Using fungi instead of petroleum
A series of fungi.
— Collage by BorgQueen
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Anything we can do to get off many manmade toxic chemicals the better, in small and large places. Researchers and business have been stepping up efforts to get off problematical chemicals by turning to natural solutions.
Boston’s WBUR reports that one quirky example is on Nantucket, which is experimenting with “MycoBuoys,” made from the root-like part of mushrooms (which, of course, are fungi), to replace petroleum-based Styrofoam buoys used in scallop, oyster, and mussel aquaculture to hold up spat collectors. The Styrofoam degrades, releasing microplastics that pose health risks to animal life in general. In this case, they may have been harming shellfish reproduction.
When shellfish reproduce, they spawn tiny larvae that move in the water until they find a structure to settle on. Once the larvae permanently attach to a surface, they are known as spat and, hopefully, grow to harvestable-sized shellfish.
The hope is that the buoys will last five to eight months. Town officials will see if their use can increase the number of scallops. If so, that could be an economic boon. Scallops sell for a pretty price.
Fungi can be used in a wide variety of ways to reduce the use of manmade chemicals. These include medicine, fuel, fertilizers, cosmetics, clothing and footwear. And reducing the production of manmade chemicals reduces the burning of fossil fuels.
Sonya Gurwitt: Former harbormaster cleans up a cove
Horace Field points to his handwork.
Photo by JOANNA DETZ, for ecoRI News (ecori.org)
By SONYA GURWITT, for ecoRI News (ecori.org)
MATTAPOISETT, Mass. — Horace Field has lived only meters from Brandt Island Cove for nearly two decades. The water’s edge is connected to Field’s backyard by a short, grassy path.
He now navigates the well-worn path bordered by trees and bushes with his black lab puppy, Piper, who bounds along close to his side, circling his knees. The path leads out onto the salt marsh, where water laps at the edge of spongy ground covered in tall, thin grass.
Field wanders through the grasses along the shoreline, untangling the occasional piece of plastic or bit of Styrofoam from vegetation. Piper follows his lead, rocketing back and forth around the marsh collecting sticks and shells to chew on briefly, before losing interest and running off again in search of a new prize.
Field pinches a a small piece of dirty Styrofoam between his fingers, examining it. This, he said, is a small reminder of the pollution that used to cover the salt marsh — Styrofoam everywhere.
“With your bare eyes right now as far as you can see that way and that way, what looked like almost junk and snow,” Field said, gesturing around him. “Big chunks and pieces of this and that.”
Now, though, the salt marsh is pristine. Thanks to Field’s efforts and persistence, the Styrofoam that once covered the cove has been almost entirely cleaned up.
The 83-year-old stares out across Brandt Island Cove, pointing out Brandt Island across the water. “Beyond the causeway there going over to Brandt Island is Nasketucket Bay,” he said. He also identified Leisure Shores Marina, just across the cove from his property, the culprit of the pollution. The place where the Styrofoam originated.
Field is protective of his 20-acre domain, which spans the shoreline between two white rocks. Though he has only lived here full time for 20 years, his attachment to the place goes back much further.
“I was born and brought up in Mattapoisett,” he said. “My father inherited a bunch of land up in Northfield (Mass.) moved the whole family up to the mountains. I was 12. Too late, I liked boats and water and that sort of thing. So when I earned my first monies ever, I came down and purchased this land. And then I just sat on it until I could afford to do something with it.”
In 1968, he built a small cottage on the land that he used as a vacation home.
“I was an international guy at work,” he said. “Whenever I got time off, I’d come back. I said, ‘Well, when I do retire that’s where I’m going to go.’”
He did just that, in 1998, building a house on the property, which he finished in 2000. Though retired, Field felt he needed something to occupy his time. He put his love of boats and water to use and became the Mattapoisett harbormaster, a post he held for the next 12 years.
