I like how we’ve gone from looking at the huge garbage patches in our oceans to the amount of microplastic in a drop of water. I don’t see it as a material issue, you pick a material and with enough quantity it will pollute. It is a consumer society issue. But maybe it will be easier to change consumer society by dangling the microplastic threat effect so the actual cause can be treated - wait, the psychopaths in CEO positions would lose money then, never mind.
Biggest sources:
- 7.6 Mt from macro plastics breaking down
- 1.3 Mt from paint
- 1.0 Mt from tyres
10-40 Mt released into environment/year, and increasing.
I’m kinda surprised that more comes from paint than tires.
You only think that way because the material for a tire is all in one place and easy to see.
Paint on the other hand is effectively invisible when we ‘inventory’ a space mentally.
So a tire in the middle of your living room seems like a lot of rubber but all the paint over every inch of the wall in the same room doesnt, even if the room is big enough for the paint to fill the volume of the tire.
Studies have identified some of the main sources of microplastics as:
- plastic-coated fertilisers
- plastic film used as mulch in agriculture
WTF?
- plastics recycling.
Uuuuh…
Plastic was never meant to be recycled.
So, what you’re telling us is, they’ve been lying for decades?
Yup passing on the responsibility from the manufacturer to the consumer
So what does it do? Cancer?
It’s making men infertile. theres even a shortage of viable sperm today around the world
Ok, that’s one positive at least.
