
New research helps unravel how vast amounts of plastic particles travel - woofyman
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thousands-of-tons-of-microplastics-are-falling-from-the-sky/
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alex_young
The numbers here are so staggering, I thought they had to be wrong. How many
plastic bottles can humans possibly throw away in total?

How wrong my assumption seems to be. In 2017, we created over 1 million
plastic bottles a minute [0], and in 2018 we produced more plastic by
weight[1] than the human population of the world[2].

[0]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/07/26/million-p...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/07/26/million-
plastic-bottles-minute-91-not-recycled/#60a743c5292c)

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/282732/global-
production...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/282732/global-production-
of-plastics-since-1950/)

[2] [https://www.livescience.com/36470-human-population-
weight.ht...](https://www.livescience.com/36470-human-population-
weight.html#:~:text=Humanity%20could%20stand%20to%20lose,242%20million%20normal%2Dweight%20people).

~~~
fokinsean
Went on a small get away with in-laws last week. They probably went through
200 bottles of water over 7 days. I would say at any given time there were 10
or so half full around the house. I was the only one who was filling up a
metal bottle in the sink. Very disheartening to see.

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hnhg
We also need to consider the microplastics turning into nanoplastics. At that
scale they can cross cell membranes. We still don't know what that means:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-019-0437-7](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-019-0437-7)

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abdullahkhalids
From here [1]

> Most of these plastic particles are synthetic microfibers used for making
> clothing

How do I buy clothes that don't have synthetic microfibers? What do I look for
on the tag?

[1]
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6496/1257](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6496/1257)

~~~
ReticentVole
Microfibers usually use plastic bottles and other containers sent for
recycling. We need to simply eliminate that stream of waste. Banning single-
use plastic is an absolutely necessary step - but the effort needs to be
global, or at least rich countries need to force major polluters (Coca Cola
etc) to act globally if they wish to retain access to local markets.

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graeme
> The scientists found microplastics in almost every sample they collected. In
> total, 4 percent of the identifiable dust particles were plastic. Brahney
> and her colleagues “immediately realized the gravity of what we were
> seeing,” she says. “That was a moment of being just completely astounded.”

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totetsu
As costal erosion becomes a bigger problem, I wonder if there will be a lot
more geo-textiles used on the coast line to manage it. Textiles made of
plastic that will eventually just wash into the oceans. Where I live on the
Sea of Japan I am constantly finding all kinds of things washed up from China,
Korea and Russia (along with all the fishing gear). There is very little I
could do locally to clean up the beaches here.

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de_watcher
As the great George has said, humanity is here just to create deposits of
plastic on the planet.