It was during his tenure as harbormaster that he noticed more and more pieces of Styrofoam cropping up on his property and along the rest of the Mattapoisett shoreline, from small beads to large chunks.
The source of the pollution was no mystery — Field knew that the Leisure Shores Marina used uncovered Styrofoam blocks to keep its docks afloat. These were beginning to break down, allowing pieces of foam to float away.
“We’re on the prevailing wind side,” Field said. “And whatever comes out of that marina, which is right across the way, ends up here. We find everything. Oil cans, coke bottles ...”
He said the Styrofoam had always been here, “but the longer it went the worse it got.” He noted that over the years oil and age break the foam floats down.
In 2005, Field wrote a letter to the Board of Selectmen. He didn’t receive a response or even an acknowledgement of its receipt. Undeterred, Field kept at it — attending town meetings and talking to various committees and boards.
He told anyone who would listen that allowing these Styrofoam flotation blocks to break down and pollute the surrounding area shouldn’t be permitted. But nobody else seemed as willing to fight for a change.
It wasn’t until early 2013, after Field retired from the position of harbormaster, that he began to make progress. Fed up with the lack of response from the town and other government agencies, Field contacted theBuzzards Bay Coalition (BBC), a nonprofit “dedicated to the restoration, protection, and sustainable use and enjoyment” of Buzzards Bay and its watershed.
Field said the BBC took action immediately, sending a team to examine the problem. Korrin Petersen, senior attorney for the coalition, led that team. Petersen has been working for the BBC for more than a decade years, handling their local, state and federal advocacy at town halls and in the courts.
“From that moment on,” Field said, “I had a real ally. (Petersen) ended up sort of leading this team. I get all the credit, but I don’t deserve all the credit. It was a team effort. She did just an excellent job of garnering the right people and getting the word to the right places.”
Petersen also had high praise for Field. He made it easy to help, she said, like any good citizen watchdog should. He came to the coalition with plenty of pictures of the Styrofoam — from tiny pieces to ones 8 feet long, rolled up into the salt marsh — allowing the Petersen and the BBC to understand the problem right away.
“Horace’s documentation of the problem and his involvement from very early on was critical and so important to the ultimate success of the issue,” Petersen said. “That’s key, for citizens to know that they have to stay involved.”
She noted that having a paper trail to illustrate the extent and time frame of the damage eventually made legal and policy arguments to the town and to the state much easier.
Still, even with documentation, Petersen said she was shocked by what she and her team observed on the first visit to Field’s property.
“It was winter,” she recalled, “and the grasses weren’t growing, so we were really able to get out into the marsh and see the extent of the pollution that was occurring. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it in my time here.”
With the help of the Harvard Law School’s Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, she began to research which laws the pollution might violate. Petersen said they discovered that the saltwater marsh is a protected resource under the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act. This meant that the Styrofoam debris altering the salt marsh was a violation of that law.
With this information, they wrote a letter to the Mattapoisett Conservation Commission, to notify it of the violations. The commission then requested that the marina, the BBC and Field all come to a commission meeting to discuss the problem.
Petersen said the main problem was the unprotected Styrofoam floats that the marina was using. Best-management practices require floats to be covered in black plastic to prevent them from breaking down.
During the next two years, the parties argued back and forth during conservation commission hearings. Initially, the debate centered on the legality of the marina’s use of the Styrofoam blocks. The marina said it was legal. However, it soon became clear that its permit stated it was to use “encapsulated flotation.”
The debate then turned to the time frame for replacement of the blocks. Though the marina claimed it needed five years to replace all of the blocks, Petersen said, it ended up replacing all of the floats before the commission even came to its final resolution, in summer 2015.
Together with the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Conservation Commission also issued an agreement between the marina and the state requiring that marina clean up within 300 feet of mean high water and to retrieve and remove any Styrofoam within a 2,500-foot radius of the marina, Petersen said. That included the salt marsh in front of Field’s house.
