If there’s one thing the human race has been undeniably successful at (apart from capitalism, narcissism and electing crappy politicians) it’s ruining our planet.
Plastic disposal, or our lack of, has a lot to answer for. We’ve done a great job of leaving the suff absolutely everywhere, including the deepest depths of the ocean. We really know how to commit to something once we put our minds to it.
Because karmas a bitch the planet has decided to get one back on us- kinda.
Turns out we’re eating our own plastic waste. A study from the University of Newcastle, titled No Plastic in Nature: Assessing Plastic Ingestion from Nature to People, found that the average person could be ingesting up to five grams of microplastic a week. That’s enough plastic to make a credit card.
Yet somehow we’re still broke. Oh the irony.
Specifically, we’re ingesting about 2000 pieces of micro plastic per week which is believed to be coming from the water we drink, with some coming in in shellfish, beer, and salt.
Here’s the breakdown in numbers:
Microplastics are pieces of plastic up to 5mm in length (that’s half a centimetre) and the thought of pooping that out is genuinely painful. Not to mention I can feel my insides crying because surely this is not good for us.
The study concludes that more research is required to determine the long-term health effects of consuming plastic, but mentions that preliminary research has shown that inhalation of plastic fibres can produce respiratory inflammation and that “in marine animals, higher concentrations of microplastics in their digestive and respiratory system can lead to early death.”
Fun.
So if humanity doesn’t care enough about the planet to stop dumping plastic everywhere, maybe we can care enough about ourselves to do something about it.
Here’s to us!