“Filthy” best described this Memphis bank of the Mississippi River.
Potato chip bags, Gatorade bottles, cigar wrappers, Solo cups, airplane bottles of every liquor conceivable, a bright-orange Whataburger cup and straw, crushed water bottles, empty containers of Bill Dance live red worms, tires, and scores of empty beer cans — all of that and more choked the roots of a reedy stand of bamboo along the boat ramp.
Litter like this is nothing new for the Riverside Marina at the very edge of Martin Luther King Jr. Riverside Park. The marina on McKellar Lake has looked like this for years.
The best imaginations would be hard-pressed to conjure the site as a boating playground paradise for Memphians, as it was in the ’50s and ’60s. Elvis skied in the waters there. The Memphis Ski Club hosted the Miss McKellar Lake contest, a beauty pageant. Memphis Magazine called the “lake” an ”important part of Memphis’ social life.”
Last week, though, the trail of litter followed the boat ramp down into the murky, brown waters of the inlet. The muddy bank past the ramp was a landmine of trash that gave pause for caution, not knowing exactly what you might step on and to wonder if you wore the right shoes.
Rubber gloves, rubber hoses, empty jugs of antifreeze, dried and browned fish corpses, and those ubiquitous clear water bottles carpeted the bank. It wasn’t enough, though, to discourage two women from lugging chairs, coolers, poles, and tackle down there for a morning of fishing.
Trash — especially plastic trash — is commonplace up and down the Mississippi. It’s not just a McKellar Lake problem or Memphis problem. Plastic trash is not even just a Mississippi River or America problem. Plastic trash in rivers is a global problem big enough to capture the time and attention of a committee from the United Nations (U.N.).
The stakes are high. Plastic trash is more than just an eyesore. It can leach chemicals into the water, possibly fouling drinking water. It can destroy freshwater habitats of wildlife. It can end up in the bellies of fish and other aquatic animals and, possibly, reach humans. Trash can most certainly end up on the banks and beaches where humans might want to play or relax.
So much of that trash, too, flows into oceans around the world. The U.N. projects that the Mississippi alone dumps one garbage-truck-load of plastic into the Gulf of Mexico every single minute.
Global talks continue on a formal agreement on the plastic problem from the U.N., which could shape the future of plastic everywhere. Along the Mississippi, a group of mayors from up and down the river are pushing for a solution that could help clean up our trash-strewn banks. Here, Clean Memphis just finished up a three-year project to reduce consumer reliance on those ubiquitous plastic water bottles.
Scope of the Mississippi
Imagine the middle part of America as a bathroom sink. The top of the sink extends from the Rockies in western Montana to the Alleghenies in western New York. Inside the sink, water flows from rivers and tributaries from 31 states and two Canadian provinces — an area of about 1.2 million square miles, according to the National Park Service.
Anytime a deckhand tosses a cigarette butt, a fisherman leaves a Coke bottle, or a picnicker leaves a grocery bag of trash along the river, it can end up in the sink. Anytime a Memphian flicks a butt from their car or tosses a water bottle to the curb — even in Midtown and beyond — rainwater washes it into a storm drain where it eventually ends up in the river. This is part of the reason why Memphis storm drains have that warning depicting a fish that reads: “No dumping. Drains to river.” For all of it, though, rainwater or a rising river level can simply pick the trash up and float it right into the sink.
By the time the Mississippi flows by Memphis, the enormous Missouri and Ohio Rivers have flowed into it. That’s already a lot of cigarette butts, Coke bottles, and grocery bags from thousands of tiny acts of littering or even larger acts of dumping. Then, the sink really narrows to a drain near Memphis, before collecting the massive Arkansas River south of us.
The drain narrows further and drains more water and trash through Louisiana. At New Orleans, 166 semi-truck trailers of water — and the piles of trash it has collected along the way — pass Algiers Point each second. The Mississippi finally empties into the Gulf about 100 miles south of New Orleans at Venice. That’s the very bottom of that huge sink, which drains about 40 percent of the continental United States. It’s worth repeating that one garbage-truck-load of plastic trash enters that water into the Gulf every minute, according to the U.N.
