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Item 4: Ordinance Encouraging Use of Reusable Bags
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Item 4: Ordinance Encouraging Use of Reusable Bags
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Bag Ban Public Testimony 7/24/2012 – 9/17/2012 <br /> <br />CORVALLIS, Ore. – There is a lot of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean, but claims that the “Great <br />Garbage Patch” between California and Japan is twice the size of Texas are grossly exaggerated, <br />according to an analysis by an Oregon State University scientist. <br /> <br />Further claims that the oceans are filled with more plastic than plankton, and that the patch has been <br />growing tenfold each decade since the 1950s are equally misleading, pointed out Angelicque “Angel” <br />White, an assistant professor of oceanography at Oregon State. <br /> <br />“There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans is troubling, but this kind of <br />exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists,” White said. “We have data that allow us to make <br />reasonable estimates; we don’t need the hyperbole. Given the observed concentration of plastic in the <br />North Pacific, it is simply inaccurate to state that plastic outweighs plankton, or that we have observed <br />an exponential increase in plastic.” <br /> <br />White has pored over published literature and participated in one of the few expeditions solely aimed at <br />understanding the abundance of plastic debris and the associated impact of plastic on microbial <br />communities. <br /> <br />That expedition was part of research funded by the National Science Foundation through C-MORE, the <br />Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education. <br /> <br />The studies have shown is that if you look at the actual area of the plastic itself, rather than the entire <br />North Pacific subtropical gyre, the hypothetically “cohesive” plastic patch is actually less than 1 percent <br />of the geographic size of Texas. <br /> <br />“The amount of plastic out there isn’t trivial,” White said. “But using the highest concentrations ever <br />reported by scientists produces a patch that is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size.” <br /> <br />Another way to look at it, White said, is to compare the amount of plastic found to the amount of water <br />in which it was found. “If we were to filter the surface area of the ocean equivalent to a football field in <br />waters having the highest concentration (of plastic) ever recorded,” she said, “the amount of plastic <br />recovered would not even extend to the 1-inch line.” <br /> <br />Recent research by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that the amount of <br />plastic, at least in the Atlantic Ocean, hasn’t increased since the mid-1980s – despite greater production <br />and consumption of materials made from plastic, she pointed out. <br /> <br />“Are we doing a better job of preventing plastics from getting into the ocean?” White said. “Is more <br />plastic sinking out of the surface waters? Or is it being more efficiently broken down? We just don’t <br />know. But the data on hand simply do not suggest that ‘plastic patches’ have increased in size. This is <br />certainly an unexpected conclusion, but it may in part reflect the high spatial and temporal variability of <br />plastic concentrations in the ocean and the limited number of samples that have been collected.” <br /> <br />The hyperbole about plastic patches saturating the media rankles White, who says such exaggeration <br />can drive a wedge between the public and the scientific community. One recent claim that the garbage <br />patch is as deep as the Golden Gate Bridge is tall is completely unfounded, she said. <br /> <br />
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