We’re Doing Our Best To Eradicate Plastic Use, But We All Need To Do More

Thanks to the efforts of David Attenborough, Greenpeace and the like, we’ve all become acutely aware of the impact plastics are having on our planet.

And here at AMBS, we really are trying to do our bit, by banning all throw-away plastic from our construction sites in St Albans and Harpenden.

But it does feel as if we all have to do much more after recent research suggests that the problem might be way bigger than we feared, as reported in the following article by Jack Peat that appeared on The London Economic website last week…

Microplastics found in water, food and air the equivalent of eating a “credit card a week”

Humans are ingesting the equivalent of one credit card per week from water, food and the air they breathe.

A new WWF study called ‘Assessing Plastic Ingestion from Nature to People’ reports that people consume 2,000 tiny pieces of plastic each week, on average, which is the equivalent of eating a teaspoon of plastic — or a credit card — every week.

Carried out by Australia’s University of Newcastle the research found that water, both bottled and tap, was the largest single source of plastic ingestion, but large amounts of microplastics were found in the food chain and in the air.

Since 2000 the world has produced as much plastic as all the proceeding years combined, a third of which is leaked into nature.

By 2030 some 104 million metric tons of plastic could be released into the environment unless drastic action is taken.

This week Canada announced it would move to ban single-use plastic items by as early as 2021.

It followed the European Union’s decision in March to ban plastic items such as plastic cutlery, cotton buds, straws and stirrers by 2021.