Solving the plastic problem: From cradle to grave, to reincarnation
Abstract
Plastic packaging accounts for 36% of all plastics made, but amounts to 47% of all plastic waste; 90% of all plastic items are used once and then discarded, which corresponds to around 50% of the total mass of plastics manufactured. Evidence for the ubiquity of microplastic pollution is accumulating rapidly, and wherever such material is sought, it seems to be found. Thus, microplastics have been identified in Arctic ice, the air, food and drinking water, soils, rivers, aquifers, remote maintain regions, glaciers, the oceans and ocean sediments, including waters and deep sea sediments around Antarctica, and within the deepest marine trenches of the Earth. They have also been detected in the bodies of animals, including humans, and as being passed along the hierarchy of food chains, up to marine top predators. Evidence has also been presented that microplastics are able to cross different life stages of mosquito that use different habitats - larva (feeding) to pupa (non-feeding) to adult terrestrial (flying) - and therefore can be spread from aquatic systems by flying insects. The so-called 'missing plastic problem' appears to be, in part, due to limitations in sampling methods, that is, many of the very small microplastic particles may simply escape capture in the trawl nets that are typically employed to collect them, but have been evidenced in grab-sampling experiments. Moreover, it is simply not possible to measure entirely through the vast, oceanic volumes of the oceans.…
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