#BeatPlasticPollution this World Environment Day
Megan R.M. Brown, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment
This year marks the 50th Anniversary for World Environment Day, and the focus is on plastic. Plastic has been around for over 100 years; the first commercial plastic, Bakelite, was invented in 1907. Since then, plastic has become commonplace in our lives, and half of the plastic produced is designed to be used only once.
Look around right now, and you’ll see plastic. Maybe it’s part of the chair you are sitting in or the device you are reading this on. Maybe you are drinking from a plastic bottle. You probably are wearing plastic, too, at least as part of some item of clothing or shoes. Plastic has made our lives easier and more affordable. It helps make life-saving devices like IV tubes, bulletproof vests and firefighting gear. Further, plastics makes preserving food easier with bags, plastic wrap and reusable containers.
The downside to all this plastic is that these synthetic polymers don’t break down quickly in the environment. A plastic bottle can take around 450 years to decompose! While some plastic can be recycled, most isn’t. It’s estimated that only about 10% of plastic is recycled. Instead, a lot of disposed plastic just breaks into smaller pieces called “microplastics.”
Microplastics are classified as any plastic particle smaller than 5 mm. These particles show up in a lot of different places, including the ocean, streams, soils, the air, organisms like birds and fish, food products, drinking water and more.
Here at NIU, along with students and colleagues, I am working on projects that look at how microplastics move through our environment – specifically in streams and groundwater. Since microplastics are so small, they can move along with the groundwater in an aquifer. As a hydrogeologist, I am interested in how this movement occurs, how microplastics can move between surface water and groundwater, and if the microplastics will change how an aquifer functions. All these topics are being investigated using field studies, experiments in my laboratory and computer models. Since beginning research on microplastics, I have become much more aware of just how much plastic is all around us and how much we really use.
This World Environment Day, I encourage you to do the same. Take a look around you. How much plastic do you use each day? Look at some labels. Where is plastic being used that you didn’t expect? Maybe make a list of all the plastic you encounter and use in just one day and ask your family to do the same.
Then ask yourself, can I make choices that reduce the amount of plastic I use, especially plastic that is used just once and then thrown away?
