To the editor: Our morning walks on Nantucket inevitably lead us to the island’s festive and delicious coffee shops. I bring my thermos. At some establishments, the baristas fill it without question. Bartlett’s Farm even offers a 20 percent discount if you BYO coffee flask. But some of the island’s downtown coffee shops have policies barring the use of customer bottles – staff are only allowed to serve beverages in single-use disposable cups. Perhaps this is a relic from 2020, those early days before we understood how COVID gets transmitted.
I savor the coffee via whatever path it takes to get inside me, even via a throwaway cup. But as someone who works in the petrochemical field, my preference would be to skip the side order of microplastics. We ingest these miniscule, jagged plastic fragments with every sip. A single one-liter bottle of water contains an average of 240,000 microplastic fragments suspended in the water. Hot liquids (like my coffee) speed the chemical leaching and the transmission of microplastics.
Plastics are made by combining gas, oil, or coal with synthetic chemicals such as PFAS, phthalates, bisphenols, and flame retardants. Officially Nantucket bans many petroleum-based single-use plastics, but the extent of the law’s implementation remains mixed. In any case, many bio-based plastics and cup liners are still made up of PFAS and other toxic chemicals. These plastics, too, degrade into microplastics, and they present a unique disposal challenge given their elevated capacity to release climate-heating gases in the landfill.
It is the smallest microplastics that are the most common and most dangerous since they can penetrate cell membranes, induce inflammation, and disrupt metabolic processes. A study in nature earlier this year discovered that the average adult brain may contain as much plastic as is found in an entire plastic spoon. Researchers link microplastics to cancer, Alzheimer’s, intestinal disease, cardiovascular disease, reproductive dysfunction, and inflammatory diseases. According to UMass Boston researchers, microplastics are prevalent well beyond our coffee, in Nantucket’s marine life, ocean water, sand, and air.
Every step in the supply chain releases harmful chemicals and climate-heating gases. It is predicted that by 2040, as much as 19 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions will come from plastics. Plastics production is on track to double by 2040 and triple by 2050. Most at risk are the millions of low-income and historically marginalized Americans who reside in the shadow of plastics fabrication facilities in Texas, Louisiana, and Appalachia, unprotected from the ‘round-the-clock toxic pollution and the all-too-frequent petrochemical leaks, fires, and explosions.
More than 40 percent of plastics are “disposable,” designed to be used just once, yet there exists no safe and economical way to get rid of them. Nantucket sends a lot of its plastic waste to the mainland, but that does not solve the problem, it only moves it elsewhere. For decades the plastics industry has been promoting plastics recycling, a process hindered by the more than 16,000 chemicals in plastic. Only a small portion of the plastics waste stream is recyclable, and plastics recycling generates stunning amounts of microplastics. The reclaimed plastic that emerges is of lower grade and higher toxicity. The bottled water shelves in Nantucket’s grocery stores feature some of these recycled plastics.
Desperate to convince the public and regulators that it has solved the plastics crisis; the plastics lobby is now engaged in a high-stakes campaign to burn plastic trash. They are calling the process “advanced recycling,” yet most of these technologies involve a decades-old incineration process that turns the plastic into air pollution, toxic ash, and contaminated soils. Waste Options Nantucket LLC has been actively exploring the use of these heavily polluting plastics-combustion technologies (called pyrolysis and gasification) but thankfully it appears that this effort is on hold.
These incinerators produce waste-plastic oils that can be made into fuel. But a 2023 investigation shows the elevated toxicity of such fuels: A Chevron refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, received EPA approval to use the pyrolysis oils to make jet and boat fuel. EPA scientists determined that air pollution produced from burning the jet fuel is expected to cause cancer in one in every four people exposed over a lifetime. The boat fuel ingredient is even more toxic: every person exposed over a lifetime would be expected to get cancer. Nantucket pilots and boat operators had best avoid using such fuels.
Island communities are unique when it comes to plastic trash. The garbage comes in with the tide, literally, and with every plane and ferry that arrives. At the same time, communities such as Nantucket are especially well situated toreduce their contribution to the plastic crisis by developing re-use and re-fill systems and giving people choices. Nantucket may not be able fix plastics policies for the entire country, but small adjustments can have an outsized effect on the health of Nantucketers and can help shift the island away from the use of these persistent, toxic materials.
A simple first step would be to enable customers to use their own empty flasks at coffee shops and other establishments, and even better, to offer a small price discount. Shops and grocers could also create systems to encourage BYO food containers in place of single-use plastic packaging. An option that’s been successful in many universities is to offer bar-coded reusable and returnable stainless-steel take-out containers. Such a re-use and refill program could work well in a small geographically bounded community such as Nantucket, with extra drop-off sites at the airport and the ferry docks for those who forget to return their dishes earlier.
Whether petroleum-based or bioplastics, single-use disposables are not the answer. Let’s give Nantucket’s customers the opportunity to say “no thank you” to the side order of microplastics.
Cynthia Palmer, Senior Analyst, Petrochemicals
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