They are tiny little things that cause havoc on our environment and bodies and yet, capturing them or cleaning them up is incredibly difficult. It’s not like we can grab a plastic detector and run along the beach hoovering them all up. Microplastics are so small that sometimes they cannot be detected by the naked eye. Even if we charged each person on the planet with the task of picking up millions of microplastic pieces, it’d still be a task too big. Every piece of plastic ever made is still in existence.
Defined as 5mm in size or smaller, a microplastic is certainly not always easy to spot. While we often head out and litter-pick around the office and in our local area, we can’t grab pieces of microplastic with our pickers. But their size is just part of the reason why they’re so problematic.
Microplastics are banned in UK cosmetics, although 6 years ago they were still legal. This means billions of them were produced, put into our face wash products, and washed into our water systems. You may or may not realise that it takes at least 200 years for plastics to break down. Meaning those billions of microplastics are still somewhere on our planet.
Other forms of microplastics are those that break away from larger pieces. Take your clothing for example, each time you wash a polyester t-shirt microplastics are released into your washer-drum and then drained away into the water system. Pieces of litter that are thrown around by mother nature often have pieces break away into the environment. Not to mention all the bits on beaches that end up in our oceans. This brings us nicely to our next point.
Microplastics in our environment
We’ve talked about how microplastics are created and how they can end up polluting our rivers, oceans, and natural land habitats. When plastic breaks down it becomes toxic, and although it takes hundreds of years for it to happen, we can all agree that them being there in the first place, certainly isn’t good for our environment.
But that’s not the worst part. Wildlife, when stumbling across these microplastics, may accidentally ingest them. It might be a fish breathing in the ocean or a lamb eating grass.
Both situations result in wildlife eating microplastics. In some cases, it can kill them – there is some horrific evidence of fish ingesting large amounts of plastic and dying. It gets worse!
Microplastics have been found in human bloodstreams, lungs, stomachs, and all around our bodies. But why? Because we too are eating the same sources that contain microplastics. Whether it’s meat, fish, or the wheat growing in fields. They’ve been found in the depths of the ocean and even on Mt Everest, so, why wouldn’t microplastics be found in human bodies?
How to avoid microplastics
As we already discussed, reducing microplastics any more than we already have in terms of production is difficult. However, using fewer plastic items means fewer microplastics are being created. From washing your polyester t-shirt or your favourite Tupperware snapping, actions that aren’t always in your control still release microplastics.
It may seem futile, and of course, sustainable use of plastic is always a positive thing. It’s important to be aware of the impact of microplastics so that you can dispose of your plastic safely when you no longer use it. Put it into the correct recycling chain, not into the rubbish bin where it might break down into smaller pieces. Collectively these small actions will be powerful in reducing the number of microplastics that enter our environment in the future.
