Ocean Conservancy has launched an online calculator that lets users see how many seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals they’ve helped by picking up plastics from the environment.

Whether you’re a party of one scooping up plastic trash as you stroll on an ocean beach, or part of an organized group cleanup effort along a roadside, the conservancy’s new wildlife impact calculator lets you plug in different types and amounts of plastics you’ve kept from reaching our oceans and seas.

“Then the calculator uses our science to output the amount of animals that you helped protect had they eaten this plastic,” said Ocean Conservancy Ocean Plastics Research Manager Dr. Erin Murphy.

The science to which Murphy refers is a study conducted by researchers with the nonprofit environmental advocacy group who reviewed the results of more than 10,000 necropsies of animals recorded to have died by ingesting plastics.

The peer-reviewed study published last November focused on dozens of species of seabirds, all seven species of sea turtles, and 31 species of marine mammals from across the globe.

“From these 10,000 animals from around the world, we found that nearly half of sea turtles had plastic in their gut, a third of seabirds, and 12% of marine mammals,” Murphy said. “And then we found that these actual lethal thresholds for these animals were much smaller than we expected.”

For example, seabirds like Atlantic puffins that consumed less than three sugar cubes’ worth of plastics were found to have a 90% mortality rate.

Loggerhead sea turtles experience, on average, that same rate of death if they ingest just over two baseballs’ worth of plastics. For every one in two harbor porpoises, the threshold is about a soccer ball’s worth, or 60 inches, of plastics.

Scientists found that soft plastics like grocery bags and fishing debris are especially hazardous for marine mammals. In fact, 28 pieces of plastic smaller than the size of a tennis ball is enough to kill a sperm whale.

Rubber and hard plastics were found to be the largest threat for seabirds. Both soft and hard plastics are of particular harm to sea turtles.

Some of the animals autopsied and included in the study were found to have entire garbage bags in their digestive systems. These bags block food from being able to move through an animal’s intestinal tract, leading to starvation and death.

An albatross was found to have died from eating an entire disposable water bottle.

Larger animals, like sperm whales and manatees, had died from eating numerous fishing lures, ice cream wrappers and, in one case, a fully intact three-gallon bucket, Murphy said, adding, “all sorts of things that we frequently find in our beach cleanup.”

Since 1986, more than 400 million pounds of trash has been picked up from beaches and waterways across the world through Ocean Conservancy’s annual International Coastal Cleanup.

The wildlife impact calculator aligns with the organization’s Clean Swell mobile app, which allows users to record each item of trash collected off a beach, in a park or neighborhood.

Information recorded through Clean Swell is plugged into an international database shared with scientists and policymakers around the world. The app allows the user to track the amount of trash that person has collected and share cleanup results with friends on social media.

Murphy said the organization hopes to eventually streamline its wildlife impact calculator with the Clean Swell app.

“We do encourage people to use (the calculator) as a learning tool so even if they’re not able to go out and participate in a cleanup that day, they can absolutely put in numbers and try to understand the relationship between what’s on the beach and how that could affect marine wildlife,” she said.

More than 11 million metric tons (8 million tons) of plastics enter the ocean each year, according to the conservancy.

“Ocean Conservancy does a lot of advocacy work to reduce the amount of plastic we produce and to improve waste management,” Murphy said. “But the third prong in this global effort to address plastic pollution is really cleanups, and every single person going out on the beach and picking up what they see does make a difference in help protecting our ocean animals.”

Plastic may be cheap to make and convenient to use, but it comes with a staggering economic cost to the United States — possibly more than $1 trillion a year — according to a new report.

The study, released Thursday, estimates that the economic cost of the life cycle of plastic – from how it’s made, to its conversion into products, to its use and disposal – ranges anywhere from $436 billion to $1.1 trillion annually.

That figure is likely a significant underestimate, according to Duke University researchers who authored the report.

“We, from the beginning, wanted to focus on the harms and costs of the entire plastic life cycle, not just focus on plastic pollution,” said Dr. Nancy Lauer, a co-author of the report and staff scientist and lecturing fellow with the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. “That was because there really is this entire life of plastic product that has now-well-documented harms at every single stage that we are paying for. It was important for us to make those harms and those costs more transparent to consumers so that they understand this is not just a problem when plastic escapes into the environment and becomes litter or marine debris.”

The team of researchers was able to explore this concept after the university in 2023 awarded it a small grant. That grant led the researchers to host a workshop in early 2024 that brought together experts from across different fields with experience in analyzing the social costs of plastic from its production to its disposal.

Those experts were given a list of studies examining economic costs associated with plastic’s life cycle compiled and initially reviewed by a team of graduate students. The experts then advised researchers on what categories of studies were missing from that list and whether there was additional research that could be examined.

In the end, researchers reviewed 13 existing studies focusing on plastic’s harms and costs on the environment, human health, and the economy.

The report breaks down the economic impacts of plastics by several categories, from greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastic production to human health effects.

The largest cost, by far, is human exposure to toxic chemicals in plastics.

Researchers estimate that increased disease and mortality from plastics use is between $410 billion and $930 billion each year.

“These high costs are driven largely by the value of IQ loss and reduced productivity associated with exposure to plastic activities,” the report states.

Exposure to chemicals such as phthalates, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, bisphenol A, or BPA, and those found in flame retardants are linked to a host of adverse health outcomes, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, reproductive disorders and neurological damage.

Lauer explained that only within the last couple of years studies on the economic impacts of human health-associated harms from plastics use have “really taken off.”

“So that was certainly a category that we, in those initial searches and before the workshop, did not have as great of a handle on, but that research has just really continued to take off in these last two years or so,” she said.

And while studies of the economic effect on human health have come a long way, Lauer said there’s still a long way to go.

“The studies that we found document the harms and costs from exposure to just a tiny fraction of the chemicals that are in plastic. There’s thousands of chemicals in plastic, several of which have known health effects, and several of which we don’t know enough about to know if they have health effects,” she said.

There is also lack of research on the cumulative effects on human health from chemical mixtures in plastics.

“If we take in a plastic particle, we’re not just taking in one or two chemicals, we’re taking in that mixture of chemicals,” Lauer said. “How those chemicals interact together to spur health impacts, we don’t have a good sense of that at this time.”

The report highlights other research gaps, including economic costs associated with plastic recycling and incineration, the effect of plastic on property values, and the cost associated with loss of terrestrial environment.

“When plastics get into the environment, often our first thought is when it ends up as marine debris and the harms that it causes in the ocean, entangling animals and creating these great garbage patches that need to be cleaned up,” Laure said. “Plastics also impact the terrestrial environment. They get into streams and lakes, along our roadsides, and studies have documented that plastics also cause harm to terrestrial animals like invertebrates and freshwater fish. But, there’s not estimates in the literature for that loss of terrestrial ecosystem services in the same way that the literature has begun to document the cost of the loss of marine ecosystem services.”

According to the report, the estimated cost of the loss of marine ecosystem services ranges from $1.4 billion to $112 billion a year.

Other categories and estimated annual costs detailed in the report include the following:

• Greenhouse gas emissions produced from fossil fuel extraction and manufacturing: $6.4 billion to $15.9 billion.
• Increased disease and mortality from oil and gas extraction: $2.9 billion to $31.9 billion.
• Landfill disposal: $2.9 billion.
• Plastic litter cleanup: $9.8 billion to $13.3 billion.
• Loss of tourism: $2 billion.
• Damage to fisheries and aquaculture industry: $88 million.
• Damage to marine shipping: $909 million.

Lauer said that a motivation to make these costs more transparent to the consumer is to highlight that, though products we buy that are made of plastic tend to be relatively cheap, “that’s just the price we’re paying right there on the spot.”

“There’s so many other costs that we may not necessarily realize we’re paying when we use that plastic,” she said.

And while plastics are important for certain industries, including the medical industry, “we’re still using a lot of plastic in places that we don’t necessarily need to be,” Lauer said. “The patchwork of state and local laws on the books are important to reduce plastics on that local and state level, and they’re important to have proof of concept and build momentum towards something that is more comprehensive. But I think what that more comprehensive strategy needs to look like is really focusing on reducing plastics at the source, and that can be through phasing out needless plastics.”

An overwhelming majority of litter captured over the course of three years by in-stream traps set up in watersheds throughout the state was plastic waste, according to a recently published study.

About 96% of litter North Carolina waterkeeper organizations and their volunteers removed from trash traps between June 2021 and November 2024 consisted of plastics, said Dr. Nancy Lauer, lead author of the paper published in the journal Community Science.

