When the gods granted midas one wish, he wished that everything he touch would turn to gold. Midas
was delighted, trees, rocks, all gold. But soon he found in horror when his food turned into gold as well.
When he hug is daughter to saute his pain, he realized his mistake too late. The richest man in the
world, was starving, heartbroken, and alone.
Humanity got a similiar wish granted when we learned how to turn brown stinky goo into magic - plastic.
Cheap, sterile, and covenient, it changes our lives. But this wonder of technology got a little out of hand.
Plastic has saturated our environment, it has invaded animals we eat. And now its finding its way into
our bodies.
What is plastic? For most of our history humans, we used stuff we found in nature to build the things we
needed. But te invention of plastic roughly 100 years ago completely changed our world. Plastic is made
from polymers, long repeating chain of molecule groups. In nature polymers exist everywhere : cells
wall, silk, hair, insect carapaces, and DNA. But it also possible to create them. By breaking down crude
oil into its components and rearranging them, we can form new synthetic polymers. Synthetic polymers
have extraordinary traits. They are lightweight, durable, and can be modeled into any shape. Not
requiring time-consuming manual work, plastic can be easily mass-produced and its raw materials are
availabile in vast amount, and increadibly cheaply. And so, the golden era of plastic began.
Bakelite was used for mechanical parts, PVS for plumbing, electrical equipments, and cases, Acrylic is a
shatter resistant alternative to glass, and nylon for stockings and war equipments. Today is almost
everything at least partly made from plastic. Our phones, clothes, computers, furniture, appliances,
houses, and cars. Plastic has long ceased to be a revolutionary materials instead it became trash. Coffee
cups, plastic bags, and stuff wrapped a banana. We dont think about this fact a lot. Plastic just appears
and goes away, unfortunately it doesnt.
Since plastic is so durable, it takes 500 to 1000 years to break down. But somehow we collectively
decided to use this super tough material for things meant to be thrown away. 40% of plastic are used for
packaging. In the US itself, packaging mades up 1/3 of all wate that its generated annually. Since its
invention, we have produced 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic. 335 million tons in 2016 alone. More than
6.3 billion metric tons of plastic have become trash since 1907. Piled up in one place, that makes a cube
with a side length of 1.9 kilometers.
So, what did we do to all this waste? 9% was recycled, 12% burnt. But the other 79% of it is sticking
arround still. A lot ends up in the oceans, about 8 million tons a year. That so much plastic that it will
outweigh all of the fish in the ocean in 2050. Becuse its everywhere, marin animals keep getting trapped
in plastic and swallowing it. In 2015 already 90%of seabirds had eaten plastic. Many animals starve with
stomach full of indigestable trash. In 2018, a dead sperm whale washed up in spain. It had eaten 32 kg of
plastics bags, nets, and a drum. While this is tragic and makes for great magazine covers, there's an even
more widespread, invisible form of plastic - microplastics.
