What's With All the Fuss About Plastic?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably seen news articles and blogs everywhere talking about how plastic is hurting the planet. But are all these treehuggers just whining? What can be so bad about something we’ve been manufacturing for years?

The answer is this: plastic can never biodegrade. What does this mean? During the manufacturing process of plastics, chemical reactions take place that produce the plastic building compounds. The composition of the plastic compounds is such that they will never break down into the organic elements of which they were composed. For example, when food waste composts, it breaks down into its original elements (carbon, hydrogen etc). Because these elements are natural, they can easily be digested by nature. That is why food scraps don’t linger on the face of the earth for thousands of years.

But plastics have molecular structures that are not natural, and therefore can never be digested by nature. Plastic can degrade over time, but cannot biodegrade. When plastics degrade, they simply break down into smaller and smaller plastic particles, but never into natural elements. These smaller fractions of plastic are called microplastics. And these microplastics are everywhere. From the bellies of birds in remote regions of the world, to marine animals, to our underground water sources. And through the course of the food chain, these microplastics eventually make their way into humans! Gross, right?!

So now that you know that, is there anything you can do about it? Of course there is! The best thing you can do, besides buying less plastic junk in general, is to reduce your consumption of single-use plastics. Just a few ideas:

· Use reusable shopping bags and mesh produce bags

· Pack your lunch in reusable containers instead of plastic baggies

· Ditch the k-cups and opt for bagged coffee instead

· Use real dishes instead of disposable plates, cups, etc

· Refuse plastic straws at home and when eating out

· Stop buying bottled water and carry a reusable thermos instead

This list could go on and on but hopefully you get the point by now. What steps will you take to reduce your plastic footprint?