“Plastic is lightweight, it’s buoyant, it floats easily,” Lauer, a staff scientist and lecturing fellow with the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, said in a recent telephone interview. “The plastic items, they can very well make their way through the stormwater system, through the stream and end up in the trash trap before they are ever going to biodegrade.”

During the course of the three-year study, 150,750 pieces of litter were removed from 21 traps.

The litter traps were funded through a 2020 North Carolina Environmental Enhancement Grant as part of a statewide microplastics research and pollution-prevention infrastructure project sponsored by Waterkeepers Carolina, a group of 15 licensed waterkeepers in the state.

By removing and documenting the litter that gets caught in the traps, waterkeeper organizations are able to get an understanding of the most prevalent types of litter entering North Carolina rivers. They are also able to look at correlations between litter accumulation and characteristics such as development, impervious surface, road density and human populations within different watersheds.

Using the data collected by those waterkeeper organizations, researchers can provide a big picture of riverine litter in the state and use that to shape policy.

For this study, seven waterkeeper organizations and their volunteers were tasked with separating and organizing the trash they removed from traps into categories.

Those categories included plastic film, hard plastic, polystyrene foam, metal, glass; and paper covering items, such as drink containers made of plastic, glass and metal, plastic straws and stirrers, cup lids, bottle caps and food wrappers.

Fragments of polystyrene foam from consumer products like Styrofoam cups, food takeout containers and packing materials were removed from all 21 traps in “very high” loads, Lauer said.

Those fragments and single-use plastic bottles made up about 83% of the litter that was collected and documented.

“If you do a cleanup of a roadside, you’re going to find a lot more plastic bags, a lot more food wrappers and we would find those occasionally,” Lauer said. “But I think that those just tend to snag on branches or get weighted down in the stream banks before they would ever be able to reach the trap. It was sort of eye opening to realize which of these plastic items, when they get into the environment, are extremely mobile. It seems like the trash traps are telling us that Styrofoam fragments and plastic bottles can really effectively be transported by surface waters downstream just because they made up such a large fraction of what we were finding in the traps.”

The paper is the latest to highlight single-use plastic pollution in the state.

A 14-page report published last March and created through a collaboration of nonprofits and the policy clinic concluded that state agencies, local governments and nonprofits spent more than $56 million in 2023 cleaning up more than 7,000 tons of litter.

Related: State’s fix for costly litter problem ‘not efficient or sufficient’

That same year, legislators injected language into the state budget prohibiting counties and cities from adopting rules, regulations, ordinances, or resolutions that restrict, tax, or charge fees on auxiliary containers.

The provision stopped locally elected officials in Asheville from voting on a proposed ban of single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam food containers. The law also barred local elected officials in Durham from deciding whether to require retailers tack on a 10-cent fee for each plastic bag given to customers in restaurants, grocery stores and shops.

That law “dealt a huge blow” to North Carolina, Lauer said.

The volume of single-use plastics removed from riverine traps clearly indicates that type of pollution is a huge issue in the state, she said

“I think what this data really highlights is that there’s still work that needs to be done and that work now, because of that preemption law, can’t necessarily be done on the local level in the same way that it could before,” Lauer said. “But there are state-level actions like banning Styrofoam, or a bottle bill that would incentivize people to return their bottles to receive a small deposit. Those could be really effective at reducing stream litter.”

She said it is important to keep in mind that there are types of litter that aren’t being captured in trash traps.

“These traps have a lot of positive aspects, but ideally we want to live in a world where we don’t need them because that trash is never ending up in our streams,” Lauer said. “I feel really strongly that there needs to be action by the corporations and the businesses and the government to stop these items from being provided in the first place. We go through life and you can make choices as an individual, but single-use plastics are still so prevalent that it can feel impossible to avoid them, no matter how hard you try.”

Five years after developing and acting on a collaborative approach to preventing and removing marine debris along the coast, those behind the plan met last week to review accomplishments so far and discuss ways to expand the message over the coming five years.

The roughly 20 representatives of state and federal agencies, nonprofit and community organizations, and academia with ties to the 2020-24 North Carolina Marine Debris Action Plan spent last Tuesday in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Beaufort facility discussing the plan’s background, completed actions, the results from a recent survey and reviewing goals for 2025-29.

The plan is a multiyear collaborative effort of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, North Carolina Coastal Reserve & National Estuarine Research Reserve, North Carolina Sea Grant, North Carolina Marine Debris Symposium and Coastal Carolina Riverwatch.

Marine debris is a persistent and widespread problem. The human-made products like plastics, metals, rubber, paper, textiles, abandoned fishing gear, and other lost or discarded items littering waterways can negatively impact human and wildlife health.

The Coastal Federation initiated the work in January 2017 when it brought together a leadership team to assess marine debris and debris management along the coast. Between that first meeting and when the plan was released in January 2020, the team met several times, held surveys, and established strategies and actions.

Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis told the participants Tuesday that the nonprofit had been engaged in marine debris projects for over a decade.

“I think everyone, early on, recognized that this is a thorny, complex issue, and it’s of a pretty significant magnitude,” Davis said.

The Coastal Federation, which published Coastal Review, has been working to protect the coast since 1982 and has offices in Wanchese, Newport and Wrightsville Beach.

Understanding that the work cannot be done alone, the Coastal Federation looked at similar efforts by other states and regions, and brought together groups and organizations to develop a marine debris action plan, Davis explained.

With marine debris always being present and the origins being difficult to trace, the organization is considering additional research to tailor policies and programs around efforts that will lead to prevention.

“I think that’s going to take significant collaboration with stakeholders, and it’s going to require some multifaceted solutions,” Davis said. Adding the workshop “is just one stepping stone on the path over the next five years.”

Coastal Federation Education and Outreach Director Sara Hallas said that the nonprofit really became invested in marine debris management in 2014 upon launching its lost fishing gear recovery project. Commercial fishermen are hired to find and retrieve lost crab pots from the state’s waterways early each year, “And we would always plan a volunteer cleanup along with that, to build awareness and engage the community,” Hallas said.

“And then we started looking around and realizing, surely, we’re not the only the organization doing marine debris projects, and surely, we’re not the only ones that are going to be able to clean up all of this marine debris. So how can we be a little bit more comprehensive and a little bit more strategic in our approach to make sure that we’re meeting all the needs of the coast?” she said.

This spurred the first meeting with other organizations involved in marine debris, and the work began, leading to “the first ever action plan for North Carolina in 2020,” Hallas said.

The first statewide plan to address marine debris outlined five major goals, including engaging the public with education, prevention and removal of marine debris and abandoned and derelict vessels, and encouraging research to understand marine debris and its impacts.

While 2020 had its challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic, Hallas said the team was able to continue with the action plan and reached nearly all of its individual action goals.

The current plan detailed 86 individual actions to be taken. Of those, 77.9% have been completed, 11.6% are in progress, and another 4.7% are ongoing, leaving about 5.8% of those items that have not been started as of mid-September.

“Only about five or six items of those 86 actions that we have in our action plan,” Hallas said, adding that for each year of the action plan, the leadership team has released a report that summarizes the highlights and takeaways from each of the major goals.

Working toward prevention, partners have reached more than 27,000 students and 33,000 adults with various education programs, participated in the North Carolina marine debris symposium each year, created marine debris curriculums, and rolled out the Marine Debris Free NC social media campaign.

In terms of removing marine debris, more than 9,000 crab pots have been pulled from waterways, as well as more than 3 million pounds of debris from coastal shorelines, “all just in the past five years,” Hallas said.

Preventing and removing abandoned and derelict vessels is its own category in the plan and has been a hurdle, she said.

“At the launch of the action plan, we saw some of the largest vessel removal in North Carolina history. And since then, that number has continued to grow,” Hallas said.

Since 2019, 343 vessels have been removed, and “a lot of that is thanks to bringing these groups” and resources together to solve the problem. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission helps to maintain the database, and working with these organizations to allocate funding accordingly.

To understand the source of debris, research and assessment has been an important part of this work as well, Hallas said, “so that we’re not just in this endless cycle of cleanup.” One project by North Carolina Sea Grant and N.C. State University was to study the macro- and microplastics coming through the Neuse River into the Pamlico Sound. The team is also looking to increase the marine debris data by encouraging volunteers to log what they pick up in trash collection phone apps.

“But if you can take a second to imagine, if people and wildlife of coastal North Carolina never encountered a marine debris, what would that be like? And that was our initial goal for the action plan,” Hallas said. “How can we achieve to get to this vision?”

