamish River effluent (outgoing water), wastewater effluent, and tourism were used to explain changes in microparticle concentrations. Lastly, 10% of microparticles were subsampled to test for plastics at Oregon State University.

Findings:

Microparticle concentrations ranged from 0 to 3.4 particles per gallon (or 0–0.64 particles per liter).
Fibers were the most common type observed.
A drastic decrease in microparticle concentrations occurred on April 10, 2020, and was identified as a breakpoint, separating two distinct time periods.
The observed change in microparticle concentrations was found to be correlated with a decrease in tourism that occurred along Seattle’s waterfront at the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
All microparticles that were analyzed for plastics were either anthropogenic (reminder: “human generated”) in material (80%), plastic (16%), or possibly anthropogenic or natural (4%).

Overall, we found a decrease in concentration as well as a potential change in the microparticle source. Decreased tourism from pandemic shutdowns led to a smaller urban population, which may have additional effects on human movement, wastewater effluent, and waterfront activity. All of these anthropogenic factors can affect both the concentration as well as composition of microparticle pollution in Elliott Bay.

The decline in tourism and subsequent lack of activity on the waterfront decreased the quantity of microparticle pollution we observed. However, the long-term COVID-19 effects on marine debris remain unknown. The microparticles we found were primarily fibers and likely not from single-use plastics, but rather from the washing and shedding of clothing (e.g., fleece, leggings, rain jackets, etc.).

While the quantity of microparticles found in this study decreased with the onset of COVID-19 and stay-at-home orders, global single-use plastic consumption increased substantially. When plastic enters waterways, it is degraded by UV rays and broken apart by physical forces, such as wave action, over time. As single-use plastic consumption remains high throughout the pandemic and the foreseeable future, it is possible that as these plastics break apart, they will begin to appear in future water samples.

While microparticle contamination along Seattle’s waterfront is relatively low and mostly consists of fibers as of 2020, future conditions are likely to worsen due to a return of tourism and current consumption and waste of single-use plastics.