The End is In Sight...?

The end of the year, that is. Although, I am excited that as of today I have 6 more samples to process out of the 90 that I collected at the end of October. You can see how happy I am in the picture below. But the focus for this week is how we as consumers can make smarter decisions about how we spend our money and how we can make small changes to effect larger change.

First--consider your macroplastic usage and consumption. Do you have a refillable water bottle? Why do you have single use bottled water, unless you are in an area where natural disasters are a regular occurrence? According to work done by Earth Policy Institute, backed by Rutgers University, 17 million oil barrels are required to fulfill the plastic water bottle needs of the American people every year. Do you use tupperware containers to store leftovers? Are you aware of the glass tupperware options or the silicon options? Consider that most plastic we use is not recyclable and will end up in landfills. The macroplastics over time will degrade due to heat, erosive activity, and UV exposure, and the fragments will end up in the soil and in waterways. 

Second--consider your microplastic usage and consumption, something you may not have considered before. Especially in the winter, microplastics become a concern due to the increased reliance on synthetic clothing. As I have mentioned before, synthetic fibers are released when clothing is washed and while wastewater treatment plants do a good job of removing the fibers from water that reaches the ocean, Hartline et al. (2016) demonstrated that a population of 100,000 individuals release approximately 1 kg of microfibers every day through their laundry. As we approach the winter, consider treating your fleeces, down fabrics, and other heavy synthetic materials similar to how you treat your denim clothing: wash them when they are dirty, not because you wore them once.

Lastly--consider your friends, family, and neighbors...potentially an odd sentiment. Many individuals are aware of the dangers of macroplastics and have seen pictures of sea turtles, seals, etc. tangled in plastic soda rings or with straws in their mouths. However, most people don't know about microplastics pollution and how it affects marine organisms; marine animals will eat microplastics and though entanglement is not an issue due to the size of the particles, ingestion of microplastics can lead to respiratory failure, behavioral changes, and death. Help teach your peers about microplastics the same way you have taught them about macroplastic pollution. Give your friends gifts in reusable packaging; send baked goods in glassware rather than single use plastics; treat your kids to a nice aluminum water bottle. We can make small changes ourselves to help out while professionals work on fixing the issue of microplastics pollution at the manufacturing, processing, and recycling levels.

Please realize that fixing the microplastics problem is not quick, nor is it easy, and I don't think that we can change the status of micropollutants by ourselves. However, by making small changes, we become allies in the fight for a cleaner Earth and can benefit our local communities.

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