N.C. Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve Central Sites Manager Paula Gillikin explained that the team distributed a survey on marine debris in North Carolina in 2017 and again in 2024, with the same questions. The first survey had 111 respond and the latest saw 49 responses.

One question, Gillikin said, was to ask respondents to rank the goals of the action plan from most important to least important.

“‘Prevent’ came up as most important, followed closely by ‘Remove,” and then “Abandoned and Derelict Vessels’ came out third, and then ‘Research’ came out last,” Gillikin said, acknowledging that research often is ranked a low priority.

Possible actions the group discussed for the next five years include reaching underserved communities and incorporating environmental justice into all goals, working with government entities to improve public policy that prevents marine debris as well as managing abandoned vessels, and different ways to expand educating the public on marine debris.

Plans to phase out during the next decade single-use plastic products on public lands — places like the Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras national seashores — are in the works, and while optimistic, conservation groups have their concerns.

Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Thursday the department-wide approach to reduce plastic pollution and a “first-ever effort” for the department to factor the climate crisis into all operations. The announcement came during the White House Summit on Building Climate Resilient Communities, which was broadcast on YouTube.

“Everyone here today understands these simple truths. The climate crisis is real. It’s happening now. And it’s uprooting lives across our country,” she said during the summit. “It is abundantly clear that even as we transition our economy toward a sustainable future, adaptation and resilience must be core pillars of our collective climate response.”

Haaland signed her Secretary’s Order 3407 on World Ocean Day June 8, 2022, directing the department “to reduce the procurement, sale and distribution of single-use plastic products.”

“I issued a secretary’s order to phase out the sale of single-use plastics on interior-managed lands by 2032. Today, we are telling you how we’re going to get it done,” she said.

Each bureau has sustainable procurement plans outlining approaches and schedules to phase out single-use plastic products such as plastic bottles and bags, and to implement improvements like the installation of water bottle filling stations across interior manage lands.

Related: Interior order phases out single-use plastics on public lands

“Our department is also taking a concerted look at how we operate and make decisions about the future in the face of the climate crisis,” Haaland continued, adding that it should be part of every decision.

That look includes four new department manual policies “to strengthen and enhance mission critical decisions and activities” and also reflect the department’s “commitment to using science, indigenous knowledge and landscape-scale management as the foundation for departmental decisions,” she said.

The department has adaption and resilience projects across the country.

In northeastern North Carolina, Haaland said the department is working with partners and local officials to “advance transformational peatland restoration work. Healthy forested peatlands offer some of nature’s best carbon storage while protecting coastal communities from threats like sea level rise, flooding and wildfires, but extreme climate fueled conditions combined with increased wildfire risks threaten these essential ecosystems and the communities and wildlife that depend on them.”

To advance nature-based solutions, more than $27 million from the Inflation Reduction Act has gone to restoration efforts for the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary, which Haaland said is to fortify communities against the “mounting impacts of climate change.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners have restored 37,000 acres of peatlands already at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, over half of the project’s goal.

Related: Refuge exudes natural diversity, wonders of pocosin lakes

“By restoring the natural hydrology and regional peat soils. The department is ensuring that communities and local habitats can enjoy the region’s countless ecological services from clean air and water and soil to storm flow resilience long into the future,” she said.

The plans Haaland announced Thursday are in support of the president’s executive order that called for federal agencies to take actions to reduce and phase out procurement of single-use plastic products to the maximum extent practicable.

Interior officials said that the plans published Thursday will be updated in 2024 to include additional details on where and how single-use plastics will be eliminated.

Since the signing of the secretary’s order last year, officials said that national, wildlife refuges and conservation lands have been installing water bottle filling stations, increasing recycling, and working with concessionaires to reduce sales of single-use plastic bottles and use of plastic utensils, bags, straws and other plastic products.

Cape Lookout National Seashore Chief of Interpretation and Education Nate Toering said Friday that the seashore is already ahead of the curve on eliminating single-use plastics in many areas throughout the park.

“We have worked closely with park partners to achieve this. For example, Eastern National, who runs our park stores, switched from issuing plastic bags with sales, and instead offers inexpensive reusable bags for purchase,” Toering explained. Adding that service providers such as Island Express Ferry Service have transitioned to selling water and other drinks in cardboard boxes and cans instead of plastic bottles.

“So, while there is always room to improve, Cape Lookout is well on its way toward achieving this goal. With over 50 miles of beaches and already tackling a never-ending marine debris problem — including lots of plastics — it’s a relief to know that we’re at least becoming less of the problem and more of the solution,” he said.

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider told Coastal Review Friday she feels that phasing out single-use plastics is achievable, but it will take a long-term commitment and accountability from decision-makers on all sides of the political spectrum.

“Plastic waste and pollution are industry problems that have burdened consumers for generations. I am hopeful that government intervention and sustainable procurement practices set by the Department of the Interior will show progress in pollution prevention. I am hopeful that this effort will further support industries that provide alternatives to single-use plastic products,” Rider said. “With all that said, the burden remains on us consumers and constituents to hold decision-makers, now and in the future, responsible for protecting our quality of water and life from plastic pollution.”

Oceana Campaign Director Christy Leavitt said in a statement Thursday that “Today our national parks are one step closer to being plastic-free.”

The organization “applauds” Haaland’s “commitment to phase out the sale and distribution of single-use plastic products in national parks and other public lands” but, the department should “implement the plans more quickly.”

“The National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and other bureaus of the Interior Department should immediately phase out the most problematic plastics, including plastic foam food and beverage containers and plastic bags. Protecting our national parks from plastics is an important step toward a plastic pollution-free future and can’t come soon enough,” she said.

A longtime advocate for ending plastics pollution, Bonnie Montelone said she has been studying plastic pollution since 2008, “when this topic was just starting to capture the global conscience.”

She is founder and executive director of Plastic Ocean Project, a Wilmington-based organization working to end plastic pollution.

Though plastic production and use has nearly doubled from 245 metric tons to nearly 470 metric tons since then, Montelone continued. “We are at the tipping point of real change.”

Montelone added that another federal agency, the Department of the State, is taking strides to end plastic pollution, as well.

She attended the launch Sept. 20 of End Plastic Pollution International Collaboration, or EPPIC, in New York City, a new public-private partnership.

With $15 million from the Department of State, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Aspen Institute and The Ocean Foundation’s Plastic Initiative, both based in the U.S., and Searious Business in the Netherlands were able to initiate the multistakeholder effort.

“We know all too well the devastating impacts of plastic pollution on our planet. The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to finding real solutions to this global crisis at home and abroad. EPPIC will create the stage to motivate ambitious commitments and actions to combat plastic pollution,” Jose W. Fernandez, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment said in a statement.

EPPIC aims to spur global action on plastic pollution by supporting projects worldwide to make the full lifecycle of plastic more sustainable, starting with efforts to change the design and use of plastic products. The EPPIC will build on established partnerships and networks to avoid duplicating efforts, the website said.

“Recognizing the need to change the design and use of plastic products in order to make plastic’s full lifecycle more sustainable, the federal government is now supporting collaboration with governments, businesses, civil society, the philanthropic and NGO communities,” Montelone said.

Though this is encouraging, Montelone said, if consumers understood that every time we buy food or drink packaged in plastic, we are voting for more of the same.

“But more importantly, if we took a look at that plastic and said, ‘I’m going to be eating and/or drinking the chemicals from this packaging and when I’m done with it, the environment, whether in a landfill or not, is going to also consume those chemicals,’ people might reconsider,” she said.

This report has been updated to remove the trademarked product name referenced in the study, which is not the device shown in the photo.

A recent study estimates that 230 billion tiny pieces of plastic the thickness of a human hair and 670 million microplastics about than the size of a grain of sand flow into the Pamlico Sound from the Neuse River Basin each year.

To reach that estimate, North Carolina State University and North Carolina Sea Grant researchers sampled 15 freshwater locations between Wake County to Craven County from August 2020 to July 2021.

The presence of microplastics, which are less than a fifth of an inch, were found at all 15 sites, though the concentration varied depending on location, according to the research funded by National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration Marine Debris Program and North Carolina Sea Grant. The most common microplastics detected were polyethylene and polystyrene.

“This study effort completed the first sampling of microplastics (smaller than 5 mm) for North Carolina freshwater rivers and streams,” states, “Engaging Partners to Evaluate Plastics Loading to the Pamlico Sound from Urban and Rural Lands via the Neuse River in North Carolina,” the study published earlier this year.

