Microplastics are everywhere | Sarah Dudas | TEDxBinghamtonUniversity

Translator: Ilze Garda Critic: Peter van de Ven I am going to tell you a story, and it is my story, but it is also yours, and you will soon see how. I asked my students to join me in the challenge of documenting how plastic affects our lives by taking a photo every time we touch plastic. And at the end of that day, gather all those photos in one place. Here I share my plastic day. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed, as a working mother (I have two young daughters), you can see that plastic is in every element of my day.

And I had to make the photos quite small because it was a challenge to fit them all on this slide. If you look closely, you'll notice that I put several plastic elements in many of the photos. It was quite overwhelming taking so many photos throughout the day, but you can see that plastic is in every element of my day. From the beginning, when I woke up to the sound of my plastic alarm clock, the plastic wrappers of the food I ate, the clothes I put on while I was getting ready to go out, the phones I used to talk a lot at work, to the end of the day, when I tucked my youngest daughter in with her favorite synthetic stuffed animal, Pinky, until the last step of the day: a plastic cover on the book she was reading. .

Plastic is in every element. When I put all these photos together, the result seemed really shocking to me, but perhaps what is even more shocking is that we have only been using plastic since the 1950s. That's about 65 years, and in that relatively short period of time, we have generated the estimated metric tons of plastic on the planet. That's equivalent to 25,000 Empire State buildings. Now, of all that plastic, only 9% has been recycled, and in my plastic days, 9% looks like this. 60% has been wasted. In my plastic days, 60% looks like this, leaving us with 31% that is still used. All that plastic – over time, with the heat of the sun, light, oxygen and microbes – will break down into smaller and smaller pieces.

This may take 10 to 20 years for a plastic bag, more than 400 years for a plastic bottle, but over time it will disintegrate into smaller and smaller pieces until it forms what scientists now call

microplastics

. Microplastics are defined as any plastic less than five millimeters, that is, the size of a grain of rice, and we divide them into two types. The first, primary

microplastics

: plastic designed to be small. And there are many reasons why we do this: medical, personal, industrial. Microbeads are something many of you will be familiar with and are now banned in many countries. Be careful with other microplastics in cosmetics, for example, synthetic fibers in mascara.

Polystyrene beads are used in many applications as filler and flotation; nurdles, a fun name for little balls of plastic resin that can be used to make almost anything, and even things like glitter are considered primary microplastics. Then we have our secondary microplastics, which are plastics that are created from the breakdown of those large materials: fragments from a plastic bottle, films from a plastic bag, fibers from nets, ropes, and even from our synthetic clothing. Now, microplastics are also in my plastic era, but they are harder to see due to their small size. But rest assured, they were there from start to finish.

In my morning cup of tea, the plastic fibers from paper-like tea bags (this is my last box), to the tire dust generated by my synthetic polymer tires while driving to preschool and work, to the nurdles of my daughter's stuffed animal and even the plastic gem ring she found in the parking lot. Until the end of the day, from the load of laundry I did, to the dryer lint, which contains synthetic fibers from our clothes, to my daughter's artwork I hung with sequins and glitter, microplastics are

everywhere

. When scientists examined habitats and environments, we found that microplastics are

everywhere

: in different habitats (from freshwater to the ocean, from the deep sea to the Arctic) and in animals (from the bottom of the food chain to zooplankton and fish, all of them). the way to the top, in marine mammals and even in ourselves.

Microplastics are everywhere and when animals eat them, this can have negative effects on them. It can have physical impacts, blockages, abrasions or chemical impacts, either from the leaching of chemicals in the plastics or from chemicals in the environment and contaminants that adhere to the plastic. And all this can create negative health effects: decreased growth and reproduction. The study of microplastics is new and our knowledge about the impacts of microplastics is limited, especially at smaller sizes. And as we get closer to those smaller sizes, down to the level that is invisible to the naked eye, about 100 microns or the thickness of the sheet of paper, we find microplastics there as well.

They are in my plastic era, in the water I drink, in the air I breathe, and we are just learning about microplastics in food. My research team has found microplastics in shellfish, clams, and oysters. Other studies have found microplastics in chicken, honey, salt and beer, and we have yet to learn about microplastics in other foods. Almost all the microplastics we have found, and in many other studies, have been fibers. We're still figuring out where these fibers come from, but synthetic clothing represents a major potential source. Every year 70 million tons of fibers are used in the clothing industry.

