Poison plastic

Honolulu Weekly
January 12, 2005

Honolulu Diary

Has Hawai'i made too much 'opala from plastic lei? According to a national report conducted by the Virginia-based Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), released last month on the hazards of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Hawai'i is the nation's tenth highest incinerator of plastic. Hawai'i incinerates 3,434 tons of PVC a year at the state's main facility on O'ahu, according to the report, PVC, Bad News Come in Threes: The Poison Plastic, Health Hazards, and the Looming Waste Crisis.

Ubiquitous to contemporary life, PVC has a wide variety of uses—from blister packs that are thrown away within minutes of purchase to linoleum floors that can last several decades.

When it was first developed in the 1920s, PVC was used to make shower curtains because of its water-resistant properties. Today, 45 percent of the PVC produced annually lines the country in the form of electrical and plumbing piping, but it is also used to make credit cards, beach balls, luggage, shoes, carpets and plastic wrap, among hundreds of other plastic products.

Sen. J. Kalani English (D-Hana, East and Upcountry Maui, Moloka'i, Lana'i, Kaho'olawe), in response to the report, has launched a mini public awareness campaign to urge Hawai'i residents to ease up on buying and using PVC to hopefully diminish the damaging effects of the plastic on the environment.

"If PVC waste is burned in incinerators, it creates cancer-causing dioxin and if it is buried in landfills, it pollutes groundwater," says English, who is especially concerned about the tarpaulin-like ground covering made from PVC that is commonly used in Maui's sugar cane fields. During cane-field fires, the plastic covering is burned with the crop. English fears that continuing the practice will eventually cause harmful amounts of toxic by-products to leach into the soil, contaminating the groundwater.

The PVC compound varies considerably and cannot be easily recycled because it contaminates bottle collection programs due to the chemicals added to make the plastic heat resistant. More menacing, however, is the fact that PVC piping and building materials need to be replaced every 20 to 30 years. Remember Hawai'i's 1980s building boom? All the PVC fittings in those structures will soon need to be replaced. Whether the old stuff is burned or buried, it spells a case of island toxic shock.

—Laurie Anne Agnese

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