The micro-plastic problem
Larger pieces of plastics certainly damage marine environments. They can flood beaches where tourists swim. They can choke and destroy habitats where wildlife nest, mate, spawn, and eat.
But if you stand at Algiers Point and watch the Mississippi, you won’t see a river of Gatorade bottles or cigarette butts flowing by. By then, most of these plastic products have degraded into fine particles — microplastics.
These particles range in size from 1 micrometer, which you can’t see with the naked eye, to about 5 millimeters, about the size of a sesame seed. So while small fish and birds can’t eat that Bill Dance worm container, they can — and often do — eat microplastics, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) researchers collected 557 specimens from 35 different species from the Gulf in deepwater cruises recently. They found — again in the deep parts of the Gulf, not around the Mississippi — that 29 percent of crustaceans and 26 percent of fish collected had eaten at least one microplastic particle.
The primary types of microplastics found in their stomachs were small fragments of cellophane, or clear plastic film often used in food and cosmetic packaging. Eating plastic particles with sharp edges can tear tissue in animals. They can also suffer chemical contamination from plastic. This can all lead to reduced swimming speed, impaired reproduction rates, increased stress levels, reduced absorption of nutrients, and death, NOAA said.
Back at the Mississippi, another research team found that “river-sourced [microplastics] emerge as dominant contributors to pollution” in the Gulf, according to a study published in the journal Nature last month. In it, researchers with the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) pointed specifically to a spot in the Gulf just west of the Mississippi River Delta as a “prominent accumulation zone.”
Reporter’s note
This may sound similar to the massive “Dead Zone” in the Gulf. In it, most sea life (except jellyfish) cannot survive. This year, NOAA scientists found that the Dead Zone shrunk. It’s now only about the size of Jamaica.
The Dead Zone is directly related to pollution in the Mississippi, too. But it is related to other pollutants in the water, like agricultural chemicals. Microplastics and this nutrient pollution are separate environmental hazards concerning the Mississippi River.
While researchers continue to study microplastic impacts in the Gulf, they’re very sure about the Dead Zone. It has a direct impact on the seafood and tourism industries at a cost of $82 million per year, according to NOAA. The waters in it are also directly toxic to humans and wildlife.
The CMCC researchers said the huge microplastics zone in the Gulf overlaps with “ecologically and economically important marine habitats, including Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, red snapper, and bottlenose dolphins.”
But before you say, “I don’t have time to worry about sea turtles! I don’t even have time to throw my Takis bag into a trash can!,” one researcher warned of a boomerang effect. Plastics in the ocean pose a threat to human health and food security.
“The fact that plastic impacts regions of intense fishery [which means we’re ingesting some] is often the best way to activate a policy response or gain public interest,” said Annalisa Bracco, a scientist with the CMCC.
Neither food regulators, researchers, nor the seafood industry have published any hard conclusions about threats posed to humans by microplastics in the ocean or the environment at large. A 2024 report by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said there is “evidence of a widespread occurrence of microplastics” and that the pathways to human consumption are many.
“Understanding if or when environmental exposures [to microplastics] pose a health risk is complicated” by all of the different kinds of microplastics, how they are made, and what they contain, the report says. But the USGS said finding answers to human impacts of consuming microplastics “has become a priority of the federal government, state governments, tribes, stakeholders, and the public.”
Global efforts
Leaders from across the world convened in Geneva last month for the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC). It was the seventh time the group had met since talks began in Senegal in 2022. Since then, sessions have spanned the globe from Uruguay, France, Kenya, Canada, and South Korea.
Each time, the leaders have failed to reach a formal agreement. Last month, the 1,400 delegates from 183 countries once again left the talks without an agreement.
Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, said the group will continue to work against plastic pollution that is in “our groundwater, in our soil, in our rivers, in our oceans and, yes, in our bodies.”
