Back to microplastics

As my regular readers have noticed, my concern for environmental issues does not stop growing and I wrote already several articles referring to environmental issues and circular economy.

I was recently reading a LinkedIn post from Alexis Issaharoff, the CEO of Antah Solar and a Sustainability & Environment Advocate.

He explained that 5,000,000,000,000 pieces of plastic are in our ocean now. 270.000 tons is their weight. 8.000.000 plastics reach the sea per day. 100.000.000 marine animals die each year from plastic waste, of which,?250.000 are ingestible microplastics?that marine creatures mistake for food. 100.000 marine animals die?from getting entangled in plastic yearly. 88% of the sea's surface?is polluted by plastic waste.

• Plastics?take 500-1000 years?to degrade; currently,?79%?are sent to landfills or the ocean, while?only 9%?are recycled, and?12%?are incinerated.?
• 300.000.000 tons?of plastic gets created yearly, which weighs the same as the entire human population, and?50% is single-use only.
• 100% of baby sea turtles?have plastic in their stomachs.
• In the past 10 years,?we’ve made more plastic than in the last century.
• We use over?500.000.000.000 plastic bags?a year – that’s?150 for each person on Earth.
• By now, the?number of plastics in the sea is higher than the number of fish. 1 in 3 fish?caught for human consumption contains plastic.

It’s now estimated that each person consumes around 5 grams of microplastics per week, significantly raising our chances of developing cancer, inflammation, neurotoxicity, and experiencing metabolic disturbances.

Ship specialized on eating plastics

In our safety surfacing business we can increase our focus on become “greener”. We can make better choices in our products and practices to be more sustainable.

• Use renewable or more responsible materials.
• Recycle or upcycle the products at the end of its life or the package of new common materials converting it into something else instead of throwing it away.?

As a positive trend, I've seen an article of Ella Alderson in MEDIUM talking about a booming trend in biotechnology that may help us to substitute the use of plastics in some industries. I will partially reproduce it below. She explains that from the billions of tons of plastic produced over the last 7 decades only 10% have been recycled. It's cheaper to make new plastic and throw it away that it is to pay workers to collect, sort and process the plastic into new forms.

The promising alternative is a fungus. More specifically, it’s the root system from which mushrooms grow. We call this organism the mycelium and it can feed on waste — such as wood chips, molasses, and plant material — from already existing industries. Enzymes are excreted by the mycelium to break the waste down so that it can be digested to create a rich network of microscopic fibers. From these fibers sprout the much familiar mushrooms.

Fibers emerge within hours, visible layers after a couple days, and a finished product after just one week. It’s during this growth phase that the mycelium can be placed into a mold to produce tiles, bricks, and special packaging. Because the mycelium feeds on agricultural waste, the finished product is a composite of mycelium and digested natural materials. The final step in production is heating the mycelium and treating it in order to render it inert, removing the possibility that the product will start to grow mushrooms or release irritating spores.

Mycelium can be manipulated to grow into specific forms by adjusting temperature, CO2 exposure, humidity, and airflow.

Research has led to producing mycelium products that are flame and weather-resistant. We now even have transparent, paper-like sheets of the fungus that are 10 times stronger than regular paper.

The possibilities of mycelium seem endless: from textiles to building materials, packaging to food, wound dressings and water filters, mycelium could transform a number of industries to make them more eco-friendly.?

Leather made from mycellium fibers. Image by Bolt Threads. Reproduced at MEDIUM article from Ella Alderson

Not only is mycelium packaging resilient, insulated, safe, breathable, and water-resistant, but it also biodegrades in the soil within just 45 days. Compare that to the more than 500 years needed to decompose a piece of plastic. It does all this using about 90% less energy than plastic and producing 90% less CO2 equivalent emissions. In fact, fungi help to store and capture carbon in nature.

As our continents become polluted and crowded, it’s these very organisms which remind us of the importance of letting go: mycelium coffins not only biodegrade themselves but also help decompose the bodies within them. Buildings made of mycelium bricks could be triggered to decompose when it’s time to rebuild. Worn articles of clothing and shoes can be buried in the backyard to feed a garden. But most importantly we must let go of our way of thinking, and our dependency on the things which are hurting us most.

I hope that biotechnology research will offer us soon new alternatives similar to this Mycellium. Thanks Ella for giving me some hope.

(Edited from a previous article in my blog at: https://francescruz.blog).