WHAT ARE MICROPLASTICS
How do microplastics affect?
Humans have produced more than 9 billion metric tons of plastic. Only 9% of plastic waste is recycled and the vast majority ends up in landfills and in the environment, where it disintegrates into micro-particles that pollute water and air, harm marine wildlife and are ultimately ingested by humans.
THE IMPACT OF MICROPLASTICS
A weight equivalent to that of 80 million blue whales, 1 billion elephants or 25,000 Empire State Buildings. This is the amount of plastic that humans have generated since large-scale production of synthetic materials began in the early 1950s: 8.3 billion metric tons. That's enough to cover Argentina. These are data from the 2017 study Production, use and fate of all plastics ever made by the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Georgia and the Sea Education Association
Predictably, annual plastic production has been multiplaying over the years, from 2 million metric tons in 1950 to more than 390 million metric tons in 2022. And this trend does not seem to be abating: of all the plastic generated by human between these two dates, half was produced in recent years. And one of the main causes of the unstoppable increase in the production of plastics is that they have a very short lifespan: half of them become waste after four years of use or less. But what is really worrying is that only 9 % of this waste was recycled, while 19 % was incinerated and 72 % ended up in landfills and the environment.
Much of the plastic that ends up in the environment will end up in the seas and oceans. Water, sun, wind and micro-organisms break down the plastic dumped in the ocean into tiny particles less than 0.5 centimetres long, known as microplastics. In recent years, it has been estimated that 30 million tonnes of plastic waste are in the oceans, while 109 tonnes are in rivers. The latter will affect the oceans for years to come, even if all other microplastic-related problems are changed.
SEE INFOGRAPHIC: Where do the microplastics in the oceans come from? [PDF]
DAILY CONSUMPTION OF MICROPLASTICS
According to researchers at John Hopkins University (USA), any European who regularly eats seafood ingests approximately 11,000 microplastic per year. But that is not all: at the end of 2018, a study by Greenpeace and Incheon National University (South Korea) also concluded that 90 % of the salt brands sampled worldwide contained microplastics. And tap water is also known to be another sources from which humans ingest small plastic particles.
Concerned by these findings, scientists have begun to study the effect of microplastics on the human body. The most frequently found plastics were polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), both major components of plastic bottles and milk and juice containers. However, the researchers acknowledged that they were unable to determine the source of each particle and suggest that the food is likely to be contaminated during various stages of food processing or as a result of its packaging.
So far, no evidence has been found that microplastics pose a health risk to humans. This is especially true for large particles, such as those found in the study. Small particles, on the other hand, pose more of a risk as they can enter the bloodstream, the lymphatic system and reach the liver.
SOLUTIONS TO COMBAT MICROPLASTICS
More and more countries are launching policies to reduce plastic consumption and curb pollution - more than 60 according to a 2018 UN report-. The UK, USA, Canada and New Zealand have already banned the manufacture of personal care products containing microbeads. These tiny plastic beads are found in some beauty products for their exfoliating properties. It is estimated that during a shower with a bath gel containing microbeads, up to 100,000 beads can enter the drain end and end up in the ocean, where they are consumed by marine life, introducing potentially toxic substantes into the food chain.
On the other hand, Costa Rica announced a national strategy in 2017 to ban all single-use plastics by 2021, thereby reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean, rivers or forests. In Africa, Kenya has banned the production, sale, import and use of plastic bags since 2017, as has Rwanda, which banned them in 2008. Following the Costa Rican example, the European Union banned single-use plastics in 2021 for which there are affordable alternatives such as cotton buds, cutlery, plates, glasses or straws. For products for which there are no affordable alternatives, the aim is to limit their use by imposing both a consumption reduction target at a national level and waste management and clean-up obligations on producers.