You Eat Plastic Every Day - Let's Fix That
If you're not recycling plastic, you're feeding it to the air and water around you. Curious about just how much plastic is floating around? Read to find out.
Do you recycle your plastic?
If you do, thank you. If you think the rest of the world is too, I’m sorry to disappoint. Keep recycling – we’re depending on you.
It is estimated that more than 90 percent of plastic is never recycled, and it’s affecting you way more than you notice.
You should know that every week you are consuming the weight of a credit card in plastic, more specifically five grams of microplastics. In a year, you will have consumed more than 250 grams of microplastics. These are pieces of plastic smaller than five millimeters, which break off of plastics that aren’t recycled. They can’t chemically degrade on their own, so they spread around both our bodies and our world, hiding in plain sight.
Microplastics can be found in the ocean, rain, air, blood, lungs and more. While they can be consumed from both bottled and tap water, the highest volumes are consumed in shellfish, beer and salt.
There are tons to go around – 11 billion metric tons to be exact. This is the amount of plastic humans have created, which surpasses the biomass of terrestrial and marine animals combined. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), we are producing around 400 million tons of plastic waste every year. Additionally, 8 million metric tons of plastic waste are dumped into oceans every year.
The following chart shows regional variations for the amount of plastic found in tap water samples.
This high production of plastic is cheap to make, yet profitable, which is why large corporations are thriving off creating more waste. For example, in 2017, Coca-Cola produced 3 million tons of plastic packaging in one year, which is equivalent to 200,000 bottles per minute.
Nestlé is another company producing high amounts of plastic, but making an effort to reduce its totals. In 2022, Nestlé’s total plastic packaging usage was around 0.9 million metric tons, a reduction of 35 percent since 2019.
It’s evident that too much plastic is being produced annually and not being recycled. The only real solution to this problem is to reduce the amount of plastic that is being produced. This may come as a challenge to large corporations, but most are on the right track toward reducing their plastic production totals.
There is a global treaty in the works by the United Nations Environment Assembly to end plastic pollution, which is expected to finalize in 2024. When we have more details on this, we will write a follow-up piece on measures being taken.
In the meantime, it’s hard to avoid microplastics and they’re not going anywhere, so let’s agree to make individual efforts to recycle as much as possible. Whether that’s in your home, parks or public works, every effort counts.
Best,
Ariana for the Don’t Count Us Out Yet Team