Book review: Erica Cirino uncovers the depths of and ways to belay humanity’s plastic addiction
We perceive the oceans as expansive, ancient, everlasting, never to be spoiled, writes Erica Cirino in her debut book Thicker Than Water, before showing us how far from truth this perception is. The oceans have a pervasive rival: "Plastic is everywhere we look".
"What eighty years ago was an unknown phenomenon today has turned into one of the worst environmental crises in history," Cirino writes. From medical devices, to clothing, "virtually all plastic we make today depends on us tapping into oil and gas". Those who espouse plastic, cover up the fact that it cannot benignly decompose. And when it does break down, plastic begets…plastic…microplastic…nanoplastic.
"Plastic, the poster-child material of industrialization, was created to defy nature, to game the ephemerality of life. And so, plastic persists.” The dangers with plastic, as Cirino shows us, are physical and chemical—blocking the digestive tracts of albatrosses and adding hormone-disrupting chemicals into our environment and bodies. Plastic is changing the nature of life on Earth.
So, more than 110 years on since the first petrochemical-based plastic—Bakelite—was invented, what are we going to do about it? Cirino’s book title, after all, contains a subtitle, Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis.
First, we need to fully understand the scale of the problem. We've produced and therefore amassed billions of metric tons of petrochemical-based plastic. More than three-quarters of plastic that's been made since the mid-1900s was used merely once or twice before being thrown out. Much of it makes its way into the air, land and water, but the extent of plastic pollution is only beginning to be understood, by scientists, individuals, and communities concerned by the plastic piling up around them.
"Plastic acts as an imposter," writes Cirino. "By 2020, humans had created enough petrochemical-based plastic to outweigh the mass of all marine and land animals combined, by a factor of two...more than 50 percent of all sea turtles have consumed plastic at some point in their lives…By 2050 scientists expect 99 percent of all seabirds will have eaten plastic."
We learn that wildlife's affinity for microplastic is in part associated with its odor, likened to dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a chemical released by algae. Some animals such as seabirds rely on DMS tracking to find food at sea falling victim to this olfactory trap. Anchovies and corals too are drawn to microplastic's signature scent. What's more is that "Pieces of microplastic and nanoplastic that have been submerged in ocean water act like small sponges, absorbing toxins—such as pesticides and heavy metals—from seawater." So, in addition to plastic posing choking and digestive system hazards, and containing plasticizers like BPA, toxins are hitching rides on plastic (“the vector effect”) and are in and of themselves hormone-disrupting, behavior-warping, immune system compromising, even carcinogenic.
Apart from ingesting plastic, we’re also inhaling it. “From what we can tell, it’s possible people are breathing in around eleven pieces of microplastic per hour when indoors,” Dr. Alvise Vianello tells Cirino in a lab in Denmark where he’s built a mannequin with lungs that ape human breathing. We’re no safer outdoors. Plastic is being colonized by harmful viruses and bacteria. Plastic debris, tested in Zanzibar by Dr. Kristian Syberg, contains E. coli, cholera and salmonella. Some of this debris, notably plastic bottles, may get collected and reused, for example by street vendors selling sugar cane juice.
Cirino travels from sink to source to understand what we must do to solve the problem.
Here’s where the scientists become more scarce and community members enter the scene. We visit Welcome, Louisiana, a predominantly Black community facing environmental racism. Welcome is located in St. James Parish, already home to a dozen industrial complexes spewing out lifespan-shortening levels of pollution. There, retired special education teacher Sharon Lavigne is currently working to stop a $9.4-billion plastics manufacturing complex that Formosa Plastics, a Taiwanese company, wants to build near her house. Speaking up, speaking out, sharing information, and demanding government and corporate accountability helped Lavigne and RISE successfully block construction of a plastic complex planned by Chinese petrochemical giant Wanhua in 2019.
Industry denies having blood on its hands; instead, corporate players want to “educate” consumers including about plastics recycling and reuse—the same narrative they’ve adhered to for the past 70 years and counting. Cirino reveals how major petrochemical and plastic corporations use deafening PR campaigns to put the onus on the object-laden consumer while continuing to put people—especially communities of color, low-income neighborhoods, and rural communities in cash-strapped nations that inherit others’ trash—at grave risk of danger. For example, Turkey imports more than 48,000 metric tons of plastic from the UK, Belgium, Germany, Italy and France every month. Foreign recyclables, mostly from the U.S., Canada and the European Union, which China stopped importing after implementing “Operation National Sword” have been displaced to Malaysia and Vietnam.
Peggy Shepard, of WE ACT for Environmental Justice in New York and part of the White House’s first environmental justice advisory council, knows the root of the problem. “We must transition away from an economy based on fossil fuels, and that includes plastics.” The communities most harmed by the plastic pollution crisis, and the reinforcement of the systemic racism it fuels, must be prioritized and involved in this transition forward.
But, as they sense the global shift in climate change policy, big oil and gas are “banking on turning ancient carbon stocks into plastic”. By 2030, plastic production is expected to double; by 2050, to quadruple. Behind this production are billionaire corporations. Cirino names them, as we should: Formosa, Ineos, Sabic, Dow, Sinopec, and BASF.
Ultimately, we learn we must wean ourselves off plastic while cleaning it up—on various scales, from personal to societal. The key ingredient in solving the plastic crisis is not a fancy technological fix or plastic-devouring bacteria—but a fundamental major shift in human values, one Cirino seems to have herself experienced on her journey from problem to solutions. We must be accountable for throwaway culture, and hold to account the corporations that fuel the crisis in the first place.
Malene Møhl, member of the Circular Copenhagen team, sums it up well, “You wouldn’t just mop up water off your floor if your bathtub were overflowing. You’d turn off the tap.”
To find out how, read Cirino’s book.
Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis by Erica Cirino: https://islandpress.org/books/thicker-water
Published by Island Press on October 7, 2021
ISBN-10: 1642831379