Would you like plastic with that?

 

 

If you suffer from a sensitive stomach then it’s probably best not to read any further…more unsavoury evidence that plastic bags are worse for the environment, and therefore, us. Never has the switch to cotton bags seemed more appealing!

Analysis by researchers has found that chemicals from plastics are now a regular staple of human diets, as a direct result of the way we are allowing plastic bags to pollute our oceans.

One estimate has put the world’s annual plastic production at 245 million tons, much of which is made up of the plastic bags we use on a daily basis for shopping and other purposes. Many of these bags eventually find themselves in the water system, and will wind up accumulating as part of massive patches of plastic that rotate as they move around the ocean.

The plastic never really disappears, it just dissolves into a kind of soupy mush where the chemical components get smaller and smaller. Once it gets even more concentrated than algae, it inevitably gets consumed by fish, and once that happens, the journey to our plates is never too long.

And don’t be fooled into thinking that if you have a fish-free diet you’re avoiding the plastic – fish is also commonly used as a feed in the agriculture business, meaning the beef or chicken you’re eating will more than likely contain a lot more chemicals than you’d rather it did, even if the animal in question has never been near a piece of plastic.

What the long-term health risks are from this build-up of chemicals transferred from our food to us are debated, but it’s not a pleasant thought that all of these miniscule bits of plastic are now a part of us. They are associated with all kinds of illnesses, and they affect everyone around the world, since every continent has its own floating piles of plastic in the waters off its coasts.

The solution can only be to find ways of keeping plastic out of our oceans, and one part of that has to be making the switch from plastic bags to cotton bags or other environmentally friendly bags. Yes the production process may be less energy-efficient, but at least a cotton bag doesn’t stick around for millennia