“Plastic is bad.”
“You need to reduce your plastic consumption.”
We have all heard this and read it countless times on the internet and on our social media feeds—maybe you have on this website, too. But have you ever wondered why and how it is that plastic is “bad”? What do we know, but also ignore, about its impacts? Is it bad for us or for our environment?
Plastics are synthetic materials that have a wide range of functions and applications. As a result, they are used in virtually everything we buy, allowing for cheaper, more diverse products and therefore for more comfortable lifestyles. It is estimated that up to 2017, 8,300 million metric tons of plastic had been produced in total.
Plastics are truly present in every aspect of our lives. They’re in our makeup, our toothbrushes, they’re released from our synthetic-fiber clothes every time we machine wash them… And they have even invaded our food and digestive system!
Plastic ingestion
The analysis No plastic in nature: Assessing plastic ingestion from nature to people on which the famous stat “we ingest a credit card worth of plastic every week” is based on, states that microplastics are found in drinking water (in 72.2% of tap/bottled water in Europe), shellfish, beer and salt. So, on average, a person might be ingesting up to 5g of microplastics per week. Luckily, that is likely an overestimate as the study also stresses that it “will depend on … the characteristics of the microplastics [and] each’s age, size, geographic location, … and life-style options”. One thing to know though, is that bottled water has more than 20 times more microplastic particles than tap water. And to help you realize how pervasive microplastics are, know that the air that we inhale also contains microplastics.
But as many studies as there might be, there are still some unknowns when it comes to this material.
Lifetimes of Plastic
Even though a quick Google search will lead you to articles listing the lifetimes of common plastic products, it’s not that simple. Various factors affect the rate of degradation of plastics, such as light, temperature or chemical environments. As a result, there are as many different degradation speeds as there are different environments in which they end up. And even for two plastics from the same category (1 to 7), some shapes are more easily biodegraded than others—so much that one could be staying for hundreds or even a thousand years longer than the other[1]. With so many factors to consider, only limited information is available on rates of degradation.
What is certain, however, is that plastic is very resistant to biodegradation and takes a very long time to do so. Essentially, most of the plastic that you have ever used in your life is still somewhere in the world, its shape unchanged from how it was when you threw it away.
But why is it such a big deal? Does anything happen in our bodies when we ingest plastic? And how is wildlife affected by plastic pollution?
Effects on human health
During the manufacturing process of plastics, they are first synthesized from what is called a ‘monomer’ and additional chemicals are then added in the process. The presence of these additives and the release of monomers is where the health risk comes from. The risk is different for different types of plastics, and the highest hazard scores were given to the recycling codes 3, 6 and 7. It means that these have the highest risk of releasing toxic chemicals during their lifetime.
Microplastics are a concern as well, because it is now clear that they can accumulate in the food chain. Even though they are usually found in the guts of living organisms which humans don’t consume, they can be transferred to other organs and tissues after ingestion, both in animals and humans! For instance, it was found that microplastics can enter the gills of crabs, and potentially be going up the food chain to us.
The ingestion of plastic by humans, mainly through plastic packaging, can alter our cell activities in theoretically all of our organs before it is eliminated by our digestive system. Some might also be endocrine disruptors.
All in all, the impacts of such a large-scale, global plastic production on human health are still unclear. NGOs such as Plastic Health Coalition have reacted to these existing gaps in research and demand more testing of plastic additives.
What about the impacts of plastic on wildlife and ecosystems?
Effects on Life
Just like the case where a turtle was in agony because of the plastic straw stuck in its nostril, as many as 267 species on Earth are affected by plastic pollution. The most affected groups are water birds and marine animals. In 2018 only, “plastic litter led to 579 cases of damage to wildlife or pets that were reported to the RSPCA in England and Wales”.
The main causes of this plastic pollution are microplastics, lost fishing equipment and other objects washed in the oceans. It was estimated than in 2014, microplastics accounted for a total mass of between an astonishing 93,000 and 236,000 tons!
Animals get physically stuck in plastic waste, or ingest it thinking it is food (it is sometimes even covered by actual food) and as a result starve to death because it does not provide them any nutrients. Plastic “increases the chance of disease and affects reproduction” according to World Animal Protection, making animals suffer for months and die a slow death.
For example, seabirds suffer from a decline in kidney function; sea turtles die entangled in fishing nets or beer holders; toothed whales ingest large pieces of plastic accidentally. Cases where animals had to be euthanized because their stomach was full in plastic are not uncommon. In British waters, microplastics were found in the corpses of all tested whales, dolphins and seals.
So what can we do about this?
Here are some ways you can help
Reduce, reduce, reduce your consumption of plastic. There are many alternatives out there that work as well. To make it easier and track your transition, download the My Little Plastic Footprint app on your phone.
Sometimes you just can’t get alternatives to plastic packaging. In these cases, look for not only low-hazard plastics (1, 2, 4, 5 recycling codes) but also the most recyclable ones (1 and 2). Find more information on our social media pages!
Make sure you sort your waste at home and put the recyclable plastics in the mixed recycling bin.
Check out the links below if you’d like to read more about the topic:
Resources
Further reading:
Articles:
National Geographic: ‘The world’s plastic pollution crisis explained’
One Green Planet: “These 5 Marine Animals are Dying Because of our Plastic Trash… Here’s How we can Help”
Research papers:
K.D. Cox et al, Human Consumption of Microplastics, 2019.
T.S. Galloway, Micro- and Nano- Plastics on Human Health, 2015
A. Chamas et al, Degradation Rates of Plastic in the Environment, 2020.
[1] A study compared degradation profiles of HDPE plastic film, fiber and bead. Bead plastic take the longest to biodegrade: more than a thousand years.
Cover photo from National Geographic, taken by Jordi Chias