Microplastics come in a variety of shapes such as fibers, fragments, pellets, spheres, flakes, foams and films, and originate from point and nonpoint sources including wastewater, industrial processes, tire wear, and degraded plastic bags, bottles, food containers and other discarded plastics.

The primary goal of this study is taking “the first step in characterizing and quantifying the annual loading of plastic pollution to our coastal waters from inland sources by examining contributions through the Neuse River watershed to the Pamlico Sound. The secondary goal was to use research results to raise awareness of plastic pollution since quantifying the scale of the problem in a local context has been shown to increase stakeholder engagement and interest,” according to the research.

The Neuse basin is home to over 2.5 million people, mostly concentrated in the highly developed upper watershed, while the lower watershed is mostly agricultural and forested land uses. Sample locations were selected to include a range of drainage area sizes, a variety of land uses, and to encompass locations throughout the basin, the research notes.

The highest number of all microplastics were observed in urban streams. “There was a significant correlation between streamflow and MP concentration in the most urbanized locations,” the study states. The study refers to microplastics as MPs.

The authors of the study, North Carolina Sea Grant extension specialists Dr. Barbara Doll and Gloria Putnam, and NC State Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering research scholar, Jack Kurki-Fox, shared highlights of their research in the article, “A River of Plastics,” in the summer edition of Coastwatch, North Carolina Sea Grant’s quarterly publication.

“Our study was the first to sample microplastics in North Carolina’s freshwater rivers and streams, focusing on 15 locations throughout the Neuse River Basin, from Wake County to Craven County. We evaluated the presence of microplastic particles by trawling for several minutes using a net with 335-micron openings (about the size of a small grain of sand) and by bailing 100 liters (about 26.4 gallons) of water through a 64-micron mesh opening (roughly the thickness of a human hair),” they wrote in the Coastwatch article.

“We estimate that about 670 million microplastic particles larger than 335 microns enter the Pamlico Sound from the Neuse River Basin each year. For microplastics larger than 64 microns, that estimate is about 230 billion particles per year,” the article continues.

Researchers sampled for macroplastics, as well, according to the study. They used three different methods in the upper portion of the river basins. They regularly collected trash at seven streams, captured debris during stormflow at two highly urbanized streams using a trap device and visually counted floating trash during stormflow events at two large tributaries and at one small highly urban stream in Raleigh, according to the research.

All three macroplastic sampling methods show that the bulk of trash washing into streams is plastics.

“Floating trash was nearly all plastics and plastics also dominated the litter captured during storm flow using the trash collection boom and basket (96%). Styrofoam pieces were the most common litter type observed using these two sampling methods,” the study states. “Grid samples in contrast contained a more diverse trash profile with plastics comprising about 74% of all samples collected.”

Urban streams were found to produce much higher counts of trash and macroplastics. The study’s findings indicate that plastics are commonly transported downstream during high flows and are likely flowing into the mainstem of the Neuse River where it will continue to wash into the Pamlico Sound.

“Therefore,” the executive summary concludes, that “programs to prevent this litter from being deposited on the ground and washed into the stormdrain system are critical to plastics from entering stormwater systems in urban areas and being transported to downstream rivers and estuaries of critical social, economic and environmental importance.”

“Most of us don’t witness the ‘plastic flows’ in our state because we aren’t out during storm events,” Putnum told Coastal Review.

“But our trash traps and the visual assessments of floating trash we conducted during high stream flows, show there is a large quantity of plastic, especially plastic bottles and foam pieces, moving through some of our urban streams,” she continued. “Next, we need to identify where it ends up and move toward prevention, because removing it once it’s in the water is costly and extremely challenging.”

Doll, who also is on the faculty for the NC State Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, told Coastal Review that, in a way, it was not surprising they found microplastics in all of their samples, and found strong links between the macroplastics and the microplastics.

“Polystyrene, polyethylene these were really common microplastics and lo and behold, very close to the items that we were finding in our trash collection research component as well,” she said.

Doll explained that she has long history with freshwater streams and has worked on nonpoint source pollution and stream improvement for all her career, and “trash has always been at the forefront of my concern from childhood.”

After hearing about the funding through Sea Grant to work on marine debris and plastics, Doll said they decided to take advantage of the funding opportunity.

Because of her work conducting stream morphology assessments, or collecting data on streams, she said she sees in the urban areas “a lot of garbage and it’s pretty disheartening.”

She was also hearing more about the issue of microplastics. She mentioned international articles about researchers looking at pollutant loading into the ocean from riverine systems.

“I believe it,” she said about what she had been reading, “because of all of the garbage I see in just our small creeks, and these creeks are connecting to bigger waterways and into the main river, and then that’s going to go into our estuary. And in some cases, like the Cape Fear, dump right out into the ocean.”

Between the amount of trash she was finding while out in the field and the recent attention on microplastics, it made her ask, “How do we get a handle on that? We had not heard of any type of this work looking at trash and plastics — microplastics and riverine systems — reaching coastal waters in our state.”

Doll said that she anticipates a push to regulate debris in waterways. If that’s the case, there needs to be research on how to quantify the debris, how to prevent it, determine what the real scale is, and “Would this be the right thing to do, to require cities and counties to clean up?” Doll said. These questions are important, and the funding seemed like a real opportunity to jump in to get answers, data and experience.

“We were very interested in this topic,” she said, and since there’s a lot of questions “let’s just start to take a bite out of that, and here’s some funding that could help us.”

Doll said the team had to adapt early to some obstacles when they began collecting samples. One was the amount of organic material they had to sort through.

“This was our biggest challenge. We spent several months, maybe almost a year, dealing with the amount of organic matter that had to be digested, filtered out, removed, separated, so we could quantify these plastics,” Doll explained, adding that the Plastics Ocean Project Executive Director Bonnie Monteleone and her team separated the plastics from the debris in their laboratory in Wilmington.

Once that was resolved, they had a solid procedure for getting that separated and identifying the plastics.

Another challenge that was surprising, Doll noted, is that when these plastics break down and degrade in the environment, it changes the plastic’s chemical signature, but the databases they were using to identify what kind of plastics they were finding were based on pristine plastic. “That became a big challenge as well,” she said, because some samples would give a signature of a food additive, but they were actually degraded plastics.

Capturing the trash during storm flow also took some adapting. The first net they put across a stream to catch trash, collected, leaves, pine straw and sticks, and ultimately failed.

“We had to kind of research about different trash-capturing devices and found some people that have been doing work in that,” including the litter getter trash trap.

During the project, Doll said they learned so much about the sampling techniques that now they can share that information with municipalities and others on how to monitor for microplastics, macroplastics, or general marine debris.

“We’ve learned a lot, and I think that that’s really important to moving ahead in the future, where we really start to grapple with this serious issue. We found very high levels of trash and microplastics from the urban areas, and that increases with higher levels of storm flow,” Doll said. “That says that those are the areas we really need to target to reduce this contribution in our particular rivers and sounds here in North Carolina. We need good strategies, and good tools and practices and to be consistent.”

Blue whales off the coast of California may be consuming as many as 10 million pieces of microplastics per day, finds a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.

More research is needed to determine the extent of the problem for whales off the East Coast and beyond, where previous studies have identified microplastics in the ocean food chain.

These tiny pieces of plastic material have been commercially produced or are the breakdown of larger pieces of plastic like water bottles, children’s toys and disposable containers. Because of their small size, less than 5 millimeters, microplastics can be hard to detect, but when they enter the environment are a hazardous pollutant.

A group of California scientists decided to investigate the extent to which whales off the coast of California might be exposed to microplastics pollution.

“They’re really big animals that strongly affect the ecosystem if they’re going to be faced with other stressors,” said Dr. Shirel Kahane-Rapport, postdoctoral scholar at California State University, Fullerton, and lead author on the study.

Kahane-Rapport and her team used data collected by 191 tag deployments on baleen whales off the coast of California. The tags are noninvasive monitoring devices that attach to the whale via suction cups. The data collected by the tags helps the scientists record things like where the whales are, when they are feeding and how often they are feeding.

They were able to juxtapose this tag data with published works detailing the microplastics concentrations in both the water column and the prey species that the whales target.

Microplastics are likely primarily passed through the food web, and the scientists predict that the exposure to microplastics corresponds to the number of organisms the whales are eating.

Therefore, blue whales that go after many small krill are consuming much higher levels of microplastics than a humpback whale, which goes after smaller numbers of bigger fish. Blue whales off the coast of California could be consuming about 10 million pieces of microplastics per day, whereas humpback whales may be consuming 200,000 pieces per day.

