Marine debris plastic — commonly referred to as "ocean plastic" — is a crisis of our broader environment and a problem that transcends national borders, yet it remains a seemingly unsolvable puzzle. "Plastic" is a catch-all term: two simple syllables that attempt to encompass tens of millions of types of polymers. From the moment we open our eyes each morning, almost everything we see and touch is made of plastic. As the plastics industry has evolved, it has produced materials that mimic leather, replicate the texture of grass and leaves, provide warmth, offer shape memory, come in glossy or matte finishes, and are as thin as silk — all saturating every corner of our lives.
The Past of Marine Debris
During World War II, the U.S. military promoted the use of plastic as a substitute for metals such as aluminum and brass, giving rise to the polyethylene, nylon, acrylic, and styrofoam we know today. From that point on, plastic began to dominate our lives in earnest. Production surged from the 1940s onward, and today global plastic consumption reaches an astonishing 270 billion kilograms per year — a figure that continues to climb. According to statistics, we each consume an average of 136 kilograms of plastic annually. Once discarded, these plastic products are hauled away by garbage trucks to incinerators — or they slip quietly into the ocean, eventually making their way back into our own bodies.
Image source: 動手愛台灣, Chen Xin-Zhu
A Common Piece of Marine Debris — The Disposable Lighter
Before World War II, people used metal lighters that needed to be refilled with fuel after use. But after the U.S. military developed the plastic disposable lighter during the war, annual lighter production skyrocketed — and so did the chances of spotting one washed up on a beach. Beyond the eyesore of lighters strewn along the shoreline, plastic lighters floating at sea create another serious problem. The black-footed albatrosses of Midway Atoll are tragic victims of this plastic revolution. Adult birds forage at sea for squid or fish egg slurry to feed their chicks, but researchers have documented since the 1960s that adults frequently mistake plastic fragments for food and bring them back to their young, significantly increasing chick mortality.
Studies and surveys estimate that as much as 725,700,000 kilograms of marine debris ends up in the ocean every year. These plastic wastes not only kill albatrosses, sea turtles, and whales — one day they will also enter the human body through the food chain.
Image source: NOAA
The Smallest Marine Debris — Microbeads
Over the past few decades, the consumer goods industry has flourished, and some manufacturers developed products containing microbeads. Driven largely by cost considerations, the raw materials for these beads shifted away from sugar, fine sand, and plant-based particles toward plastic — including PE (Polyethylene), PP (Polypropylene), PET (Polyethylene terephthalate, the material used in water bottles), PMMA (Polymethyl methacrylate, the material used in acrylic), and Nylon. These substances do not break down over time. Because the particles are extremely small and difficult to manage, they ultimately drift into the ocean. Many people assume that the vastness of the sea can absorb everything, but these substances have already entered the human body through the food chain.
The Taiwan Watch Institute has partnered with the Dutch organization Beat the Microbead to survey products containing plastic microparticles sold in Taiwan (link), hoping to empower consumers to reject products that are harmful to the environment. When shopping, you can also use an app to scan product barcodes and check whether they contain microplastics (app download).
The Deeper Harm of Ocean Plastic
In a broad sense, ocean plastic encompasses PET bottles, discarded fishing nets, plastic bags, styrofoam, and all manner of plastic products. Beyond causing marine life to ingest them accidentally, plastic's resistance to decomposition means that wave action along the shore gradually breaks it into fragments. The lipophilic nature of these fragments attracts and concentrates man-made hazardous substances known as POPs (persistent organic pollutants), including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and DDT (Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane) — all proven to be highly dangerous carcinogens. As these fragmented plastic particles pass through the food chain and accumulate in the human body layer by layer, they may cause endocrine disruption, contributing to conditions such as infertility, developmental delays in children, breast cancer, and prostate cancer — modern diseases that will slowly but profoundly affect future generations.
How Can Ocean Plastic Be Recycled and Repurposed?
Take a walk along any beach, or join a beach cleanup, and you'll be struck by just how much plastic litter is present. Whether that beach plastic can be given a second life is a question environmental groups are working hard to answer. However, preliminary surveys of dozens of recycling companies in Taiwan paint a worrying picture. Ocean plastic recycling faces three major hurdles that must be overcome:
Too Many Plastic Types — Sorting Is Extremely Difficult
As noted above, "plastic" encompasses many different types of polymers, but only a small number have meaningful recyclable value. A common example is PET bottles, made from Polyethylene Terephthalate. After being battered by waves and broken into fragments, ocean plastic becomes a mixture of many different polymer types — making sorting the very first major challenge that recycling facilities must face.
Marine Organisms and Salt — Cleaning Is Extremely Difficult
Recycling requires a complex series of processing steps before ocean debris can be converted into usable raw materials. PET bottles, for instance, can be processed into PET yarn and then remade into clothing or other goods. However, recycling equipment is not designed to handle the salt content of seawater or the marine organisms that attach themselves to debris, so every item collected from the ocean must go through a laborious cleaning process to remove contaminants.
Recycling Lacks Economies of Scale
After passing through the two steps above, the vast majority of ocean plastic has already been eliminated from consideration. Taking a PET yarn production line as an example, a minimum of 10 metric tons of material is needed to achieve economies of scale. Even though the volume of debris collected at a single beach cleanup can be staggering — 動手愛台灣 collects approximately 1 metric ton of plastic waste per cleanup — once unsuitable materials are removed, the recyclable plastic that remains may amount to only a few hundred kilograms, which most recycling facilities are unwilling to send a truck out to collect.
Image source: 動手愛台灣, Chen Xin-Zhu
Despite these three challenges, companies around the world — including in Taiwan — are investing in research and development for plastic recycling, from transforming fishing nets into clothing to using waste plastic as road-paving material. The hope is that in the not-too-distant future, research teams around the world will find a viable solution to the vexing problem of marine debris.
While We Wait, What Can We Do?
Since 2016, beyond high-profile issues such as the Dragon King coral at Green Island, the giant sea fans of Orchid Island, and the giant clam controversy in Penghu, marine conservation has been attracting growing public attention. In addition to long-established beach cleanup groups, many organizations and institutions have begun hosting a wide variety of beach cleanup and ocean cleanup events. While the marine debris collected today can only be reported to local environmental protection agencies and transported to incinerators for disposal, participating in these activities allows us to bring the message of marine conservation to more and more people — with the hope of bearing more mature fruit in the future.
Ocean cleanup event at Wanghaijane. Image source: 揪潛水同學會
RE-THINK beach cleanup event. Image source: Chen Xin-Zhu
Below are a few recommended beach cleanup and ocean cleanup groups — we hope you'll get involved! (Feel free to recommend other groups as well!)
- EVP Group Official Website
- 揪潛水同學會 (ocean cleanup)
- Xiaoliuqiu Marine Volunteer Team (ocean cleanup)
- 動手愛台灣 (beach cleanup)
- RE-THINK 重新思考 (beach cleanup)
- 寶島淨鄉團 (beach cleanup)
References:
- Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, Susan Freinkel
- Applications and Societal Benefits
- Ocean "microplastics" impair reproductive capacity — humans and birds alike affected. Environmental Information Center
