Neal Stephenson's Plastic Island: How Our Throwaway Culture

1.1 Introduction

Waste regulation in the United States did not always consist of large green Groot trucks arriving weekly on Fridays, strict EPA environmental protection laws, and the widespread implementation of teaching children to “save and recycle” in schools. In fact, the US has a long and disheveled history with waste management, with some infamous disasters longing to be forgotten. Neal Stephenson’s Zodiac, a self-dubbed “eco-thriller,” tackles in a fictional setting some of these waste management dilemmas using politicians, industry/company leaders, media, and technology. Stephenson’s 1988 novel was published at a time of heightening public consciousness of waste management and addresses the core factors of regulating this crisis,

applicable within the story and in a modern EPA era.
2.1 Government in Zodiac
In Zodiac, the police and EPA fail to strictly enforce the laws and regulations against improper company disposal practice. Thus, mavericks such as S.T. and Tom assume those roles, illegally accessing a restricted pipeline to collect chemical samples (Stephenson, 1988, ch. 11). After a brief conversation with the state trooper charged with arresting them, S.T. convinces the trooper of the company’s malpractices and notes, “the EPA has offices full of mediocre chemists… led by political appointees” (Stephenson, 1988, ch. 7). As a government agency, the EPA is led by appointed officials with industrial ties that create inherent bias in their judgements – as such, they tend to cast a blind eye over certain companies as a graceful political gesture; however, this unfortunately means the regulations are ineffective and unadhered to.

2.2 Government bona fide
Though the EPA was largely ineffective for most of twentieth century, several practices it instituted in the latter half played a significant role in reducing improper waste disposal, such as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1965, which sought to “protect human health and the environment from the potential hazards of waste disposal” (EPA, 2013). While this bill was a crucial first step in the proper regulation of waste disposal, it gave states and their potentially biased governments leeway in determining regulations, as the act merely suggested states to develop guidelines based on a set of recommendations approved by the EPA. Unsurprisingly, in Zodiac, states with more lax policies such as Massachusetts quickly found themselves with the massive landfill of Spectacle Island, which collected trash for over fifty years and became a tremendous public hazard. While no such extreme conditions appeared in the US, it serves as an important reminder of why government-dictated policies are key to maintaining order in many cases. Most recently, however, the EPA addressed an environmental aspect crucial to Zodiac – water – and learned from their mistakes to create steadfast guidelines themselves. The 2016 bill, Requirements for Municipal Solid Waste Landfills, states that all “facility owners and operators must install a groundwater monitoring system that can collect samples from the uppermost aquifer” and that “all groundwater monitoring systems must be certified by a qualified groundwater scientist” (EPA, 2016). An essential difference between the 2016 bill and 1965 bill is the rigidity of enforcement – with modern technologies and heightened awareness, the EPA stringently requires companies to check their landfills for chemical content – yet another demonstration for the power and value of governmental intervention.

3.1 Industry in Zodiac
The reasons behind improper dumping practices are abundant and sensical, as not only is it a simple endeavor, but also an inexpensive one as compared to treating the waste for chemicals and ensuring that it is disposed of via the proper, albeit convoluted methods of the EPA. Consequently, companies guilty of these duplicitous methods often downplay their practices to escape public backlash, often citing a lack of environmental understanding as fallback for their practices if caught. For instance, in chapter 2, the management expert heading Basco, works public relations by comparing their pollution of the harbor with an illustration of an “eye dropper full of compounds going into a railway tank car of pure water” (Stephenson, 1988, ch. 2). As dumping several gallons of waste into a pool would seem significant for the public, the “number one polluter of Boston Harbor” miniaturizes it to appease the public eye. However, it is highly possible that Basco truly fails to realize the implications of their actions, as S.T. and Tom discover that Basco has an enormous waste pipe that disperses waste across this large pipe in an “effort” to reduce concentrated waste, which is not at all a relevant method. Tom fumes about how these companies “think this was the answer. Diffusion… they figure if they could spread their pollution out across a mile of that current, it would more or less disappear” (Stephenson, 1988, ch. 7). Though it is difficult to predict whether company leaders fail to understand what they say or are purposefully deceiving the public, it nevertheless demonstrates a low level of environmental education and that company leaders should be the primary target of environmental efforts.
3.2 Industry bona fide
Many companies under today’s EPA regulations also claim to be unaware of the ramifications, but fortunately, they are held at stricter penalties than Basco. It is the duty of company leaders and their directors to educate themselves on the implication of each of their actions, especially if they are evading laws. Many landfill companies currently structure their landfills with layers of clay separated by thin sheets of plastic. Each layer contains oxygen-free waste, 66% of which is biodegradable and can be recycled as methane gas that is captured and sold as an energy source (Ashford, M, 2010). However, methane is twenty times as potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions). Furthermore, 52% of municipal solid waste is transported to landfills, of which only a mere 34.6% is recycled and an even scarcer 12.8% is composted, leading to the extreme release of methane gas into the atmosphere. However, despite these dire conditions, the EPA has failed to enact any laws regarding the degradation or removal of methane gas. Thus, current situations parallel those in Zodiac: namely, companies left to their own devices choose the economically-friendly and environmentally-deleterious method.
4.1 Media in Zodiac
As a crucial tool for both the spread of educational messages about the environment to the downfall of a company that fails to adhere to EPA regulations, the media is a powerful tool for environmentalists and companies alike. In Zodiac, the media was the ultimate downfall of Basco, whose PR department was unable to stopper the outpour of information after S.T. informed the newspaper about Dolmacher’s bug. With a headline of “Harbor of Death! MIT Prof: Toxic Menace Could Destroy All Life,” it is hardly difficult to envision how such a malicious title tied to a company evading regulations could lead to an entire public image disaster for the company.

