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Addressing the issue of microplastics in the wake of the MicrobeadFree Waters Act—a new standard can facilitate improved policy. Jason P. McDevitt, Craig S. Criddle, Molly Morse, Robert Clark Hale, Charles B. Bott, and Chelsea M. Rochman Environ. Sci. Technol., Just Accepted Manuscript • Publication Date (Web): 15 May 2017 Downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org on May 16, 2017
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Environmental Science & Technology
Addressing the issue of microplastics in the wake of the Microbead-Free Waters Act—a new standard can facilitate improved policy. Authors and Affiliations: Jason P. McDevitt*†, Craig S. Criddle‡, Molly Morse§, Robert C. Hale∥, Charles B. Bott⊥, and Chelsea M. Rochman# †
William and Mary Research Institute, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 23185, United States ‡ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Codiga Resource Recovery Center, Stanford University, Stanford, Califonia 94305, United States § Mango Materials, Oakland, California, United States ∥Department of Aquatic Health Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, Virginia 23062, United States ⊥Hampton Roads Sanitation District, Virginia Beach, Virginia 23455, United States # Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S3G5, Canada *Phone: (757)221-1751. E-mail:
[email protected].
Biography Jason McDevitt is a research scientist at the William and Mary Research Institute, president of the William and Mary Intellectual Property Foundation, and an entrepreneur in the biotech and consumer goods industries. Craig S. Criddle is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Codiga Resource Recovery Center at Stanford University. His research focuses on microbial biotechnology, including synthesis and biodegradation of plastic materials. Dr. Molly Morse is the CEO and co-founder of Mango Materials, a San Francisco Bay Area-based startup company that uses methane gas to feed bacteria that manufacture a naturally occurring biopolymer. She is currently working to scale the manufacturing technology to produce environmentally friendly materials. Robert C. Hale is a professor in the Department of Aquatic Health Sciences at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science; with a focus on the detection, sources, fate and impacts of organic pollutants, including polymer additives and microplastics. Charles Bott is the Director of Water Technology and Research at the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, and he is also an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech and Old Dominion University. Chelsea Rochman is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and has spent years researching the sources, sinks and ecological implications of plastic debris; she also translates her science beyond academia, recently writing policy briefs and serving as an expert witness on microplastics for the bill to ban microbeads in California (AB888).
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Environmental Science & Technology
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Abstract The United States Microbead-Free Waters Act was signed into law in December 2015. It is a bipartisan agreement that will eliminate one preventable source of microplastic pollution in the United States. Still, the bill is criticized for being too limited in scope, and also for discouraging the development of biodegradable alternatives that ultimately are needed to solve the bigger issue of plastics in the environment. Due to a lack of an acknowledged, appropriate standard for environmentally safe microplastics, the bill banned all plastic microbeads in selected cosmetic products. Here, we review the history of the legislation and how it relates to the issue of microplastic pollution in general, and we suggest a framework for a standard (which we call “Ecocyclable”) that includes relative requirements related to toxicity, bioaccumulation, and degradation/assimilation into the natural carbon cycle. We suggest that such a standard will facilitate future regulation and legislation to reduce pollution while also encouraging innovation of sustainable technologies. Introduction Plastics have become an indispensable material in modern society. Due to increased production and imperfect waste management, the accumulation of discarded plastics in the environment is escalating. Much of this plastic litter exists as small particles (microplastics, defined as
