Plastic use has increased microplastic pollution that harms wildlife and hinders food production and enters human bodies via the food chain.
We could return to using glass containers. But glass production requires more energy and resulting air pollution.
Microplastics are believed to disrupt photosynthesis
This may impede plant growth, with potentially serious consequences for food production
Microplastics can reduce photosynthesis by up to 12%, according to an assessment led by a team of mostly China-based researchers. The study, published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed terrestrial crops, marine algae and freshwater algae.
Seafood yields could plunge 7%, and staple crops could see a loss of up to 13.5%, according to the study.
Microplastics are usually absorbed through soil when a plant sucks up water and other nutrients through its roots, Fiener told DW, adding if the particles are small enough they can pass into its cells.
Microplastics have been found throughout the human body and linked to a range of potential health problems, including strokes and heart attacks.
In the past two decades, global output of new or virgin plastic has surged. It’s projected to increase two or even threefold by 2050, potentially tripling associated global emissions.
I read the article, and have read numerous studies and articles in the past about plastic, but the devil is in the details. I was able to give up single use drinks in plastic, glass and aluminum containers, but even my home brewed coffee comes in an aluminum pouch with a plastic tie and my coffeemaker is plastic. I can and do buy my organic oats, rice and nuts in pre-weighed glass jars at Friendly City Coop, but I have to combine the trip with other chores since they are 20 miles away and I don’t know how destructive my car tire plastics are. I get blueberries, goomyberries, strawberries, blackberries and raspberries from my daughter’s garden from May to September, and I can buy apples in the offseason, but all offseason berries come in plastic.
I had to give up yogurt because no recycler in this valley takes yogurt containers. Our bin is down to a few recyclable containers per week, but I have little hope of improving on that until we are forced as a society to change our ways.
Also, glass is breakable, heavy and expensive. Have you ever tried to break a plastic soda bottle with a hammer? I did. Couldn’t do it.
Not just food products.
How about medical devices? Did you ever consider how the myriad of molded and tubular plastic devices could be replaced?
Also clothing. I still buy cotton but I don’t buy wool anymore because it’s so hard to take care of. So I live in fleece, like most other people in the PNW. Also, all natural fibers are expensive compared with synthetics.
Speaking as a chemist … the chemical industry has produced a lot of pollution. But modern society isn’t going to give up the lifestyle which is based on plastics to a large degree.
Hey, perhaps some of you here have an answer. I drink bottled water. It’s better than tap water here. In fact my Medical School girl friend turned me onto it about 9 yrs ago so I figured it must be good.
OK, now around 2023-ish the buzzword is : Micro plastics. They’re in everybody’s brains yadda yadda. I read an article just a few months back that had a doctor saying if you want to reduce your intake of micro plastic by 97% (which is an operational 100% given modern life) just stop drinking those damned little plastic bottles of water.
Sounds about right, I guess….? So, I start looking for alternatives and there ain’t any. Not really. I already have one of those Britta filtering things but … it’s plastic! And any and every other available, suitable, –doesn’t make you jump though a hoop to get it or use it– water storage thingy is plastic. So do any of you keep filtered water in the fridge, available in quantity, in something that’s not plastic and is actually readily obtainable?
Oh yes, that’s another thing. Just because you have a filtration system that filters out lead, phosphates, calcium, rattle snakes and the list…. it might not work on micro plastics. Well, duuuh, that’s the problem on the table. So, they find this threat (possibly created like Alar in apples or exaggerated like climate change) tell us how bad and scary it is but there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re all gonna die but, oh well! Hey, what’s up with all that…?
The amount of plastic you take home from supermarkets in Portugal is absolutely staggering. While there are recycling bins all over, lots of people throw everything in the general garbage bin meant for household trash.
In Germany bottled water has a large surcharge for the plastic bottle which you get back from the recycling machine which gives you a receipt honored by supermarkets. This system has an interesting side effect, lots of people can’t be bothered to recycle so they litter. Street people pick up the plastic bottles and recycle them getting some cash in the process. I like this system.
gets right at what i was saying in the first post. We aren’t getting teh information we need and just saying “Well it’s out there” is disingenuous. Why do we have to look hither and thither for clues like an episode of Columbo and even he mostly just gets lucky at the end. Then we have to buy this filter for this, that filter for that, except the other kind, that one doesn’t really work.
Or oil, as I keep trying to tell the environmentalists. We can trim around the edges, maybe even make a real dent with some forward thinking technologies {cough}EVs{/cough} but once people have convenience they’re really loathe to give it up, no matter what.
See: “Jimmy Carter” for what happens to politicians who try to convince them otherwise.
Plastics? Tough putt. Paper bags can help, but seriously? Big issue there. Gotta be a better way to recycle it all. It is “oil” after all. Maybe there’s some kind of car that can run on shredded detergent bottles?
My supermarket has a few brands of water still sold in glass bottles. I think one is “Saratoga” and maybe “Panna”. And I just did a quick search and apparently Zephyrhills offers a water delivery service where the water comes in glass or aluminum bottles. First I ever heard of that!
Our local Trader Joe’s packs everything in paper bags, but they always double them up. So we come home with 4 or 6 or 8 paper bags every time! They are such good bags that we hate to throw them out, but as a result they pile up all over the place. Lately, we’ve been placing our plastic recyclables in them so make it easier to get a bunch of plastic stuff or metal stuff into the appropriate bin outside.
I get those very same double bags at TJ’s, too, but I keep bringing them back to the store when I shop, both to keep them from piling up and to do a tiny bit of recycling. I’ve used some of these double bags for 15-20 shopping trips over the past several years.
We also have a bunch of those canvas bags. In theory each car has 3 or 4 of them at all times. But in practice, sometimes none are left in a car, and a stop is made to shop somewhere. And sometimes a new canvas bag will be purchased in those cases. And then there are all sorts of giveaways, I’ve received canvas bags after donating blood, and the kids have received them at various events, and I once got one at work, etc.
I didn’t know there was a treaty under discussion.
After the final intense meetings which went through the night in Geneva, the chair of the intergovernmental negotiating committee that governs the treaty discussions formally closed the session on August 15 without agreement on the treaty text. This is not the end. The process has not collapsed.
However, there is no confirmed date or venue for the next round of negotiations and no mandate for formal intersessional activities.
