Let’s talk about microplastics

Plastic is surrounding us everywhere we go. It’s in our groceries, clothes, cars, toys, packaging… everywhere. Because it is not biodegradable, it often ends up in landfills, oceans, or on the streets. There, because of the waves, heat, and wind, the plastic breaks into small parts disintegrates piece by piece and becomes microplastic.

Microplastics are defined to be little synthetic compounds parts, smaller than 5 millimeters. Some are formed accidentally from bigger pieces of plastic – like for example the wearing down of the car tires – and some are intentionally made and added to health, beauty and cleaning products. You can find them in toothpaste, facial scrubs, make-up products like foundation, eyeshadows, lipsticks and more.

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The food chain

When those microplastics are littering the oceans and the streets, some birds and marine life can mistake it for food. While digesting in their small organisms, the microplastics cause injuries, illnesses, and hormonal imbalances. Later that small marine life is eaten by some bigger fish, and then it lands on our plates. Yummy.

How to avoid microplastics?

Firstly look through your cosmetics. Check the ingredients list for most common microplastics like: Polyethylene (PE), Nylon (PA), Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), Polypropylene (PP), Polyurethane or Acrylates copolymer. You may also check out the website beatthemicrobead.org where you can search your cosmetic brand name, and they show you what microplastics it hides on a scale from Red (contains microplastics) through Orange (sceptical microplastics) and Green (no microplastics) to Zero Plastic Inside (certified microplastic-free products). Later you can start searching for some microplastic-free alternatives or maybe even make your own beauty products. The internet is full of ideas for DIY skin care, so maybe give it a shot?

But microplastics don’t only come from cosmetics. A very wide amount of them is from synthetic clothing. While washing these garments they lose some microfibers that are also very harmful to the marine life. Solutions? Well, the obvious one is buying sustainably and from natural fabrics. If you’ve been here for a while, you probably already know our thoughts about fast fashion so I won’t mention it here. But what about the synthetic clothing you already have? Don’t throw it away, that will only make things worse. So what can you do? There are filter bags you can buy. How you use them is you put your non-natural fabrics to the bag and just wash it regularly in your washing machine, and that’s it. The bag should catch all the fibers and suppress them from littering the bodies of water.

Microplastics are a broad topic, and I covered just a tiny bit of that problem here. We’re currently on a way to step by step kill our planet with all the trash, pollution, water waste. It’s time to stop it and take some initiative.