News Item
The City featured Dyson Environmental Studies and Sciences Professor Melanie Dupuis in "AS PLASTIC BAGS GO BYE, A RENEWED PUSH TO RECYCLE FABRICS"
‘No Perfect Material’
Professor Melanie Dupuis, the chair of the Environmental Science department at Pace University said it’s difficult to hard to quantify the potential environmental impact of hundreds of thousands of polyester bags being used for the first time by New Yorkers. Many of the plastics in them deteriorate over time, releasing microfibers that end up in our oceans and fish.
She pointed out that trade-offs like these are very common as industries and cities try to move away from practices that are extremely harmful to the environment, to practices that are less damaging.
“There is no perfect clean material out there that has no environmental impact,” Dupuis said. “In cases like these, it is our job to figure out which has the least environmental impact and move in that direction.”
