Litter, pollution and seafood

Shannon Bohrer

(11/2019) "Everything that can be invented has been invented" - Mr. Charles H. Duell, the commissioner of the U.S. patent office in 1899.

My wife starts most days with a morning walk. She often carries a trash bag and picks up what she finds, but there seems to be a never-ending volume of discarded materials. Her, our dog Lily and a neighbor walk about a mile and a half on back roads adjacent to our farm. They pass less than a dozen homes and yet they encounter a continuum of discarded trash. On a daily basis the amount of discarded materials is not that great; however the cumulative value is substantial. With less than a dozen homes and light traffic, one has to wonder, who is doing all of the littering?

My wife, and rightfully so, has at times been greatly annoyed with people that discard their unwanted materials along public roads. Since she has been picking the trash for years, and this has been on country roads with little traffic, one has to question how bad is the problem. On some highways, there are road signs saying that the road way has been adopted by a designate civic and commercial organization. The adoption is for the purpose of cleaning up the highway, by picking up the discarded trash. Of course if we examine the larger issue we find that our entire world, even our oceans have been trashed. A few years ago some east coast beaches were closed because of medical waste, including needles, had washed up on the shore.

Literally, the problem today is that the volume of trash is greater than it has ever been. Our environment, our land and water is being polluted at alarming rates. The micro-plastics in our oceans are being ingested by fish that we consume, and we in turn we are ingesting our own pollution.

"There are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. Of that mass, 269,000 tons float on the surface, while some four billion plastic microfibers per square kilometer litter the deep sea."

The majority of plastics in the ocean started out as discarded trash on land. The discarded trash on Keysville road ends up in the drainage ditches that feed into Toms Creek. Toms Creek feeds into the Monocacy, then the Potomac, to the Bay and then to the Ocean. While the polluted oceans are far away, the issues related to the problems are close to home.

Given my age, I remember government campaign ads designed to reduce or eliminate littering and pollution. The first that I remember was a television ad, with an American Indian, who had a tear running down his cheek as he observed the pollution of streams. Since that first campaign, we have had projects to clean rivers and streams, clean vacant lots, clean highways and even projects to clean the oceans. All of these projects have been successful with the collection of trash. However there is no indication that any of them worked long term. All the trash that has been picked up has been replaced with more debris.

Trying to clean up the world with voluntary programs has not worked. Nor, do I believe we ever can. If we could pick up all of the trash from the entire world in one day, it might be trash free – for one brief moment before more trash is discarded. Similar to other problems we have, we sometimes focus on the wrong end. Instead of focusing on cleaning up the trash, maybe we should look at preventing the problem from occurring, or to be more correct, from re-occurring.

We have strict laws on littering but the enforcement in spotty at best. Literally, the problem is not viewed as urgent, but more of a nuisance issue. Possibly, the problem will have some urgency, only when people become ill from ingesting seafood contaminated with micro plastics, which is already occurring. Maybe we should view littering for what it has beome, a health issue, which will only grow.

Enforcement does have a cost, so thankfully the current fines, providing arrest are made, are sufficient to fund enforcement programs. In Maryland the fine for littering is under "Md. Criminal Code Ann. §10-110." The penalties range from 30 days of incarceration and a $1500 fine, and up to "imprisonment not exceeding 5 years or a fine not exceeding $30,000 or both." The penalties are dependent upon the volume of trash. Additionally the courts can require community service, additional cleanup and even suspension of drivers’ license. Since we already have the good laws, we could use better enforcement practices of the existing laws.

One approach for better enforcement could be cameras. Entity(s) could use cameras in areas were trash accumulates. The camera would record the dumping and the government could track the violators using the motor vehicle registrations.

In large metropolitan areas they already have cameras in place for security reasons. These cameras have direct feeds that would enable the entity to observe the offense in real time, meaning they could notify the authorities.

In rural areas the basic trail camera could be used and the information retrieved. In problem areas, the entity(s) could install constant feed cameras so the information could be monitored, or at least recorded. While this does sound like a lot of effort, think about the future health of our oceans and the seafood that the world depends on.

"Scientists at Ghent University in Belgium… calculated that shellfish lovers are eating up to 11,000 plastic fragments in their seafood each year. We [the consumer] absorb fewer than 1%, but they will still accumulate in the body over time." Reported in 2017

I am not advocating that we install cameras on every tree or every utility pole, nor am I saying that the use of cameras will solve this problem. I respect ones right to privacy in a free society. However, I am saying that we have a food related health problem that is only growing. Even if single use plastics were no longer manufactured or legal anywhere in the world, the problem that currently exists will continue for years. While we should continue cleaning up the trash, we also need to effective enforcement for prevention.

The idea is straightforward in that you are making the person(s) who engages in the littering, responsible for the behavior. While many think of littering as a visual image; it really is a health issue that is growing. When people see warning labels on seafood, that explain how many plastic microfibers are in each unit of the product, maybe then we will perceive the threat. Maybe then we will act.

"The Significant Problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them" - Albert Einstein