WasteLess.ca recently hosted a film titled Plastic People on the topic of microplastics. Microplastics are defined as pieces of plastic smaller than 5 mm. Microplastics much smaller than this, however, are being found in, well, everything. Imagine dividing the edge of a dime into 1000 slices – that is a micrometer. Invisible to the eye, microplastics are being found in plants, in animals, in the soil, in the water, in the air and in us. In our own bodies, microplastics are being found in our reproductive systems, our blood, within individual cells, in our brains – everywhere researchers look. The truth is we are only beginning to discover the extent of this pollution and the resulting ecological and health impacts. If you think this is bad news, you are right.

Microplastics in our bodies can impact our health in three basic ways: simply having a piece of plastic in your blood or in your brain may cause health problems. The second source of concern are the additives in plastics that are known to leach out – pigments, plastizers, stabilizers, fire retardants: ‘forever chemicals’ associated with a myriad of potential health impacts. And the third source is the fact that plastics attract other chemicals in the environment – herbicides, pesticides and many other synthetic chemicals – which are brought into the body with the plastic, like a Trojan horse bearing toxic gifts.

Plastics generally do not disappear once they are in the environment. They just break down and become harder to clean up as they degrade into smaller and smaller bits. And this is the conundrum as we continue to produce (and dispose of) 400 metric tonnes each year. Like all pollution it is much easier and cost-effective to prevent its release to the environment than to try to clean it up later. One could look to selenium from coal mining or greenhouse gas emissions as examples of this. And though these are considered ‘wicked’ problems, doing something better is always better than doing nothing at all. So, what can you do?

Plastics are an important engineering material – strong, lightweight, chemical resistant, tough. They are useful in durable goods, but maybe not so necessary as disposable goods. One of the easiest ways to reduce the amount of microplastics in the environment is to stop using single-use items like plastic bags, cutlery, straws, etc. You might think this is inconsequential, but about a third of plastic production (140 million metric tonnes) is directed to single-use products. That’s almost 40 lbs for each person on the planet each year! Only 1% of single-use plastics comes from recycled products.

It is likely that the largest source of microplastics from the home is from laundry. Synthetic fibres from our clothing break down and are washed away with the wastewater (eventually re-entering the environment as waste sludge or effluent water after treatment) or they are blown outside with the dryer air. What you can do is choose clothing with natural fibres when you can; use full washer loads with minimum laundry soap and set on gentle; and hang your clothes to dry. Millions of microfibers are released in each load of laundry – these simple practices may reduce this number by 70%.

The film, Plastic People, referred to the microplastics in each of our bodies. But we are also plastic people in that we have become so dependent on the material over the past 70 years. Knowing about the consequences of microplastics pollution should encourage us to use this important material more deliberately.