Huh? Plastic Bottles Contain What?

“We’re contaminating everything we use.” 

“We’re contaminating everything we use.” 

University of Plymouth Associate Professor Justin Turner

With 7.8 billion human beings inhabiting earth today (and growing), it is clearly impossible to believe that we have not inexorably altered this planet and everything in it. It’s difficult to believe that the pandemic isn’t just a natural effort to contain our raging horde. While I have blogged extensively on the impact of climate change, massive extinctions of species, depletion of valuable non-renewable resources and the release of toxic pollutants into the air, our waterways and spread across the land, every once and a while I like to drill down on one unexpected but significant form of pollution that most of us might not know about. One that addresses very small amounts of these toxic substances, not enough to generate a deep health concern, but evidence that we genuinely do not realize the consequences of so much of what we do.

Today’s subject is plastic waste. Not necessarily the obvious that we see (sea?) around us, although it actually is all around us. Not the massive accumulation of 1.6 million square miles of mostly plastic garbage floating and sunk somewhere between Hawaii and California, although it’s there too: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, one of several such oceanic gyres. See my April 26, 2018 Plastics at Sea blog for specifics. No, today I will address the presence of those rare earths, the ones driving microtechnology without which some of our most ubiquitous electronics cannot function, in our plastic waste. Which also carry some serious geopolitical consequences as some nations – like China – control the largest concentrations of such minerals.

Mark Wilson, writing for the February 18th FastCompany.com, explains: “Praseodymium. Dysprosium. Neodymium. These are the extremely precious, rare-earth materials that are inside every iPhone and similar electronics. To acquire them is not just costly, but has led to incredible levels of environmental destruction.

“Yet scientists have just discovered that rare-earth materials can actually be found in everyday consumer plastics—including water bottles, children’s toys, yogurt containers, and cosmetic cases. Our disposable plastics are filled with very small amounts of the earth’s most finite treasures.

“‘The irony is they’re extremely valuable,’ says Andrew Turner, an associate professor in environmental sciences at the University of Plymouth, who led the study. ‘They’re critical elements for modern technology. And yet we’re finding that they’re becoming contaminants.’

“Scientists have understood for some time that our plastics can include unexpected materials. Recycled black plastics, in particular, are commonly infused with dangerous levels of bromine or even lead. That’s because TVs and other plastic-using electronic devices add materials such as bromine as a flame retardant, and that plastic can end up recycled into microwave dinner trays.” Recycling is supposed to be a positive environmental path, but many of those chemicals’ use in one context are simply dangerous in another. “[This] this study [also] examined virgin plastics—plastics that were derived from pure petroleum rather than other recycled goods. That means we can’t trace the presence of rare-earth materials back to recycled electronics or other man-made pollutants. They come from an unknown source…

“Turner’s team notes that rare-earth materials can be found in plastic ocean waste, which means that this contamination may have been happening for decades. Plastics are a modern wonder material that arose out of World War II, and much of the core science behind plastic production remained unchanged over the course of the 20th century. ‘If I were to make a calculated guess, yes, [rare earth materials] have probably been in plastics all along without us knowing about it,’ says Turner.” FastCompany.com. Interesting.

The amounts of such rare earths in plastic waste are so small that there is no commercially viable way to replace mining these minerals with extracting them from that plastic. There may be other waste materials that might have commercial extraction value, but we just have not discovered which ones. But what all this research points out is that when a new product is made or extracted, our technology, at that time, may not be sufficiently sophisticated to detect what we discover years later. And while there may be very small amount of such toxins in those products, if waste accumulates, as in those oceanic garbage patches, so do those toxins. 

Substituting biodegradable materials for plastics that remain in the environment for decades is a start. More attention to the use of materials with unknown substances is obviously required. But this is not an American problem, and without uniform global standards, there is no real solution.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if we are to solve problems that cannot be contained to man-designated international boundaries, global connectivity – not isolation – is the only path.