Problematic plastic pollution at Lake Tahoe

Some of the litter, including plastics, unearthed by the robot at Zephyr Cove Resort in Tahoe. (Image: ECO-CLEAN Solutions)

While it might not be obvious, chances are you are swimming with microplastics when you are in Lake Tahoe. Swallow a gulp of lake water? Yep, you may have just ingested particles of plastic. Plastics are in the sand you are walking and sitting on as well.

Tahoe Environmental Research Center hosted a talk by Monica Arienzo, associate research professor in hydrologic sciences at Desert Research Institute in Reno, titled “Plastic pollution in the Tahoe basin.”

Some plastics sink to the bottom of the lake, others float, and still others move within the water column. Some are easy to see; some require a microscope.

Macroplastics are what you can see. They include plastic bags, wrappers and any piece bigger than a pencil eraser. Microplastics are the small pieces measuring 5mm or smaller. Macroplastics can become microplastics as they breakdown.

The BEBOT unearths foreign matter at Zephyr Cove Resort with the direction of JB Harris, co-founder and CEO of ECO-CLEAN Solutions. (Image: ECO-CLEAN Solutions)

For many reasons alarm bells are going off because of these plastics, with a biggie being they are made from oil and natural gas. Harmful chemicals are released when plastics breakdown.

“My research group is interested in understanding what happens when that plastic leaks into the environment. Where does it go? What happens to it? How does it move in the environment? And what are some of those sources that we can start to tackle?” Arienzo said.

Arienzo pointed out even though many products are now BPA-free, meaning they don’t have Bisphenol A, there is still plenty to worry about.

PFAS, or what’s known as forever chemicals, is a “growing area of concern because it’s often added to plastics.”

She praised the federal government investing $144 million to better understand the health effects of plastics.

Humans are also wearing plastic because most synthetic materials contain plastics. “If your clothes stretch, they have plastic in it,” Arienzo said. Washing synthetic clothes less often keeps wastewater from being loaded with plastics. Air drying these clothes prevents plastic collected in lint from blowing into the environment.

Tires contain plastics. Carpooling and taking public transit can help with less tire debris entering the world.

Plastics are in paint and personal care products.

All plastics eventually breakdown, enter the environment and then have consequences downstream, literally and figuratively.

It’s not just humans who contend with the ill effects of plastics. Animals can eat plastics and get entangled in them; both with potentially lethal outcomes.

“What we know about microplastics in general and how they apply with the Tahoe basin is that we know plastics can be found in our rain and our snow,” Arienzo said.

Her group has been working with TERC to unearth how much plastic is in the moisture here, and what happens as it is transported into rivers, streams and the lake. Sediment also becomes a receptor for microplastics.

These particles also leave Lake Tahoe via the Truckee River in Tahoe City, winding up in Reno’s water supply. These researchers found plastics throughout the Truckee River and in Pyramid Lake. A student of Arienzo’s has found them in Incline Creek as well.

“I can tell you everywhere we have looked we have found plastics,” Arienzo said.

Much of her talk focused on the macro pieces of plastic that are found on the beaches of Lake Tahoe. For the last two summers college interns scoured Tahoe beaches for litter. This summer they are not out working, but hope to be again next summer if funding allows.

Students were at Mourelatos Resort in Tahoe Vista, Kings Beach, Camp Richardson and Tahoe Beach Club in Stateline. They chose these sites to study the differences and similarities between the North Shore and South Shore, and private vs. public beaches.

Items were collected by a BEBOT, a remote controlled device that collected the debris while sifting out the sand. The BEBOT, short for beach robot, is being used at beaches throughout Tahoe rid the sand of trash.

Litter for this study was defined as any item not native to the environment like plastic, Styrofoam, metal, paper, glass, personal hygiene and animal waste. These were broken into subcategories that were counted and weighed. Native items such as sticks and pine cones were left on the beach.

Results included:

• Mourelatos—56 percent was other, 31 percent plastic, 6 percent paper.
• Kings Beach—70 percent other, 19 percent plastic, 4 percent paper.
• Camp Rich—63 percent other, 20 percent plastic, 11 percent paper.
• TBC—42 percent other, 43 percent plastic, 6 percent paper.

Other included: Asian clams, other shells, fireworks/celebration items, nonnative nuts/shells, food items/bones, hair ties/rubber bands, non-plastic fabric and clothing, tobacco items that weren’t cigarette butts like wrappers, lighters and Zyn pouches, toys, construction and charcoal.

“We created a new category for nicotine pouches because this was a new kind of item that we were finding more and more prevalent in our litter. (And) a lot of nuts and shells were found,” Arienzo said. “Again, this is stuff that people are bringing to the beaches and not cleaning up.”

Across all four sites plastic made up 58 percent of the litter, food wrappers 13 percent, while cigarette butts and plastic clothing were 8 percent each.

The BEBOT, short for beach robot, leaves behind clean sand at Camp Richardson. (Image: ECO-CLEAN Solutions)

Kings Beach had the highest litter and plastic counts per meter squared, followed by Camp Rich, TBC and Mourelatos.

Arienzo was surprised to find the plastic content so high at Tahoe Beach Club. It was closer to Camp Rich than Mourelatos. Speculation is this might have to do with the bar serving drinks in plastic containers with plastic straws.

The trend is more litter accumulates on public beaches. This could be because more people are on the public beaches. It could also be that private beaches are better maintained.

“If we really wanted to do some messaging around plastic litter, we could really start to educate around these items in particular, and around cigarette butts,” Arienzo said. She noted how more and more beaches have cigarette butt disposal sites; so people need to be made aware of them and the importance of using them.

Other things people can do: don’t buy single use tea bags made with plastic, wear cotton, rinse and reuse plastic bags, bring to-go containers to restaurants, get reusable mesh bags for produce.

“My feeling is we are not recycling our way out of this problem. My feeling is if we want to stop plastic pollution, stop microplastics, we have to say we turn off the tap on plastics,” Arienzo said. “The only way we are going to stem the tide of all of this plastic in the environment, in our bodies, biota, the environment is we just have to stop using them.”

Note: A version of this story first appeared in the Tahoe Mountain News.