Not a Pretty Picture

By Ray Rivers

June 2nd, 2023

BURLINGTON, ON

OPINION

I recently attended a Pollution Probe event to honour Edward Burtynsky, the Canadian born world famous photographer and artist known for his large format landscape art work. Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, in 2019, received a similar honour for his environmental leadership on acid rain, Great Lakes restoration, the government’s Green Plan and initial efforts on combating climate change.

The stuff we through away has to end up somewhere.

Pollution Probe is generally considered one of the more moderate of the environment organizations. They are not typically known to protest environmental policy by climbing the CN tower or tying themselves to old growth timber and taunting chain sawing loggers. Founded by students and their professors at the University of Toronto in 1969, Probe receives broad support from industry and government as well as concerned individuals.

Probe has an enviable track record in research and bringing together various sectors to a cause. They can point to the banning of DDT; the 3 R’s recycling program; reduced nutrient loading into the Great Lakes; and contributing to the fight against acid rain. Probe is currently undertaking a plastics pollution recovery project in the Great Lakes. Mr. Burtnysky, a soft spoken environmentalist, had recently undertaken an exhibition of his work focusing on plastic pollution. It was a fitting and timely tribute.

The federal government’s commitment to ban the manufacture and importation of a number of single use plastic products, mainly plastic packaging, straws and stir sticks, is in place, though it may take some time before current stocks are depleted. And after that the government’s sights need to focus on the holy grail of plastic pollution – the PET bottle.

Pollution Probe organized a panel to discuss the plastics issue, following Mr. Burtynsky’s address. Notably, there was a representative from NOVA Chemicals on the panel. Nova, a major manufacturer of plastics, is headquartered in Calgary though ownership is offshore in the United Arab Emirates. The debate was cordial; it was clear that in this forum nobody was yet prepared to address the elephant in the room – getting rid of the plastic bottle.

Plastic water bottles

Ethylene, a hydrocarbon gas, is used to produce polyethylene, ethylene oxide, PVC, styrene, and as the name implies, (polyethylene terephthalate) PET bottles. NOVA has a lot to lose were PET bottles the next target, so they talked up their efforts at recycling as a viable solution. But they must understand that those PET bottles raise enough health and environmental questions that banning them for most applications will be the only solution.

For example we all know that you should never leave a water bottle in your car on a hot day since it could leach unsafe levels of antimony trioxide and phthalates, basic building blocks in the production of most PET bottles. And it follows that they probably contaminate what’s inside the bottle to some extent even at lower temperature, and possibly even when frozen.

There is the matter of micro plastics. According to a Penn State study municipal tap water (presumably from sources which also receive wastewater) was shown to contain something like five or six plastic particles per litre of water. But samples taken from bottled water exceeded that by at least 50 times. As the study notes, the researchers are yet unsure about the full health consequences of ingesting that amount of plastic particles; it can’t be good.

Moreover, according to the National Library of Medicine “Almost all commercially available plastic products we sampled—independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source—leached chemicals having reliably detectable [Estrogen Activity] EA, including those advertised as [Bisphenol A) BPA free. BPA is prohibited for use in infant drinking bottles in Canada and the USA. In some cases, BPA-free products released chemicals having more EA than did BPA-containing products.

This type of estrogen is a concern since it mimics or antagonizes naturally occurring estrogens and can produce many biological and adverse health effects in mammals, according to the journal Environmental Health. These include “early puberty in females, reduced sperm counts, altered functions of reproductive organs, obesity, altered sex-specific behaviours, and increased rates of some breast, ovarian, testicular, and prostate cancers”. That should be scary enough to make us want to stop buying plastic bottles used for everything from water to peanut butter.

Finally there is the waste plastic matter, land filled mounds of used bottles and icebergs of plastic floating in our oceans. It is what Edward Burtynsky has captured with his magnificent photography and brought to our attention through his exhibitions.

According to Pollution Probe some 10 million kg of plastic waste enter the Great Lakes each year. Everyone agrees that we should continue recycling plastic. But we all should understand that recycling alone is not enough. It will not be until the plastic revolution is over.

Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.   Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa.  Tweet @rayzrivers.   Ray Rivers has previously acted as consultant for Pollution Probe and represented the organization at an earlier Congress of the Parties (COP) climate change meeting.}

Background links:

Probe Gala –

Burtynsky –

NOVA Chemicals –

PET –

Pollution Probe Great Lakes Plastic Clean Up –

Federal Plastic Regulation –

Burtynsky Plastic Pollution –

Estrogen Activity

EA Effects –