Dangers of plastic in climate highlighted as treaty talks continue

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OTTAWA – Mother Nature delivered a typical spring day Wednesday in Ottawa, with a morning of light drizzle fading into afternoon sunshine, near-freezing temperatures and thousands of grams of plastic.

That “plastic forecast” comes from a project by Australia’s Minderoo Foundation, which is trying to draw attention to the extent of the global plastic problem as negotiations for a global treaty to end plastic waste continue in the national capital.

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“We have produced so much plastic that it is now in our climate,” the foundation’s report says.

The data is based on scientific measurements of airborne microplastics in Ottawa that were collected by Minderoo scientists in February and March.

They also measured the amount of plastic in Ottawa’s drinking water and found that on any given day, someone consuming the recommended 2.5 liters of water would also ingest about 5,400 plastic nanoparticles.

Microscopic pieces of plastic can be described as “microplastics” (no larger than a pencil eraser) or nanoparticles, which are smaller than a millionth of a millimeter.

“Thousands of tonnes of microplastics are falling in Ottawa and other cities around the world,” said Minderoo founder Andrew Forrest. “It falls on your food, it falls on the air you breathe, on the water you drink.

“I think it’s really serious and the fact that it’s raining on us, essentially, because it’s everywhere.”

To clarify the issue, Minderoo displays its daily plastic forecast throughout the city, including on digital billboards at the Ottawa airport.

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Medical research has linked plastics to a host of health conditions, including infertility, a higher rate of miscarriages, and some cancers. The research is still very premature, partly because the plastics problem is a relatively new phenomenon.

More than half of all plastics ever made in the world have been produced in the last 20 years alone.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development says global plastic production rose from 234 million tonnes in 2000 to 460 million tonnes in 2019, while plastic waste grew from 156 million tonnes to 353 million tonnes.

About a fifth of that waste ended up in the environment, while less than a tenth was recycled.

Plastics have many ways to leak into the environment.

Statistics Canada, which recently updated its plastics data reports to support the national zero-waste plastic strategy, reports that nationally, plastic production and imports grew from 5.6 million tonnes in 2012 to nearly 7,000 tonnes. 1 million tons in 2019, and a little more than 7.1 million tons. in 2020.

In 2012, Canadians threw away about 4.3 million tonnes of plastic, and in 2020 that figure increased to 4.9 million tonnes. Forty per cent of all plastic waste in Canada comes from packaging.

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Plastic particles enter the environment in multiple ways, sometimes intentionally as litter or from unmanaged trash heaps. Sometimes it comes from managed landfills where the plastic slowly decomposes, leaches into the ground or enters waterways.

Some start out small: microbeads, for example, or glitter, which are actually small pieces of plastic coated in aluminum. Others start out large and get smaller over time.

“Every plastic bottle, bag or straw we leave in the environment will eventually break down into thousands and thousands of microplastics,” said Anja Brandon, associate director of U.S. plastics policy at the Ocean Conservancy.

Once these plastics leach into the soil, water and air, they become part of the food chain. Plastics have been found in all parts of plants, including roots, stems, petals and fruits.

A study published in January led by researchers at the Ocean Conservancy and the University of Toronto found microplastics in 16 different proteins, including fish, shellfish, beef, pork, chicken, plant-based fish fingers and ground beef.

A 2021 study published in the journal Science Direct found evidence of plastic particles in apples, pears, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, and potatoes.

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Brandon said plastic microfibers are a mainstay of the fashion industry and every time a load of laundry goes through a washing machine, 18 million plastic microfibers can be flushed down the drain.

Once these particles are added to the environment, it is impossible to completely remove them, Brandon said. He compared it to taking a beach of sand and scattering it around a lake and asking someone to retrieve each grain.

“You’re never going to get them all.”

Brandon said that because exposure to plastics is still relatively new, there is no long-term evidence about what will happen to people due to repeated and constant exposures.

Brandon said the main solution to the problem is to reduce the amount of plastic we release into the environment and the only way to do that, he said, is to produce less.

“If we want to address the plastic crisis for the sake of our ocean communities, public health, human health, all of it, we need to start with reductions to produce and use less single-use plastic in the first place,” he said.

“We need to better manage the plastics that we are going to use, which means redesigning them so that they can actually be reused or recycled and stay in the economy.”

Plastic treaty negotiations are looking at all sorts of solutions, including putting strict limits on the amount of plastic made and banning the most toxic chemicals used to make plastic.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2024.

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