The reality of plastics and their ability to fragment was brought home to me recently.
Clearing out old home office files confirmed my capacity to hoard. As decluttering progressed, some plastic binders just fell apart as sorting for recycling was being attempted.
A second reminder followed: a bathroom leak due to a plastic seal disintegrating due to old age.
If only they became harmless on passing their “effective use date”. But as the world is slowly realising, microplastics are causing untold contamination of the environment and of humans in particular. Perhaps the most insidious aspect of this is evidence that even in their prime they are shedding.
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The pollution is obvious. Particles persist for thousands of years though we don’t know all the consequences of most body organs containing microplastics or of every waterway harbouring tiny bits of man-made polymers. Yet plastics are everywhere in modern life; in the deepest oceans and remotest places.
“And since plastics are forever, the world’s seas are now littered with massive gyres of plastic waste – billions of tonnes of used food containers, water bottles, fishing gear and other items that fragment into microplastics, wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems and increasingly on human health,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warns.
Microplastics are small beads often found in soaps and personal care products. They also include bits of what were once larger items. The problem is they can absorb harmful pollutants such as pesticides, dyes and flame retardants, only to later release them in the ocean.
Their likely part in declining fertility is profoundly worrying. Chemical additives called phthalates, often referred to as plasticisers (increasing flexibility), are linked to hormone disruption that undermines fertility and causes miscarriages. Bisphenol A (BPA) used in plastic manufacturing is equally menacing.
A recent documentary on Netflix, The Plastic Detox, follows six US couples as they struggle with low sperm counts and other barriers to conceiving a child and are advised by epidemiologist Dr Shanna Swan.
The couples limit their exposure to plastics, buy nonsynthetic clothes and ditch cleaning and personal care products sold in plastic containers. This detoxing appears to improve sperm counts and other pregnancy-related variables, and some couples do become parents – though Swan acknowledges this was not a study and lacked a control group and robust sample size.
The documentary highlights a related problem; the industry’s long-standing lie that recycling is a viable solution to the plastic waste problem.
Just as scientists at Exxon were privately telling management by the 1970s that continuing to burn fossil fuels could end civilisation as we know it, plastic companies’ own scientists have for decades been telling them that recycling is not a real solution. An internal document described in The Plastics Detox and cited by the California Department of Justice in its ongoing lawsuit against ExxonMobil, concludes “recyclability at scale is not financially viable”.
[ There is something delusional about your frantic trips to the recycling binOpens in new window ]
A Climate Beat column published by Covering Climate Now in 2024 noted, “the oil industry sees plastics as a lifeline in the face of growing global efforts to transition away from fossil fuel in the name of climate survival”. BP, for example, projects that plastics will account for 95 per cent of demand for new oil in coming decades. Oil executives highlight how plastic can help “future-proof” the industry as the world moves away from its product for energy.
I am in the same camp as Swan in not being against plastic itself (it serves useful purposes, notably in healthcare and food production); just the damaging chemicals added to it. Equally, it should be acknowledged that getting pregnant can be difficult for many reasons.
“As long as we’re putting clothing on, that clothing should not contain PFAS [man-made ‘forever chemicals’] or other chemicals. As long as we’re eating food, it should not have harmful chemicals in it,” Swan says. The US should do what the EU has done, she adds – there are fewer than a dozen personal care chemical compounds banned in the US, but 1,100 are banned in the EU. Meanwhile, global plastic production is expected to triple in the next 40 years.
Conflict in the Middle East has raised concerns not only about global supplies of oil and gas but also of plastics. Higher energy prices not only raise manufacturing costs but also the cost of the materials themselves, including polyethylene and polypropylene, two of the world’s most widely used plastics.
More than 99 per cent of global plastics are derived from fossil fuels, so plastics and fossil fuels are two sides of the same coin. With the world producing twice as much plastic as it did in the 1990s, the case for phase-out of both is equally compelling.
Kevin O’Sullivan is an environmental commentator and consultant