Even though microplastics are small, plastic consumption at this volume is substantial. According to Kahane-Rapport, the size and weight of microplastics vary.

“You may have a piece of cellophane, or you may have a piece of more dense plastic, like the top of a water bottle — those of course weigh differently,” Kahane-Rapport said. “So people generally, in this work, have been counting pieces and not weight.”

But, Kahane-Rapport said, it could mean that baleen whales are consuming an average of 20 kilograms of plastic per day. That weighs roughly the same amount as a 5-gallon bucket of water.

According to Kahane-Rapport, quantifying the exposure of this human-caused pollution on whales is not just important for the health of the animals, but the rest of the ecosystem, too.

“It could seem like just a sad story about whales,” Kahane-Rapport said. “But it’s also a story about humans.” Humans eat many of the same fish species as whales, making us part of the same food web. “It’s all part of our ecosystem. And if that part of our ecosystem is damaged, it will affect us too. It’s not really just a story about whales, it’s also about us.”

Now that they’ve quantified exposure, Kahane-Rapport will continue studying the effects that microplastics have on whales, in terms of how it moves through the whale’s system.

The other aspect of this work is to examine this issue in other locations. Whales like the North Atlantic right whale, which depend on habitat off the coast of North Carolina, are already critically endangered, and yet nothing is truly known about their exposure to microplastics.

This is not just an issue in California, Kahane-Rapport explained, but in ocean waters across the world.

“Solving microplastic pollution is going to be a global project,” Kahane-Rapport said.

Litter traps are being placed in creeks and rivers throughout the state to catch plastics washing off roadways.

The statewide effort to install Trash Trouts, a device that traps litter in stormwater, is part of a growing effort to lower the amount of macroplastics and microplastics getting into waterways and, eventually, into the ocean.

Waterkeepers throughout the state will be monitoring the amount of trash collected from the traps and use that information to boost collaborations with local governments to cut down on the amount of plastics making it into the sea and, more importantly, advocates say, curtail consumption of single-use plastics.

“Plastic pollution isn’t a problem we can clean our way out of, although it’s important to get it out of our waterways,” said White Oak Waterkeeper Rebecca Drohan. “We kind of envision the Trash Trouts’ role in that as having data on what sorts of litter, what sources they could possibly be coming from, track that and use that to work with our municipal leaders to inform some of the plastic problems that we’re seeing.”

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch partnered with Jacksonville to install earlier this month a Trash Trout on Scales Creek, a tributary of the New River.

The creek is an unintended recipient of roadside trash, making it an ideal location for a litter trap to catch plastic debris from getting to the Atlantic Ocean.

Trash Trouts were designed by the nonprofit environmental group Asheville GreenWorks. The device works like a metal strainer, capturing and holding trash on the surface of the water.

The litter traps are funded through a North Carolina Environmental Enhancement Grant as part of a statewide microplastics research and pollution prevention infrastructure project sponsored by Waterkeepers Carolina.

Up to 75% of trash in the nations waterways comes from roadside litter. A majority of that trash is plastics.

When they enter waterways, larger pieces of plastic, referred to as macroplastics, begin to break down into smaller pieces known as microplastics. These tiny pieces of plastic are consumed by marine life and humans.

At least 14 million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean each year, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an organization made up of more than 1,400 government and civil society organizations.

Last year, about 5,500 pounds of trash was rounded up during cleanup efforts throughout the White Oak and New River watersheds, according to Drohan.

The amount of trash collected during cleanups this year overseen by Cape Fear River Watch surpasses that.

“We’re over 6,000 pounds of trash and recycling this year alone and it’s only April,” said Rob Clark, Cape Fear River Watch water quality programs manager.

Roughly 80-85% of the litter collected is plastic of some kind, he said.

The Trash Trout Cape Fear River Watch is installing in Burnt Mill Creek by ARIUM apartments in May will complement litter traps to be placed in storm drains in Wilmington and Leland.

The storm drain devices called LittaTraps, which are catch basins designed by New Zealand-based company Enviropod, are tentatively scheduled to be installed in four locations over the next couple of weeks. The traps were funded by a grant through the Jandy Ammons Foundation.

Related: Project to gauge how well storm drain traps catch litter

In Wilmington, a trap is to be placed in a curbside drain at Waterline Brewing Co. on Surry Street and in a storm drain at the intersection of South Front and Dock streets downtown.

“The idea of the projects is, if we can remove macroplastics from the waterways, we can reduce the levels of microplastics because a lot of microplastics come from macroplastics that break down in the water over time,” Clark said.

A year after the Trash Trout’s installation, river watch will continue sampling and comparing levels of microplastics before and after the trap was placed in the creek. There is a second, controlled site at Island Creek where samples will also be compared.

Two quarts of water will be collected at each location and shipped to the Watauga Riverkeeper in Boone, where water samples are analyzed under a microscope, Clark said.

“Microplastics seems to be a persistent problem globally,” he said. “The structural solutions are super important to collect data and reduce litter levels, but we really need to figure out some source-based reduction because we’re just getting swamped with this stuff. It’s hard to stay on top of the issue without reducing it at the source in some way or another.”

Cutting back at the source was a topic of discussion Friday during the North Carolina Plastic Policy Workshop at the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort.

Michelle Nowlin, a clinical professor of law at Duke and co-director of Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic headed a session at the workshop discussing policy tools local governments can use to stem the tide of plastic waste going into fresh and marine waters.

Nowlin spoke to Coastal Review a couple of days before the workshop. She said it is incredibly important to draw public attention to litter traps and their effectiveness in reducing the amount of plastic getting into the ocean.

“What we need to do is keep the trash out of the waters to begin with,” she said.

That’s something that can be managed at every level of government, but particularly at the local level.

“The General Assembly has pretty unlimited authority to adopt comprehensive legislation and obviously that would be more effective if they would do so, but the General Assembly has had several bills that various lawmakers have proposed over the years to try to have more effective waste management policies and those have not made it out of committee,” Nowlin said. “Waste management really happens at the local level. Local governments have considerable authority to decide what is the best waste management strategy given the concerns and considerations in our community.”

Nowlin and other researchers have done comprehensive research looking at what other states and cities across the country and national governments throughout the world have done to address plastics in their communities to put together a list of several options local governments here can use.

Those options include everything from banning certain types of single-use plastics by, for example, working with local school districts to rid the use of Styrofoam, to imposing consumer fees on plastic shopping bags, which research indicates is more effective than banning bags outright.

One of the easiest things a local government can do is require vendors it contracts with not use single-use plastics or products contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — think GenX.

“That’s a very easy, straightforward thing that local governments can do and it doesn’t require any new authorizing language,” Nowlin said. “They can decide as Durham County has done that we’re not going to provide single-use plastic water bottles anymore at county-sponsored functions.”

TOPSAIL ISLAND – An island-wide initiative to cut down on plastic waste is gaining traction as Topsail’s three beach towns consider banning a type of material used to make floating docks.

Topsail Beach is leading the charge in adopting an ordinance that would prohibit unencapsulated polystyrene from being used in repairs and new construction of docks.

Town commissioners there recently gave administrators the green light to create a draft ordinance for the board to consider adopting at their April meeting.

Surf City and North Topsail Beach are expected to follow suit in what would be a major step in an island-wide waste reduction campaign that aims, in part, to promote plastic waste reduction by local businesses.

If approved, the ordinance would be the first in North Carolina banning the use of unencapsulated polystyrene in docks, Topsail Beach Mayor Steve Smith said.

Polystyrene is a plastic used to make various consumer products such as Styrofoam food packaging and coolers. When unencapsulated, polystyrene can break up with weathering, scattering clumps and small fragments in waterways and on shorelines. The material can degrade into microplastic, which can easily be ingested by wildlife.

“There’s no way that that can be cleaned up,” said Kerri Allen, coastal advocate and southeast regional manager of the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Wilmington office.

Since 2019, Coastal Federation-led crews have removed more than 2 million pounds of marine debris including abandoned boats, storm-damaged docks and homes, fishing gear, poorly managed construction sites, plastics in wastewater and stormwater discharges, and litter from coastal estuaries up and down the North Carolina coast.

Three- to four-man crews continue to pick up on average 2 tons of debris a day, Allen said.

About 75-80% of that is from docks, piers, gazebos and other waterfront structures.

Ability to choose

In 2020, the Coastal Federation launched the N.C. Marine Debris Action Plan in partnership with community groups, government agencies and academia, to clean up the clutter and promote building codes for structures like docks aimed at reducing post-hurricane and other coastal storm debris.