4.2 Media bona fide
While there was little evidence to support the idea of educating the public about environmental concerns through media in Zodiac, that is an efficient method of doing so.

Activists frequently purchase airtime to influence individuals so much many even proceed to become activists themselves. One example of an issue that the media has highlighted is the case of “Plastic Island,” an island of trash that has formed in the North Pacific Ocean due to currents and weather conditions. One article is titled, “Plastic Island: How Our Throwaway Cultures is Turning Paradise into a Graveyard” (Nick Walsh, 2017). The pathos of the title induces emotion – specifically, anger, confusion, and sadness – over the actions of humans that destroy habitats and form a disgusting pile of trash in the ocean. In fact, the trash aggregated in that area is speculated to affect and potentially endanger the survival of several species of birds and current restoration efforts have been largely unsuccessful due to lack of funding and the extreme measures required to resolve the problem. Nowadays, social media has also taken a prominent role that is rapidly replacing newspapers, if having not already replaced. Hashtags and trending news stories are shared across communities, garner intense interest from media in other forms, and inspire or bandwagon many people into joining the environmentalist

movement.
5.1 Technology in Zodiac
Environmental technology comes in all types, from filtration straws to biodegradable shopping bags. However, Zodiac takes technology up a notch or two with Dolmacher’s bug, an anaerobe that was meant to remove toxic chemicals from the Boston Harbor that originated from the industrial waste. However, due to the biotech company not stringently testing the organism enough (Basco needed an immediate solution), they did not discover until much later that if the equilibrium of the harbor is disturbed, the anaerobe will not remove toxins, but in fact produce its own. In an effort to remove the bugs, S.T. suggested exposing the contaminated parts of the harbor (where the bugs reside) to oxygen, which would kill the bugs, as they are obligate anaerobes, or microorganisms killed by exposure to normal atmospheric levels of oxygen.
5.2 Technology bona fide
While nobody is trying to create a superbug to eliminate toxins in Boston Harbor or Asian carp from the great lakes, the most prominent environmental issue today is that of greenhouse gas production and accumulation. Similar to the aforementioned methane gas dilemma, greenhouse gases are also produced from landfills and their release needs to be stoppered. Waste renewal energies have been steadily increasing as a market, with thermochemical, biochemical, and physicochemical conversion taking the lead in efforts estimated to reach $37.6 billion by 2020 (Balch, O., 2015). Many of these methods have been implemented in areas such as Libya, which would massively benefit from a renewable and relatively inexpensive method for not only properly disposing of waste, but also creating energy in a more efficient and biofriendly method as opposed to oil or similar imports. The rapid expansion of industry in Libya has led to increased urbanization and growing population, which have dramatically increased the amount of MSW (municipal solid waste) generated. The technology of WTE (waste-to-energy) incineration, which recovers energy by producing electricity and/or steam from discarded MSW, is expected to play a pivotal role in MSW management in Libya.
6.1 Conclusion
However, Stephenson raises as many questions as he answers in the story – namely, would any of his “solutions” be applicable in real society, and how can public awareness be increased even further? Waste management is undoubtedly an issue that will plague society for generations to come, but if environmentalists take even a little (and hopefully just a little) of S.T.’s passion, the United States will have taken a significant step towards regulating waste management in a manner most conducive to preserving the environment (Tarek et. al 2014).