When the gods granted king Midas one wish, he wished that everything he touched would address gold. Midas was delighted. Trees, rocks, buildings all gold. But soon he found in horror that his food was gold similarly. When he hugged his daughter to assuage his pain, he realized his mistake too late. The richest man living was starving, heartbroken and alone. Humanity got an analogous wish granted after we learned a way to turn brown stinky goo into magic - plastic. Cheap, sterile and convenient it changed our lives But this wonder of technology got a touch out of hand. Plastic has saturated our surroundings. it's invaded the animals we eat and now it's finding its way into our bodies.
What is plastic? for many of our history humans used stuff we found in nature to create the items we wanted. But the invention of plastic roughly 100 years ago completely changed our world. Plastic is created from polymers - long repeating chains of molecule groups. In nature, polymers exist everywhere : the walls of cells, silk, hair, insect carapaces, DNA. But it is also possible to form them. By breaking down fossil fuel into its components and Rearranging them, we will form new synthetic polymers. Synthetic polymers have extraordinary traits. they're lightweight, durable and might be molded into almost any shape. Not requiring time-consuming manual work, plastic is easily mass-produced and its raw materials are a available in vast amounts And incredibly cheaply, so the golden era of plastics began Bakelite was used for mechanical parts, PVC for plumbing electric gears and cases, Acrylic may be a shatter resistant alternative to glass and nylon for stockings and war equipment Today almost everything is a minimum of partly made of plastic. Our clothes, phones, computers, furniture, appliances, houses and cars.
Plastic has long ceased to be a revolutionary material instead it became trash. Coffee cups, plastic bags, or stuff to wrap a banana. we do not consider this fact plenty. Plastic just appears and goes away. Unfortunately, it doesn't Since synthetic polymers are so durable, plastic takes between 500 and 1,000 years to interrupt down. But somehow we collectively decided to use this super tough material for things meant to be thrown away. 40% of plastics are used for packaging. within the u. s., packaging makes up 1/3 of all the waste that's generated annually. Since its invention, we've got produced about 8.3 billion metric a lot of plastic. 335 million tons in 2016 alone. over 6.3 billion metric loads of plastic became waste since 1907. congregated in one place, that produces a cube with a side length of 1.9 kilometers. So what did we do with all this waste? 9% was recycled, 12% burnt. But 79% of it's sticking around still. plenty finally ends up within the ocean. Around 8 million tons a year. That's most plastic that it'll outweigh all the fish within the ocean by 2050. Because it's everywhere, marine animals keep getting trapped in plastic and swallowing it. In 2015 already 90% of seabirds had eaten plastic. Many animals starve with stomachs filled with indigestible trash. In 2018 a dead toothed whale washed up in Spain. He had eaten 32 kilos of plastic bags, nets and a drum While this can be tragic and makes for nice magazine covers, there's a good more widespread, invisible variety of plastic. Microplastics are pieces smaller than 5 millimeters a number of them are employed in cosmetics or toothpaste, but most result from floating waste that's constantly exposed to UV radiation And crumbles into smaller and smaller pieces 51 trillion such particles float within the ocean, Where they're even more easily swallowed by all types of marine life. This has raised concerns among scientists, especially about health risks from the chemicals that are added to plastic.
BPA for instance makes plastic bottles transparent But there's also evidence that it interferes with our hormonal system. DEHP makes plastics more flexible, But may cause cancer. it'd be pretty bad if micro plastics are toxic, because they travel up the organic phenomenon. Zooplankton eat micro plastic. Small fish eat zooplankton. So do oysters, crabs and predatory fish and that they all land on our plate. Micro plastics are found in honey, in sea salt, in beer, in H2O and within the household dust around us. 8 out of 10 babies and nearly all adults have measurable amounts of phthalates, a standard plastic additive in their bodies And 93% of individuals have BPA in their urine there's little science about this thus far and without delay it's inconclusive.
We need plenty more research before panic is justified. But it's safe to mention that lots of stuff happened that we didn't plan for. and that we have lost control Over plastic to a particular extent which is reasonably scary. But just to form sure we should always simply ban plastics, right? Unfortunately, it is a bit more complicated than that. Plastic pollution isn't the sole environmental challenge we face. a number of the substitutes we'd use for plastic have the next environmental impact in other ways. as an example : in step with a recent study by the Danish government, making a single-use bag requires so little energy and produces far lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to a reusable cotton bag, that you just have to use your cotton bag 7 thousand 100 times before it'd have a lower impact on the environment than the bag.
We're left with a fancy process of trade-offs. Everything has an impression somehow, and it's hard to seek out the proper balance between them. Plastic also helps solve problems that we do not have excellent answers for at the instant. Globally, one-third of all food that's produced isn't eaten and finishes up rotting away on landfills where it produces methane. and also the best way of preventing food from spoiling and avoiding unnecessary waste continues to be plastic packaging. it is also important to notice where the overwhelming majority of the world's plastic pollution is coming from without delay. 90% of all plastic waste entering the ocean through rivers comes from just ten rivers in Asia and Africa. The Yangtze in China alone flushes 1.5 million a lot of plastic into the ocean every year.
Countries like China, India Algeria or Indonesia industrialized at a powerful pace within the previous couple of decades, transforming the lives of billions of individuals This development was so fast, that the rubbish disposal infrastructure couldn't maintain with collecting and recycling all the new waste this brought If politicians in Europe and also the US want to handle this issue, investing in infrastructure in developing countries is simply as important as fighting plastic pollution reception with campaigns and redesigning products to reduce unnecessary plastic production. the underside line is, as long as we do not address plastic pollution from a world perspective, we are going to not solve it.
Plastic pollution may be a complicated problem. We found a magic material and that we had a extremely experience with it, But we'd like to use caution or simply like Midas, we'll find yourself during a world that we did not want for. Your individual daily actions still have an enormous impact. What you are doing matters! Refuse disposable plastics. Convince your friends and family to try and do the identical. Pressure companies and politicians to require the mandatory steps to stay our oceans clean and our food safe. Together we are able to beat plastic pollution! This video was a collaboration with UN Environment and their clean seas campaign. If you wish to require action to show the tide on plastics, head to cleanseas.org and make your pledge
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good info.
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