“As coastal property owners, anyone who has a dock or pier, you really do have the ability to choose a strong contractor that selects these best-management practices,” Allen said.

A majority of microplastics being recovered on the beaches are polystyrene beads, she said. Next month, the Coastal Federation is kicking off program where volunteers from North Topsail Beach in Onslow County down to Sunset Beach in Brunswick County will collect microplastics from the beach.

Topsail Beach commissioners during their March 9 meeting discussed what they would like to see in a draft ordinance, one that would require new docks be built using encapsulated polystyrene. Older, storm-damaged docks that have unencapsulated polystyrene would have to be repaired with encapsulated material.

A property owner must obtain a town permit to build a dock or pier.

Smith noted that most contractors are now using encapsulated polystyrene, “but the non-encapsulated is still available and so we want to ensure that as we go forward the non-encapsulated is not used.”

“There’s other issues here that we’ll have to work, but in terms of coastal management it’s taking the next step, no matter how small, it needs to be done at this point,” he said.

Carbon-copy ordinances

Surf City Mayor Doug Medlin said the plan is to essentially have a carbon-copy ordinance in each town.

“We’ll probably do something similar,” he said, adding that a unified ordinance will be discussed March 24 during the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC, meeting.

TISPC Vice-Chairman and North Topsail Beach Board Mayor Pro Tem Mike Benson said he expects a proposed ordinance for that town will be on the board of aldermen agenda next month.

“For me it’s a no-brainer because it’s the simple thing to do and it’s going to protect the environment,” he said. “We are in favor of everything that can be done to manage plastics on our beach.”

Between the staggering amount of debris being collected through the Coastal Federation’s initiative and firsthand observations by boaters and kayakers on the water, Smith said people are willing to start taking small but important steps that will eventually reduce waste.

“Our hope is that these three towns can really create a pilot ordinance that other towns can adopt,” Allen said.

Big turnout

Earlier this year, a meeting of stakeholders — everyone from town officials from each of the municipalities, business owners, realtors and property owners — was held for those in attendance to discuss ways to reduce the use of plastics and other disposable products on the island.

Pender County Tourism Director Tammy Proctor was hoping for a turnout of about 30 stakeholders. That number surpassed 90.

They’ve decided to take a step-by-step approach, one that is less about mandates and more about positive messaging that encourages property owners and tourists to change their habits.

“Glass on the beach (is not allowed). (Tourists) pack for the day and they bring it to the beach,” Proctor said. “Those are the kinds of things that we want to raise awareness for and a sign at the beach isn’t enough. We want to reach folks before they get here. This is all of our beaches. This is all of our waterways. Let’s all of us take care of our natural resources.”

Scott Franko, who sits on the board of the Greater Topsail Area Chamber of Commerce and is the marketing director of Treasure Realty, plans to promote reusable shopping bags printed with a design of the island to grocery stores in the area and the beach municipalities on the island.

He had 10,000 bags made last year and began distributing them last August to businesses that are typical tourist hotspots.

Franko is also the man behind the BEach Clean poster with a short and to the point leave-no-trace message: use trash containers; no glass on the beach; pick up after pets; and fill in holes on the beach.

“It’s an educational program,” Franko said. “It’s an informational program. Over time we’re hoping to change consumer behavior. Over time we’re hoping to get the businesses around here to also change their behavior to change the consumer’s behavior. The goal is you want people to wanna. If they wanna do something that’s better than mandating something and to get to the point of wanna and buy-in you have to nurture a message enough and hope that a majority of the people get it.”

Oceana is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and restoring the world’s oceans.

North Carolina is responsible for some important “firsts” in our nation’s history. We were the first state to instruct delegates to vote for independence from England. As our license plate boasts, aviation began here when the Wright brothers completed their first flight in Kitty Hawk. Plus, the first American mini-golf course was constructed here in Pinehurst. (OK, maybe that last one wasn’t quite as significant.) 

The point is, we have a history of leading. Yet we’re lagging behind our fellow states when it comes to combatting a growing problem that affects North Carolina intimately: plastic pollution. An estimated 33 billion pounds of plastic enter the ocean every year — that’s roughly equivalent to dumping two garbage trucks full of plastic into the oceans every minute. Marine life is choking on it, and people are now breathing, eating and drinking it. It’s everywhere — including our state’s coastlines. 

Marine animals have been reported suffering from plastic impacts for years in North Carolina waters, according to a November 2020 report by Oceana. Here’s a quick snapshot of what those impacts can look like: In 2009, a leatherback sea turtle (a species listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act) was discovered in North Carolina with balloons and a 2-foot-long plastic bag in its body. In 2015, a bottlenose dolphin was found here with a child’s plastic ring toy entangled around its head.  

These are animals that draw people to our shores. Dolphins, whales and the occasional seal, sea turtle and manatee create special moments for visitors who don’t often have access to such experiences. They come here for pristine beaches, ocean scenes and the myriad forms of recreation that our coast provides. In fact, our 3,375 miles of coastline generate $3.1 billion gross domestic product through activities like tourism, recreation and fishing. Additionally, this robust coastal economy supports around 62,000 jobs.  

If business continues as usual, the plastic pollution crisis will intensify. The plastics industry expects annual production will more than triple by 2050. As plastic production increases, so will the amount of plastic entering the ocean. North Carolinians will not only see these impacts as our coastlines become more polluted; they’ll also feel them as plastic continues to damage the critical and diverse ecosystems that support our commercial fishing and recreational businesses. 

The most effective way to curb the plastic pollution crisis is to reduce the production and use of single-use plastic products. These items are profoundly flawed by design: They’re created from a material made to last forever but are designed to be thrown away and are sometimes only used for a moment before polluting the Earth for years to come. The top 10 waste items found in worldwide coastal cleanups are all single-use plastic products — and this has been the case every year for several years. Plastic food wrappers, bottles, straws, cups, plates, bags, takeout containers and more have taken over our coastlines. 

Our coast is quite literally our lifeline. And it is being increasingly sabotaged by plastic. So why aren’t our businesses and policy-makers doing something about it? 

Companies have a responsibility to change course — and they’d be wise to do so considering the path we’re on. They need to stop using so much unnecessary single-use plastic and instead turn to more sustainable alternatives before it’s too late. Unfortunately, we’re not seeing this necessary shift in the companies that provide many of the products we depend on every day.  

That’s why our local and state lawmakers are such a crucial piece of the puzzle. Hundreds of cities across the U.S. have said “enough is enough” and passed policies banning certain forms of unnecessary single-use plastic, such as plastic bags, straws and plastic foam food containers. Over a dozen states — most of which hug the coast — have passed bills to limit single-use plastics. 

North Carolina, however, has failed to address the issue. Like plastic, we’re just kind of floating along as the problem escalates. 

So it makes perfect sense that city and state governments across the country are passing policies to reduce these unnecessary products. Why haven’t we? North Carolina cannot remain stagnant when it comes to addressing this issue. We have too much to lose.  

It’s time we stepped up to the plate and remembered the change we can effect on the rest of the country when we lead. I am calling on our elected leaders to champion smart, effective policies to phase out the use of unnecessary single-use plastics. We need change now. Our future is at stake. 

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns. The opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Wilmington put in place a sustainability program in 2012 that recently has been trying to combat plastic pollution – especially plastic bags — through education and outreach, with the help of a state grant and partnerships with nonprofit organizations.

The sustainability program aims to efficiently manage energy, water and waste, “while cultivating a culture of environmental stewardship throughout city operations to reduce our environmental footprint. We strive to implement fiscally and environmentally sound projects to preserve the quality of life of our community and resources,” according to the city.

Part of the outreach included having the city council approve in September a resolution to reduce plastic waste and support Ocean Friendly Establishments, a nonprofit initiative that encourages businesses and nonprofits to reduce single-use plastics.

David Ingram, Wilmington’s sustainability project manager, who has been in this role since 2015, said in an interview that the resolution ties in nicely with his department’s outreach work funded through a state grant from the 2020 Community Waste Reduction and Recycling Grant Program.

The city was awarded $16,917 with a $3,383 match requirement, totaling $20,300 toward the effort. The grant, which was put in place to help local governments in expanding, improving and implementing waste reduction and recycling programs, is administered by the North Carolina Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Service through the Solid Waste Management Outreach Program, according to city officials.

City officials apply for this grant each year. This year, they pitched building the city’s recycling program with a focus on increasing public awareness of waste reduction and recycling and supporting the statewide Recycle Right NC campaign as well as promote the “Mayor’s Plastic Bag Challenge,” an effort to reduce single-use plastic bag usage.

