12 November 2018
[Image Source:
https://sciencing.com/raw-materials-plastic-bottles-5747796.html]
I have written about plastic
before. Plastic and water. Plastic shopping bags. This time, I want to share a
little something about why plastic is harmful to our health, and the health of
our living systems. Plastic is made to last. Which is ironic seeing as it is
also made, mostly, to be used just once and thrown away (this is a ridiculous
concept on its own - something to be made for one-time use). Most plastic is
not biodegradable, so it can last many human lifetimes. There are nine
different types of microplastics that can be found in most of our digestive
systems at any given time - the culprit - drinking out of plastic bottles and
eating food that has been wrapped in plastic. And eating fish (unfortunately we
have polluted our oceans and water systems with so much plastic that
microplastics are a thing in oceans and many water bodies - fish can't escape
them).
Plastic is (unfortunately) part of our
every-day life. It is convenient, fast, and (unrealistically) cheap. It is
everywhere. Plastic also is not one single material. It consists of numerous
synthetic materials with their origins in oil, gas, or coal. Here below are a
few ways in which plastic ruins our health, and the health of our environment:
Plastics are found in our food and
drink. As above, but also generally, toxic chemicals can be found in the blood
and tissue in almost all of us. Exposure to them is linked to cancers, birth
defects (plastic cross the placenta), impaired immunity, thyroid disruption,
risk of heart disease and various other illnesses and ailments.
Plastic spoils our groundwater. And
our oceans. It is everywhere. It poisons our food chain. Even plankton, the
smallest of our creatures, are eating microplastics.
It is actually expensive to make and
consumes priceless energy. Most of the cost of your water bottle in your (more
than 90%) is the plastic bottle - which you will use once and throw away (as if
there is an 'away' to throw things to). It takes a huge effort to make this,
and a huge amount of oil to manufacture (both in raw material for the product,
but also the energy to produce it).
I have mentioned also before the
detriment it has on other life on Earth. See our
first Weekly on this.
So, why do we do it? Well, for one,
the real costs are not added into the price of the water. So we pay a cheap and
totally unrealistic price for a bottle of water, or a packaged food item. But
believe me, we will pay in other, much more scary ways.
It should be a norm to bring and reuse
own containers to fill things with. It should be ridiculous and other-worldly
to even conceive the possibility of using something just once, and then
discarding it to pollute and poison us. So...why do we currently think the
other way around?