When I studied at school, I remember the teacher telling us that there was a seventh continent of plastic. I thought it was a big compact pile of waste. In reality, it’s more like a giant “plastic soup”. Plastic waste spreads out in the oceans, and some plastic debris eventually lift back to the surface and float on water. Unfortunately, some of these microplastics end up in our plates.
Micro… what?
To start with a simple definition from Futura sciences, a microplastic is a plastic particle whose size is less than 5 mm. It is a waste which can end up in the oceans, coastal areas, and which can unfortunately be ingested by fish, marine mammals but also seabirds.
So, when we eat our fish, we may end up swallowing microplastics ourselves if that same fish had ingested microplastic. It doesn’t sound really tasty right? Even worse, according to a study, globally we ingest 5 grams of plastic per week, which is the equivalent of a credit card. It seems that we can’t escape from plastic.
What’s the solution to avoid microplastic?
First of all, you should avoid buying bottled water and start drinking tap water because bottled water contains more microplastics than tap water. Indeed, according to a canadian study, a person who drinks mineral water swallows about 130,000 particles of microplastic water each year, compared to 4,000 for those who drink tap water. Then, you can buy local products and reduce your meat consumption.
An effortless green action
You can, of course, take part in the actions and for instance collect waste in your hometown. But, there are other actions that require almost no effort. For instance, you probably know the search engine called “ecosia” which plants trees every 45 searches you do. But, did you know that there is a similar search engine dedicated to ocean cleanup? Indeed, OceanHero undertakes to collect a plastic bottle present in the ocean for every 5 research you do.
You can also follow beterre on social media and share it with all your friends. We need to sensitize people about the plastic issue so that small steps can be taken by many people. In this way, we can drastically reduce plastic pollution. So, don’t wait any longer and join beterre so we can reduce and replace plastic effortlessly!
