About 60 students, faculty, and staff from local high schools converged on a Crandall Library Thursday for a discussion of all things plastic, but with a focus on single-use plastics such as soda and water bottles, grocery bags and the plastic clam shells and food containers taken from grocery stores. The day included presentations, lunch and discussions about the lifecycle of plastic and the way it burrows into every facet of life, often with debilitating effects.
Guest Speaker David Sayer of Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit organization dedicated to lowering the total tonnage of plastic in the environment, began the day with discussion about the way micro- and nanoplastic particles have been found everywhere on the planet.
He highlighted all the ways that plastic is used on top of plastic, with a school lunch served in a single-use plastic tray and food, such as a bag of chips, in plastic on that tray.
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One slide showed precut fruit at a grocery store in plastic containers, a particularly annoying choice for one student who quipped: “If only fruits had some sort of natural covering.”
“Anywhere scientists care to look, plastics can be found,” Sayer told those gathered, adding that last year scientists found nanoplastics, the tiniest of pieces of plastic, in clouds. That location joined the long list of other places from the snow and ice of Mt. Everest to the depth of the Pacific Ocean’s Miriana Trench, about 36,000 feet below the ocean’s surface.
The particles are found in mother’s milk, in a baby’s poop and in other living beings. Plastics can attach and melt into geography such as rocks and become part of the landscape. At multiple times, he said he was done with examples only to add another. It was all part of his presentation called “The Plastic Crisis: Turning off the Tap.”
“Our only recommendation (at Beyond Plastics) is that we have to reduce plastic production. We have to turn off that tap, the plastic production tap,” Sayer said.
After his discussion, students went from the basement of the library to the second floor for break-out sessions involving ways to think about the total plastic production, using plain white rice as stand-ins for plastic bottles produced.
Environmentalists brought a hawk, an owl and a vulture to show, with discussion of the ways that plastic affects animals. Trish Marki of the Wildlife Institute of Eastern New York, told the students that the vulture is the raptor most susceptible to plastic consumption.
That was an echo from Sayer’s earlier presentation.
Sayer showed a picture of scattered remains of an albatross carcass, with a pile of plastic where its stomach should have been. The plastic likely made the bird feel full so it ate too little and died. However, the story does not stop there, he said.
Since the plastic does not breakdown, other animals—perhaps a carrion-eating vulture—could ingest pieces of the plastic that already killed one bird.
Warren County Solid Waste Coordinator Scott Royael also highlighted something Sayer turned to a number of times: Much of the trouble with plastic was unintentional. Royael said that plastic bottles may have been developed to help get water to locations that did not have it. The bottle was a safe, effective way to transport water, but it is now his job to help reduce that reliance on plastics in the county, he said.
Sayer listed a similar example of water filters designed to clean water and make it safe for drinking. The filters often have plastic components, and the smallest particles leave the filter and enter the water so that a quart of water in a plastic bottle has as many as 250,000 nanoparticles of plastic.
The day was an event hosted by Crandall Library’s new Sustainability Committee, which acknowledged in a statement that plastic plays an important role in the modern world, particularly in the medical fields and PVC piping, but the goal was to educate people about the role of single-use plastics.
Committee chair and local attorney Elizabeth Little-Hogan said in the statement that the library hopes to educate and motivate students about the issue without “increasing students’ eco-anxiety.”
Library Director Kathy Naftaly added, in the statement: “Libraries throughout the world are discovering that libraries are excellent venues for demonstrating sustainability to our communities. Teaching youth is a good place to start.”
Sayer offered some close-to-home changes they might try in their schools, such as asking the cafeteria to hold a “no plastics day.” Or they can encourage the schools to switch to aluminum cups if they currently use plastic cups and finger foods at various events to limit the amount of plastic ware.
Students from Queensbury, Glens Falls and South Glens Falls participated.
G. Stephen Thurston is the managing editor of The Post-Star. He oversees the news room. Contact: 518-742-3225, sthurston@poststar.com.