World Wisdom: Microplastics and Oceans

Monday, June 8th was World Oceans Day and even though that's past, the oceans need our attention more than ever before. The ocean covers 71% of our planet, is home to more than 228,450 incredible species, feeds over 3 billion people every year and removes 30% of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. While the ocean is mitigating climate change, it is also increasingly affected by climate change. World Oceans Day is the day to celebrate the awe and wonder of our oceans, but also to recognize the dire situation our oceans are in, and what we need to do to turn the tide.

Visit Ocean Wise online for World Oceans Day: www.ocean.org/worldoceansday

I had a chance to interview microplastics expert Dr. Anna Posacka, Research Manager of the Ocean Wise Plastics Lab.

What is a microplastic or microfiber?
A microplastic is a plastic smaller than 5 mm. It can be a fiber, fragment, microbead, or pellet. The smallest plastics, at less than 1 or 0.1 um in size (depending on who you ask), are nanoplastics, which are typically treated as a separate category.

Why are they so prevalent and how do they affect oceans?
Any plastic product has the potential to pollute if waste is mismanaged. Examples of microplastic pollution are spilled nurdles intended for use in manufacturing, or break-down products of larger plastics—plastics such as packaging, clothing, fishing gear, road paint, or protective equipment. Plastic is prevalent because it is cheap to produce and durable, which means it does not readily biodegrade. Just as large animals get tangled in macroplastics or confuse them with food, smaller animals like zooplankton get microfibers tangled in their appendages or try to ingest a microplastic, which then may damage their digestive tracts or simply make them feel full, resulting in reduced feeding behaviour. Because zooplankton are near the bottom of the food web, other species that rely on them for food may be impacted as well.

How can people help reduce their impact of microplastics on the ocean?
The waste hierarchy reduce, reuse, recycle is the foundation of waste-management stewardship. The following are some practices that would reduce the amount of microplastics entering the environment. In the way of,
· Laundry – please see our Science Feature: “Me, my clothes and the ocean” for more detail.
o Do it less often.
o Use less water at lower temperatures. If you are in need of a new laundry machine, consider purchasing a high-efficiency front-loading machine. This helps to reduce water usage but has also been associated with lower fibre shedding from textiles.
o Consider purchasing a lint filter designed to connect to the drain hose of the washer.
o Avoid fast fashion and poor quality materials as they have a greater potential to loose microfibres
· material goods:
o Consume less to avoid generating waste.
o When you do have to discard an item, recycle it or throw it in the garbage bin. Don’t litter or put plastic in the food-waste bin.
· behaviour
o Talk to your friends, family and community about plastic pollution; encourage better practices to help the environment
o Educate and engage the next generation - participate with your children in a local litter cleanup or online education programs aimed at plastic pollution awareness and action such as those offered by Ocean Wise

If you own a business, you have power to make the same kind of changes, only on a larger scale:
· Design your products for long-term use, for re-use, for easy maintenance, and for recyclability.
· Put systems in place to make re-use or recycling easy.
· Reduce packaging and excessive plastic use, demand the same of your suppliers.
· When disposable plastic is unavoidable, opt for the compostable when possible and ensure consumers can dispose of them properly. Compostable materials require very specific conditions to degrade, high temperatures and pressures we find in industrial composters. Thus if material ends up in landfill or worse the environment it has the potential to linger as conventional plastics do. Avoid materials that can snare or entangle.