4 - Plastic

Summary

We each use 150 plastic bottles and 300 single-use plastic bags every year. Very few of these get recycled. Plastic is used in everything because it is light, cheap, disposable, and virtually indestructible. Nearly 380 million tons of plastic are produced every year. Plastic is made from oil, natural gas, and other petroleum-derived chemicals that do not biodegrade and persist in the environment for hundreds or thousands of years. Every year nearly 9 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans, most of it single use, where it breaks down into small pieces known as microplastics, leaching chemicals (like BPA, styrene, and PCBs) into the ocean. Animals sometimes mistake microplastics for food and ingest them. This can block their digestive tracts leading to starvation, or allow chemicals and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs) attached to the plastics to concentrate in their flesh and fats. When other animals (and humans) eat these smaller animals, chemical toxins – carcinogens and endocrine disruptors – bioaccumulate up the food chain and can affect health and fertility. Plastics also harm (or kill) coral reefs, fish, and other marine animals due to entanglement. We can and should reduce our use of plastics.