Of those 70 million, 60% are synthetic. And you can see that when you go shopping if you look at your labels. My daughter and I went shopping in preparation for this talk looking for a stylish natural fiber shirt. We went to four big Canadian retailers and failed. So today I'm here looking a little less formal than I'd like, but feeling much more comfortable than I would if I were here talking to you about plastic while wearing it. Now, as we wash clothes, fibers are released, and a recent study took six-kilogram loads of clothes (polyester, cotton, polyester, and acrylic) and washed them.

And they generated from 140,000 fibers for the polycotton blend to a whopping 700,000 fibers for acrylic, per load. Now, I took those numbers and imagined that my family of four would generate a three-kilogram load of synthetic clothing per week. Multiply that by 52 weeks a year and my family alone generates 1.1 billion fibers a year—fibers that go into our sewage system, our waterways, the ocean, our ecosystems, and our food. Our microplastics are everywhere, but there's something we can do about it almost everywhere we go, and it starts with the old three Rs from the '70s we're familiar with: reduce, reuse, and recycle.

But we need to update them to add three new Rs, starting with the first: reject. Reject single-use plastic, reject any plastic you don't need, reject straws, reject coffee cups, think critically about what you need, think about where it is. If you can't refuse it, reduce it. Think carefully about the plastic you need, look for natural alternatives where you can. There are many things we can do to reduce fiber contamination, for example, you can use a fiber collector like the Cora Ball, or use a bag to put your synthetics in, like the Patagonia Guppyfriend, use a front-loading washing machine . which generates fewer fibers than a top loader.

Use a filter in your washing machine to catch fibers before they enter the water. All of these things will help reduce fiber contamination. If you can't reduce it, reuse it. Choose products designed to last rather than those with planned obsolescence. Try to get as much life out of your plastic items as possible, and if you can't reuse them, by all means, recycle them, but even the hard stuff, even the stuff that doesn't fit in your curbside recycling. In my case, it's plastic bags, Styrofoam, electronics. If your community does not have facilities to handle these types of items, then creating the demand and need is worth your time.

The second new R: rethink. We live in a society that does not value second-hand goods very much, we have to change that. We need to focus on services rather than replacement, and that will require the final, and perhaps most challenging, new R, which is redesign. On a broader scale, we need to shift our thinking from the linear make-take-dispose model to one that is more circular in nature, to one where we think about the end life of a product from its inception. Now, I went through my plastic days and chose a series of items that follow that linear economy, that linear model of make, take and throw away, and I multiplied the images by the number of each one that I have used in my life. .

Now, I'm proud and a little embarrassed to say that this is the alarm clock of my childhood, which isn't saying much for being up to date, but I've been through different appliances, computers, phones. ; I chose my daughter's backpack because in her seven years on this planet, she's already gone through three, and I've worn more synthetic clothing than I'd like to admit. This consumption model generates much more waste than in a circular economy, which focuses on services, on reuse, on renewal, rather than replacing, where you might have a phone, a computer that is updated with the latest technology as it works. becomes available.

Imagine a system where you don't own your clothes, but instead hide them or rent them from companies you like, wear them until you want something new, return them, and they reuse them in newer styles you want. have on. Let's slow down fast fashion and focus on quality instead of quantity. All of these things, with a shift in our linear way of thinking, are within the realm of possibility and many are already happening. Let's think beyond the bottle and create space for innovation. Plastic is a valuable product, we depend on it and a future without it is completely unrealistic.

But we cannot and should not continue to use and produce it on the growing trajectory we are currently on. Plastic is durable, lasts a long time, and while that is a problem in one respect, it represents an opportunity in many others. Microplastics are everywhere, and although that scares me, what gives me hope is knowing that the solutions are too. Thank you. (Applause) Winter Clark: I'm very intrigued by these ideas of rethinking and redesigning, you know, focusing on repair and services instead of just throwing something away after one use. Do you think those aspects of rethinking and redesigning are more important than continuing to reduce the amount of plastic we use?

Sarah Dudas: I think both are important. On an individual level, it is very easy to reduce the amount of plastics we use. Now, I challenge everyone here to try to do that every time you're offered plastic you don't really need. So we can make some smart individual decisions, but we need to rethink things on a broader level. There are some things we are doing that we can improve. For example, in the food packaging industry, we package foods that have a shelf life of a few days to perhaps a few years and packaging that lasts more than a few decades.

This doesn't make sense, we need to rethink those models, and with that will come a further reduction in the way we use plastic. WC: Very good, thank you. SD: Thank you. (Applause)