Litter

Today I went downtown and paddled for 40 minutes.  I drove, because I had errands to run en route.

We finally got a good, heavy thunderstorm here in Memphis yesterday afternoon.  Unfortunately, though we needed it badly, heavy rain is not conducive to an appealing harbor.

When I arrived at the dock today I found a harbor teeming with floatable trash.  A heavy rain washes plastic bottles, aluminum cans, styrofoam containers, plastic grocery bags, and more from the streets into the storm drains, and flushes them into Wolf River Harbor.  The city recently constructed a rack at the mouth of Bayou Gayoso, just across the harbor from my marina, to capture litter from that creek, and it's doing its job: today it was full of trash.  But the reality is that there are many other creeks and ditches that deliver litter into the harbor.

I think the only way we'll ever truly solve this problem is getting people to stop littering.  That's a daunting task.  Legend, if not historical fact, has it that Memphis was once a litter-free city; in the middle of the last century, Mayor Edward H. "Boss" Crump maintained a zero-tolerance policy regarding littering and other nuisance behaviors.  I'm a little skeptical about such an approach working today.  Memphis is now a much larger and more diverse city than it was in the 1950s and before.  And, more significantly, today's litter contains materials that did not exist at the height of Boss Crump's reign.  I'm talking about plastic.

All litter is unsightly, but plastics have the added problem of never breaking down.  Ever.  At least, not in sixty or seventy years, which is about how long plastics have been in existence.  A piece of plastic such as a soda bottle will break down into tiny microscopic pieces, but those pieces do not chemically decompose.

This article addresses the issue of microscopic plastic particles that now permeate the oceans.  Scientists are unsure whether toxins from the plastics are moving up the food chain, but it seems likely.  Plastics have been around for such a short time that the long-term consequences for humans and other species might not be known for a long time.

Some plastics are supposedly recyclable--the curbside recycling program here in Memphis accepts No. 1 plastics (most soda bottles) and No. 2 plastics (most gallon milk jugs)--but what takes place is not actually recycling but something called "downcycling."  In other words, a soda bottle cannot be melted down and recast into another soda bottle; it can only be "downcycled" into a lower-grade plastic.

There are in fact numerous uses for downcycled plastics.  For instance, whitewater boat manufacturer Jackson Kayak uses plastic downcycled from old boats to make accessory parts such as seats and bulkheads.  But this practice merely slows down the accumulation of plastic waste.  It does not eliminate it.

For my part, I try to reduce my use of plastics wherever I can.

Soda bottles is a very easy area to do so.  My best advice is not to drink soda in the first place: I (mostly) quit drinking soda a few years ago, and I don't miss it at all.  If you do buy soda, look to see if it's available in cans rather than plastic bottles.  Some of the higher-end sodas, like Snapple and IBC Root Beer and Jones Soda, come in glass bottles.

And whatever you do, please do not buy bottled water.  More often than not its quality is no better than that of the water from your tap.  Here in Memphis, where we have excellent tap water, bottled water is inferior.  When you pay for a bottle of water, what you're paying for is the cost of the bottling and transportation of the product.  And once you've drunk it you've got that bottle to get rid of.

Other ways to reduce your plastic use is to go shopping with cloth bags so you won't bring home a bunch of plastic bags; if you routinely get a cup of coffee in a coffee shop or convenience store, take your own mug rather than use one of the styrofoam cups the store provides (styrofoam is a type of plastic, in case you didn't know); and, well... buy things that last.  Get a durable ice chest, not one of those styrofoam ones that are good for two uses at best.  Get something better than those 15-dollar plastic chairs for your deck.  Get good quality toys for your kids instead of that plastic junk from Walmart and Toys 'R' Us that's broken by the end of one day.  I've seen these things and more floating in the harbor and the river.

Sorry if I'm getting a little preachy.  I seem to get this way whenever there's a heavy rain in the downtown Memphis watershed.