The talks stalled on the issues of limiting plastic production, phasing out toxic chemical additives, and ending the global waste trade, according to the American nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). The group said much of the pushback came from oil-producing countries.
Work along the river
The Geneva negotiations included mayors from the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative (MRCTI). That group first came together in 2012 to harmonize on issues from 124 Mississippi River towns and cities. Since then, the group has grown in power and harmonized louder on issues before state, federal, and international decision-makers.
In Geneva, Bob Gallagher, mayor of Bettendorf, Iowa, suggested making those who make plastic products responsible for cleaning them up, instead of taxpayers.
“Right now, taxpayers are being burdened with managing the cost of recycling and disposal of plastics,” Gallagher said in a statement. “Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy levels the playing field, reduces local government and taxpayer costs, and drives innovation for streamlined product design and recycling.
“Businesses like Unilever, Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, SC Johnson, and many others want EPR. This all comes back to saving money and helping people.”
EPR policies have been around for years. U.N. committees have discussed it at length as one possible solution to fight plastic pollution. It’s already at work on other products. In 23 states, manufacturers now pay for the costs of recycling e-waste like televisions, laptops, and tablets, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). In 10 states and the District of Columbia, manufacturers pay for the cost of paint disposal, according to the NCSL.
Large corporations, like the ones named by Gallagher in his statement, have committed publicly to EPR. However, smaller companies and the industry advocate groups that lobby for them have pushed back against the idea on cost concerns.
Work in Memphis
In 2022, Clean Memphis received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a campaign called Trash Free Waters. The main aim was to reduce the city’s reliance on one-time-use plastic water bottles by changing consumer behavior. To do this, Clean Memphis’ Choose to Reuse campaign put water bottle refill stations in Memphis-area schools, parks, and community centers.
The campaign wrapped up in last year. Nefertiti Orrin, Clean Memphis’ president and CEO, said the group installed 49 water bottle refill stations across six school campuses, 10 public parks, and five city of Memphis community centers. Counters on the stations reported that 102,000 plastic water bottles had been saved in one year at the schools alone.
Another part of the Choose to Reuse campaign was an app called Fill It Forward. It was meant as a sort of social network where members could log bottle refills and challenge each other. As of last week, users in the Clean Memphis campaign logged 1,583 bottle refills. That use diverted 44 pounds of waste from waters, nearly nine pounds of waste diverted from oceans, and about 1,430 pounds of CO2 emissions from the air.
Orrin said another important part of the campaign was education and in-school engagement. More than 500 students in Memphis learned why it’s important to reduce the use of single-use plastics and how plastics can pollute storm water here, then ocean waters via the Mississippi River. This, she said, is an important takeaway for all Memphians.
“[It’s important] to just really understand the impact of the trash at the point of collection and where it actually ends up,” Orrin said. “It’s not just in our community; it ends up in waterways. It gets carried and ends up in our oceans. It’s really harming our marine life and we’re losing biodiversity because of the habits of us as humans.”
Back to the River Bank
In a way, it’s a relief to look at our often-littered river banks and think that the errant water bottle or cigarette butt may not have come from some disrespectful Memphian. As much as the Mississippi has already drained by the time it gets here, that trash could have come from a span of nearly a million miles.
It’s also frustrating to look at that trash and know that it’s not going anywhere soon. The problem is being studied by the U.N. That U.N. Those wheels turn slowly and so many of their resolutions are non-binding. Another solution is to ask those ultra-wealthy companies that use plastic to clean up after themselves for millions of dollars they aren’t paying now. That could be an uphill battle.
Alarm bells ring persistently along the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico. But they go mostly unheeded, it seems.
Take for example that for 40 years now, those NOAA scientists have floated out and studied the Gulf’s Dead Zone. The government even admits the problem puts an $82 million hole in the vital fishing and tourism industries each year. But for the last 40 years, the biggest change in the situation has only been the formation of that group of scientists that float out and study the Dead Zone.
