Plastic Pollution: Understanding the Threat of Microplastics

Microplastics- These are the pieces of plastics that are less than 5mm in size and are present in the environment from various sources of plastics.

Humans couldn’t have possibly imagined that a simple invention back in 1909, by “Leo Hendrik Baekeland” called the Bakelite (the first synthetic plastic – “phenol formaldehyde resin”), could become a threat to the environment. The commercial success of this product lead to inventions of many more plastics like LDPE, HDPE, PVC, Polystyrene etc.  After this human have accepted plastics so fast that we can easily see how dependent we have become on the plastic.  The global plastic industry in 2020 was valued at 580-billion-dollar industry. Plastics are now everywhere and in every industry.

Why is plastic becoming a problem to us?

There are many perspectives to this, but I will discuss 3 of them.

•       The non-biodegradable nature of the plastic.
•       Accumulation of microplastics in food chain system.
•       The presence of microplastics in various natural resources.

1.      The non-biodegradable nature of the plastic – Plastics are non-biodegradable in nature that is it takes a very long time to degrade and integrate itself into the nature. So, the rate at which we are generating plastic is not the rate at which it gets out of the environment. So, eventually plastic is increasing in the planet and so is the plastic waste and the truth is governments do not know what to do with such a massive amount of plastic waste. So, its high time that we find a solution to deal with all this.

2.      Accumulation of microplastics in food chain system – Evidences have been found that microplastics gets leached to the food packed or kept in plastic containers or packaging materials. These microplastics then enters into the food chain system. There is a concept of bio-magnification according to which the amount of microplastics found in the top member of the food chain will be magnified by accumulation from the organisms of lower organisms. These microplastics are leading to disruption of endocrine system of human beings leading to several hormonal disease and also leading to mutations causing cancers.

3.      The presence of microplastics in various natural resources – Every natural source like water in rivers, ocean, glaciers and even the ground water, the soil, the air has now microplastic contamination. So, it is evident that the problem of plastic and microplastic is eventually going to increase in the future.

How to deal with it?

Reality is We cannot deal with it alone. To solve this issue, it needs a massive collaboration of government agencies, corporates and normal people. There is no short-term solution to this. A long- term vision and effort is required by us to curb this problem.

A) Innovation and research on bioplastics (plastics that degrade quickly but has the required property) should be promoted both by the government and industries. 

B) Research on urban planning to deal with the plastic waste that currently exists and reduce the amount of plastic waste generation should be focused.

C) Education among the normal people about the reduce and reuse of plastics.

D) Strategical steps like promoting of traditional and natural packaging materials and banning the disposable plastics which cannot be reused can be very beneficial. 

E) Introduction of proper disposing protocols such as two-level segregation of waste. One by the people when throwing and other by the municipal body.

While the scale of the plastic pollution problem is overwhelming, it is essential to recognize that individual actions can make a difference. We can do what we have in our hands because governments will do what makes money for them. The NGOs and individuals are the one who are working on ground. So, there is just a small hope that we still can save the environment. Let's see what future have for us.

-CuriositySeeker