“I would say that this was a victory,” Petersen said. “It was a great example of a citizen blowing the whistle and a regional advocacy organization coming together with the town to clean up a pollution source.”
Field said the process taught him some important lessons. “Be persistent, and be honest. Have a cause that is bulletproof, and don’t let up on it until you get satisfactory results,” he said.
Joyce Rowley: Plastic bags on way out of Mass.?
By JOYCE ROWLEY/ecoRI News contributor
Six years ago, the city of Somerville passed one of the first ordinances in New England requiring large retailers to recycle plastic shopping bags. Now it’s poised to be one of the first to ban the bag in Massachusetts.
“It was a great victory,” said Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz of the earlier campaign to recycle plastic bags. Gewirtz is confident that a new law eliminating plastic shopping bags will also become a reality.
The Somerville Board of Alderman recently sent a draft ordinance to the legislative matters committee for final review.
“I’ve heard nothing but support for it from residents," said Alderman Mark Niedergang, a member of the energy and environment special subcommittee. “It’s time has come.”
Citing impacts to marine and land ecosystems by thin-film plastic shopping bags, the law would allow only compostable or marine-degradable plastic bags that meet certain standards. Reusable plastic bags with 2.25 millimeter thickness or better, as well as durable bags of other materials, could be handed out to customers.
The new law would apply to businesses greater than 2,500 square feet or with three or more stores in single ownership that have a combined size of 2,500 square feet, and retail pharmacies of any size with two or more stores under the same ownership within city limits.
Convenience stores that have gross annual sales in excess of $1 million would have to comply.
“Customers ask for them,” said Ben Weiner, owner of a local liquor store who spoke in opposition to the ban at a public hearing in November. Holding up a black plastic bag used at liquor stores, he said the bags are a convenience.
Resident Maureen Barillaro brought a large plastic bag full of retailers’ shopping bags she had collected along the Mystic River before the hearing. Reading from a list, she ticked off the names of the retailers the bags came from, and included the black bags favored by liquor stores.
"Somerville is a growing city with a large population. So there’s a lot of plastic bags,” Barillaro said. “A plastic bag ban is really the only way we're ever going to eliminate this issue.”
Somerville would be the sixth Massachusetts municipality to ban plastic shopping bags. Brookline, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Great Barrington and Nantucket have bans in place.
Nantucket's sweeping biodegradable packaging ban, in place since 1990, calls for using anything other than plastic or Styrofoam on all “packaging added to or supplied by vendors or commercial establishments within the Town of Nantucket for merchandize of any type being removed from the establishment.”
Somerville also passed a ban last year on polystyrene (Styrofoam). The law took effect in May and became enforceable in October.
Both ordinances were modeled after Brookline — the city’s polystyrene and plastic bag ban took effect last year. Those ordinances passed by a vote of Town Meeting in 2012.
“It’s going surprisingly well,” said Dr. Alan Balsam, Brookline’s director of public health, whose department is charged with enforcing the bans. “We expected difficulties.”
Balsam’s department supplied retailers with a list of vendors that supply alternatives to plastic. Still, the polystyrene ban took longer to get full compliance.
“Polystyrene is in every food place; there are over 350 in town,” Balsam said.
This year, 100 food services got six-month exemptions as allowed by the law, and about 80 received an extension to the end of 2014. Most are now in compliance except for one or two items, such as plastic coffee-cup lids and the condiment containers in take-out restaurants, according to Balsam. The chain coffee shops such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks have alternatives to both the cups and lids.
“You go to the grocery stores, and people put one item in a plastic bag,” said Gewirtz, the Somerville alderman. “They leave with dozens of bags. And where do the bags end up? They end up in the landfills and the waterways. They choke marine life and they never biodegrade. My hope is that we'll get plastic bags banned statewide.”
Massachusetts has yet to pass a plastic reduction or elimination law, although there are five proposed bans in committee.
Editor’s note: SCATV public access coverage of the Nov. 20 public hearing was used for a portion of this article.