The Micro World of Plastics

In this article, I’ll talk about the depths to which Plastic has entered into our lives and its implications in the bigger picture.In the previous article, I talked about how Plastics are disposed (especially in India) and showed how it has entered the three spheres of our ecosystem: Lithosphere (land), atmosphere (air) and Hydrosphere (water). But there is a bigger story when we talk about plastics. Let’s delve deeper! Be it your trusted bottle of packaged water, beer, body washes with exfoliating fruit extracts or even your table salt, Plastic is one common ingredient in all of it, if not anything else. You name it, and you have plastics there! You must be wondering how. It’s a different world that these plastics enter into, to enter our lives at such a base level. It is the Micro World of Plastics. Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic of size less than 5 millimeters generated usually from fragments of larger plastics. But they can most commonly be traced in various synthetic clothes, often termed as microfibers. These microfibres wash out of the clothes on each rinse and pass through all filters and drains to reach water sources.  Microbeads are another form of minute plastic beads (size between 1 micron and 1 micrometer) that remain unchanged throughout and enter oceans in their original form. These beads generally occur in health and beauty products, often the exfoliating beads in body washes are these microbeads. Cheaper than natural exfoliants, these plastic beads are go-to’s for companies. Because of their small size, they pass all sewage and treatment filters and enter the oceans unchanged. Along the way, they act as sponges to toxins, absorbing them all and become virulent bombs which eventually get eaten by the aquatic animals and birds thriving on/near water bodies.Consequences? Many of them die. And now imagine yourself having that deadly plastic infected fish for dinner! Well, yes, things are pretty ugly. But the good news is that under the “Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015”, the US banned the use of microbeads and steadily, all states of America and the world are moving towards its absolute ban. This ban is expected to enter into force in 2020 in India.  But the problem still is pretty huge. Various companies are still trying to increase the net amount of plastic we utilize. In fact, mega investments are still being made to increase the plastic use by up to 40% by 2025.  The challenge is huge but not unachievable. As consumers we have immense power and buying responsibly can be our first step taken in unison against this Plague.