“This year, the focus of that grant was really just a lot of outreach and education in regards to not only Recycling Right, but also promoting the use of reusable bags to help eliminate the use of single-use plastic bags,” Ingram said.

Ingram said the city had used the grant to take numerous steps to educate residents and help them understand what can be recycled, including Recycle Right NC materials. “We really tried to kind of simplify and make it more streamlined,” he said.

The city program also purchased reusable bags to hand out and provided some to the Plastic Ocean Project to distribute at their recent events, Ingram added.

“I would say to this particular grant, the education outreach efforts will be ongoing, and we have quite a few more reusable bags to distribute. We have a lot of messaging just in regard to Recycling Right,” he said.  “Going forward, we hope to collaborate on some other events as well just to continue that messaging.”

Ocean Friendly Establishments is an initiative of the Plastic Ocean Project, which aims to educate the public and help address the global plastic pollution problem.

Plastic Ocean Project Executive Director Bonnie Monteleone told Coastal Review that it didn’t take long to convince the city council to approve a resolution of support for the effort, but COVID-19 delayed progress for more than a year.

“As the saying goes, it takes a village,” Monteleone said, adding Ingram played a major role in bringing the resolution to the city council. Numerous Wilmington Ocean Friendly Establishments committee members joined in the effort along with help from the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher.

Monteleone noted that the bag campaign to encourage using reusable bags is in line with the city council’s resolution and with Plastic Ocean Project efforts in general.

“We are in the process of designing a ‘Got your bag’ logo that will be displayed in parking lots and billboards,” Monteleone said. Plastic Ocean Projects is also connecting with grocery stores to provide educational materials and the reusable bags from the city. “We hope to initiate the campaign mid-November that will focus on a positive message.”

Monteleone explained that the Ocean Friendly Establishment program began with just addressing the use of straws, encouraging restaurants to only give them out upon request. “It has now grown into a five-star program. This a perfect example of how one small effort can turn into a movement. We hope the bag campaign will do the same.”

Ocean Friendly Establishments is the brainchild of Ginger Taylor, a volunteer for the Wrightsville Beach Sea Turtle program, who saw the need for a solution to plastic straw litter, Monteleone said. Taylor was troubled by the number of straws she picked up in Wrightsville Beach while walking the strand identifying turtle tracks and pitched her idea at a North Carolina Marine Debris Symposium, an annual symposium featuring presentations by environmental and educational groups on different efforts to tackle marine debris.

Through the work of the Plastic Ocean Project, the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher and other organizations including the North Carolina Aquarium’s Jeanette’s Pier and nonprofits such as Keep Brunswick County Beautiful, the North Carolina Coastal Federation and Crystal Coast Riverkeepers, Ocean Friendly Establishments now has more than 200 establishments, including businesses, restaurants, breweries and nonprofits. “It’s a great example of the power of one and our very caring communities,” she said.

What makes the Ocean Friendly Establishments program successful is the numerous volunteers that make up many committees along the coast. “They are truly the driving force behind the success of this program as well as the resolutions,” she said.

A self-regulating, community-based certification program, Ocean Friendly Establishments has its own website where volunteers can join committees and businesses can apply for certification.

“It all comes down to using less plastic. Nature did not design plastic and therefore does not know what to do with it, hence it persists in the environment indefinitely. Because it can persist for decades and in some cases centuries, it can wreak havoc on the natural world and sadly is. The solution to plastic pollution is to reduce. If we don’t use it, we can’t lose it,” she said.

Why is plastic a problem?

Ingram told the city council in September that while the city has a long history of being a steward of the coastal environment, “We do recognize that plastic film and single-use plastics represent a contamination in our local environment, as well as our waste stream.”

Ingram said that plastic bags, while they are recyclable, tend to be placed in either curbside recycling or in locations that are not the proper place to drop these items off. When that happens, the bags impede the recycling process at many of the materials recovery facilities. The bags clog the system and force the machinery to be shut down, leading to delays and increased costs.

“This plastic film and bags, as well as straws, represent an enormous impact to our local waterways, when they don’t make it into our recycling or waste stream,” Ingram said. “They break down into small fragments that not only float on the surface of our waters but actually can sink down to the bottom and be very difficult to ever remove from the environment.”

Monteleone said Americans use more than 1 billion plastic bags a year – about 365 bags per person — which in total equals about 12 million barrels of oil.

While these bags can be recycled, many are not and chemicals leech out from the plastic bags and are starting to affect animals. Organisms that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen are compromised because of plastics. “These are getting lost in the environment and wreaking havoc on our marine life. “

About 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water and anything that ends up in the environment has the potential of getting into storm drains and into rivers, which lead to the ocean.

State regulators are cracking down on where property owners may install artificial turf near coastal waterways.

During the meeting of the Coastal Resources Commission Wednesday, Sept. 15, Robb Mairs, minor permits coordinator with the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s Wilmington office, said the use of artificial turf within the state’s 75-foot coastal shorelines area of environmental concern, or AEC, and associated 30-foot buffer “suddenly emerged” this year.

The seemingly new trend has raised concerns about certain materials used to install artificial grass, the different types of material used to make artificial turf, whether those materials are pervious or not, and how their proximity to coastal waters may affect water quality.

Coastal Resources Commission rules restrict development within the 30-foot buffer to water uses, including docks, piers, boat ramps, bulkheads and accessways. There are some exceptions to the rules, such as pile-supported signs, elevated, slatted wooden boardwalks, crab shedders, decks and grading, excavation, and landscaping as long as it excludes wetland fill — unless required by permit in a shoreline-stabilization project.

However, the state does not have standards for artificial turf being installed within that buffer, Mairs explained.

Coastal AECs include wetlands, estuarine waters, public trust areas and estuarine and public trust shorelines.

The 30-foot buffer within those AECs is considered by state coastal officials to be particularly crucial in protecting water quality.

Division of Coastal Management officials this past May first caught wind of artificial turf being installed within the 75-foot AEC in Wrightsville Beach, according to Christy Simmons, division spokesperson.

“That case was resolved through an enforcement action and the shoreline buffer was restored,” Simmons said in an email.

Since then, the division has been reviewing cases in Corolla in Currituck County, Topsail Beach in Pender County and Wrightsville Beach in New Hanover County, she said. In some of those cases, artificial turf will have to be removed, at least from within the 30-foot shoreline buffer.

“In the limited enforcement cases we’ve had so far, we’ve only required removal of the artificial turf and have not assessed any civil penalties,” Simmons said.

As division permit officers are handling these cases, they’re fielding a growing interest from property owners and landscapers asking about placing artificial turf within the coastal shoreline AEC.

Part of the debate about regulating artificial turf within the AEC goes to the question whether fake grass and the materials used to install it are impervious.

Coastal Resources Commissioner Neal Andrew said at the commission’s Sept. 15 meeting that he’d seen some of the artificial turf that has been installed in Wrightsville Beach.

“It appears water does drain through this material and therefore appears to act as a pervious surface,” he said. “I personally don’t see an issue with it being outside that 30-foot range.”

Division Director Braxton Davis said it had yet to be determined whether artificial turf is pervious and that any such determination may have to be concluded on a case-by-case basis.

Mairs said the problem is that some components of artificial turf appear to be inconsistent with standards set by the North Carolina Division of Water Resources and state Energy, Mineral and Land Resources, or DEMLR, state stormwater section.

DEMLR staff say they would have to decide case-by-case whether artificial turf is pervious.

Any such determination would not preclude DEMLR’s regulations that require vegetated setbacks from surface waters in coastal stormwater permits. The rules mandate that the area within the buffer remain vegetated unless one or more exceptions in the rules have been met.

Artificial turf is not an exception.

Buffer rules in the Tar-Pamlico and Neuse rivers do not include artificial turf in their table of uses.

Division of Water Resources officials advised that artificial turf appears to contradict the intent of the rules to preserve the buffer as a function for removing nutrients.

Water resources officials have expressed concerns about the potential of small plastic fibers, and rubber or silica beads sometimes mixed into soil under the turf during installation getting into nearby waters and potentially violating state water quality standards.

Larry Baldwin, vice chair for the Coastal Resources Commission, said that if artificial turf is installed for the purpose of stormwater infiltration, design could make a difference, especially if it were to cut down on potential nutrient runoff if turf is used replace fertilized grass.

“I’m kind of torn on this in terms of what’s better for water quality,” he said.

Commissioners voted 10-1, with Baldwin dissenting, to prohibit the installation of artificial turf within the 30-foot buffer.

“I think if we’re all concerned about water quality I’m going to make it as simple for staff as possible and protect the last line of defense for our waters,” said commission Chair Renee Cahoon.

Commissioner Craig Bromby said the commission should look further into the matter.

“I think we can maintain the status quo and endorse (the division’s) interpretation, but I think this needs looking at,” he said.

Microplastics are everywhere.

“It’s in our water, it’s in the ocean, it’s in the animals, in the air, even in space,” Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic, North Carolina Coastal Federation assistant director of policy, said recently during a virtual forum on microplastics.

Since the mass production of plastics began in the mid-20^th century, plastic has permeated our lives, she explained July 15 to the 202 from 29 different counties logged on for the North Carolina Coastal Microplastics Forum, organized by the federation.

The online forum included presentations from researchers, educators and environmental group representatives who explained the different types of microplastic pollution, the risks microplastics pose to the natural environment and human health, and current policies.

“This forum is the first step in our effort to inform the public and galvanize support for the change that will hopefully lead to solutions to microplastics,” Zivanovic-Nenadovic said.

Bonnie Monteleone, ​executive director of the nonprofit Plastic Ocean Project Inc. and a plastic marine researcher, said she found in her research that around 3.86 metric tons of microplastics, or pieces measuring less than 5 millimeters, are in the North Atlantic.

The ocean is turning into “plastic soup,” Monteleone said.

Plastic is the newest member of the food web “because plastics break up, not down. They’re breaking up into smaller and smaller particles, making them more bioavailable for all the organisms in the ocean. So I like to call it the ‘big small problem’,” she said. “As the particles get smaller, we start to see less and less of them and scientists are really concerned to where these smaller particles are going.”

One place these microplastics are being found is in our seafood.

Dr. Susanne Brander, a member of the faculty at Oregon State University since 2017 and previously faculty at University of North Carolina Wilmington, explained that microplastics are transferred through food webs and then are ingested directly by organisms, “but they are also trophically transferred, meaning that they are ingested by smaller organisms that are then fed upon as prey items by forage fish or larger predators. The ultimate result is that these items can end up in seafood on our dinner plates.”

According to an analysis, globally, about 26% of a fish species are found to ingest microplastics, which is roughly the same in the U.S. Microplastics affect the fish’s ability to survive and to reproduce, and that can have population level impacts.

“So we should think about this from a human health perspective but also from a fish health perspective. And in the end, that’s going to influence how many fish there are out there to catch.”

Dr. Marielis Zambrano with North Carolina State University department of forest biomaterials said that these microplastics being found in the ocean — and in our seafood — are from synthetic textiles, tires, city dust, road markings, marine coatings, personal care products and plastic pellets, or nurdles.

Microplastics are synthetic solid particles that don’t dissolve in water and are less than 5 mm in size. It’s estimated that a minimum of 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing 270,000 tons are floating in the world’s oceans, she explained.

The average person ingests more than 5,800 particles a year of synthetic debris, found in everything including seafood, beer, tap water and sea salt. Microplastics are even found in human stool samples, meaning we are eating microplastics, Zambrano said.

Found in 99.7% of all samples taken from the ocean surface, microfibers are a primary source of microplastics. These microfibers get into the environment through the home laundry process. The effluent is processed in wastewater treatment plants but some of the particles are too small to filter out before being discharged. Microfibers are also in the air from carpet, clothing and other materials.

Dr. Richard Venditti, the Elis-Signe Olsson professor in Paper Science and Engineering in the Forest Biomaterials Department at N.C. State University, said a study at the university found that cotton and rayon, both based on natural materials, degrade in about 35 days in lake water in a simulation.

“In stark contracts, polyester and many other plastics are completely inert to biological activity and persist in the lake water for a very long time,” which is a challenge, he said.

The microfiber problem has no unique solution but there are some possible ways to help, such as filters on washing machines, a sustainable coating on fabrics, using natural or plant-based fibers, or new methods to spin fibers that are durable, though all of these are not without problems.

Haw Riverkeeper Emily Sutton reiterated that microplastics are a huge public health concern and noted the high percentage of microfibers they find while testing because wastewater treatment plants aren’t able to remove all those before being discharged. Haw River, a tributary of Cape Fear River, is in the central part of the state.

Plastic, which is getting into our bodies through drinking water, has even been found in breast milk, she added. There’s also concern about the chemical compounds these plastics are made of, as well as about PFAS and other chemicals. “Those compounds are also being soaked up by these plastic particles” that are making it into our bodies.

Dr. Scott Coffin, a research scientist at the California State Water Resources Control Board, said that while wastewater treatment plants are effective at removing microplastics — between 88 and 99% of plastics — what is removed is then turned into sludge.

The sludge, which contains a high level of nutrients, is often transformed into biosolids and used as fertilizer in agricultural fields across the country. For North Carolina, 25-50% of sludge is applied as biosolid to agriculture, according to a map Coffin included in his presentation. With the increase in plastic production, there’s an increase in microplastic concentrations in biosolids, he said.

While it’s known that plants can uptake and accumulate microplastics through their roots and be distributed through their shoots, it’s unknown that plastic particles can make their way into the actual fruits and vegetables that we eat, Coffin explained. “However, we do know that with increasing plastic concentrations in soils, we see decreasing plant production of fruits and vegetables, with above a certain threshold, a complete inability of the plant to create tomatoes in this one study.”

Coffin added that plastic does often contain hazardous chemicals, some of which are intentionally added.

There’s at least 3,300 known chemical additives, 98 are hazardous, and 15 are endocrine disrupting. Bodies create estrogen naturally but when exposed to higher levels, it can cause things like diabetes, intellectual disabilities and cancer.

“Why do we care so much about endocrine disruptors? Exposure to just one class of endocrine disruptors of flame retardants results in more intellectual disabilities than pesticides, mercury and lead combined with an estimated 750,000 to 1.75 million total intellectual disabilities in the United States between 2001 and 2016,” Coffin said. While the human health effects of microplastics are largely uncertain, he said, evidence is rapidly evolving.

Coffin said humans are exposed to microplastics through tap water. Researchers found in 2017 that 94% of samples in the United States had detectable levels of microplastics, prompting California to pass a bill for its Water Board to define microplastics and develop standardized testing. 

When it comes to bottled and tap water, in general, higher concentrations are found in bottled water than tap water. “This is not surprising, as the bottle itself seems to be the source of these particles. Just unscrewing a lid from a plastic water bottle releases on the order of 14 to 2,400, plastic particles.”

A recent study also found that polypropylene feeding bottles for infants releases about 16 million particles per liter. This results in the estimated daily exposure of 14,000 to 4.5 million particles per day to infants.

“This is just an exposure, and we don’t know how much risk this could cause,” he said, adding that looking across all exposure routes, air is likely the greatest exposure pathway, with a much higher concentration indoors than outdoors.

Microplastics don’t go away once we’re exposed to them. “It’s estimated that we’re walking around with between 525 and 9.3 million plastic particles. We know that these particles can be transferred to the next generation with four out of six placentas containing microplastics in a 2021 study.”

Associate professor at Wake Forest University School of Law, Sarah Morath said in terms of plastic pollution, there are regulatory instruments like bans, such as the 2015 ban on microbeads in beauty products like body wash and toothpaste, economic instruments such as a tax or fee designed to encourage individuals and businesses to alter their behavior, and persuasive instruments, like an education campaign or Plastic Free July which where individuals voluntarily commit to eliminating their use of single-use plastics for a month.

Legislation that has been enacted or is currently being considered at the federal level includes the Save our Seas Act, which tend to get a lot of bipartisan report because they invoke nonregulatory methods, and Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act, reintroduced in March, with mechanisms to address plastic pollution, including putting the onus on the producer to collect and dispose of the product, Morath said. Other acts include the RECYCLE Act that focuses on improving residential recycling programs and RECOVER Act, focused on building recycling infrastructure, both introduced this year.

Zivanovic–Nenadovic told Coastal Review after the forum that this is the federation’s first step in directly addressing the microplastics pollution.

“I hope that the audience was able to gain knowledge about the impacts, magnitude and ubiquity of microplastics. It took decades to get to the point we are in and it will take a determined effort to start to turn the clock back on this problem. We hope to have excited the audience and motivated it to help us as we go forward,” she said. “The audience was able to learn about how pervasive the microplastics are in our environment. The presenters share information about microplastics in our food, in drinking water, elaborated on sampling methods and offered possible policy and regulatory solutions, and examples that exist in other states.”