Why Plastic Pollution is the Most Important Environmental Issue

The world Health Organisation considers air pollution to be the most pressing environmental issue at present, they are wrong about this. The most pressing environmental issue today is plastic pollution and in this blog post I will outline why this is the case. We are only just beginning to see the environmental impact and health impact from plastic pollution.

Air Pollution – Reversible Degradation

Air pollution (air quality) to the greater extent is created by combustion of fuels in typically urban environments. Gases such as nitrous oxide and tiny particles such as PM2.5 and PM10 can cause detrimental effects to those who inhale them on a regular basis however we have seen time and time again around the world that this type of Air Pollution can be rapidly reversed.

For example the clean air act implemented in 1970s California led to a rapid increase in air quality and similarly.

Between 2016 and 2023, London’s annual average NO2 concentrations dropped by 49%, which is almost double the rate of the rest of England.

Efforts in the UK to improve air quality have been fairly successful especially now given the uptake of electric and hybrid vehicles and the establishment of clean air zones in cities around the country we’re successful these have led to an almost immediate approvement improvement in air quality which just gave the show that although air quality is a serious problem it can be dealt with quickly with some very simple policy changes.

With air quality if you remove the inputs the problem is largely cured.

Plastic Pollution – Irreversible Degradation

Plastic pollution is not like air pollution if you take away the input the problem is still there the plastic just doesn’t disappear, it doesn’t dissipate, it doesn’t go away. In fact we’ve already got a bit of a time bomb on our hands with the amount of plastic that is in the environment and waiting to break down as we speak.

Although large chunks of plastic on a beach or floating around the ocean can look unsightly they are not really the problem. The problem starts when these large chunks get broken down and smaller and smaller pieces and end up being ingested by various creatures whether they be on land or on Sea.

There are also countless quadrillions of plastic particles which are discharged which are already small such as lint from washing, or particles from car tires all of these being washed into Rivers down into the sea and entering the food chain.

52,050 to 233,000 plastic particles/g depending on vegetable samples.

You only need to look at the measurable percentages of plastic found in many fish for example to realise that plastic even now is a problem. We are eating it all the time, as well as breathing it in (nod back to air quality) and if by some miracle tomorrow there was some agreement, some global agreement ,to see all production of plastic stop. Then we would still have quadrillions of tons of plastic in the environment waiting to break down into tiny particles and to leak into our food chain. The food we feed to our kids.

In Tunisia, 92.5% of sardines have microplastics in their digestive tracts.

So this is why plastic pollution needs to be knocked right up the list first place because the longer we take to put forward a decent response (near 100% ban on single use plastic) then we are just building an ever more dystopian future for ourselves. What will that look like:

• where wild food from the sea and from the land cannot be eaten
• we’ll have to grow all food in Sheds because the soil is so contaminated

This might sound a bit far-fetched but it’s already happening plastic is in our food and at some point it will get to a concentration where the health effects become very much measurable with more and more acute effects on our health.

People Against Plastic Pollution 

Environmental Research Ideas & Topics

I our day to day report writing and in conversations with clients, we hear of topics for which we then subsequently find gaps in available data. We have listed these Environmental Research Ideas & Topics below. So if you are conducting research at any level, and in any part of the world you might pick one, and advance our understanding.

We will update this post with new topics as we think of them.

5 – Over Application of Nutrients (Added October 2024)

We have heard in some instances that industrial farms (in this case in the UK) are over applying nutrients to Farmland. The example we heard about was a poultry farm where the volumes of poultry manure being produced were very large and these were then being spread to surrounding Farmland without following the guidance on nutrient balancing as provided in our RB209 for example and this is lead to in effect sterility in the land owning to an over concentration of macaroni nutrients this is entirely unsubstantiated claim coming from a phone call but it might be that there is some truth in there somewhere.

4 – Suitability of Compost Regulation in the UK (Added October 2024)

Regulations relating to composting i the UK and very confused. This comes from the waste / non- waste split. Which some producers manage to avoid, and others not so. This can lead to huge commercial enterprising circumnavigating requirements for an environmental permit, and then small farm sized operations requiring very complicated environmental permits.

3 – Export vs Recycling vs Incineration Rates for Plastic (Added October 2024)

Every week we hear of wildly differing claims with regards to “recycling” rates. The recent lawsuit between California and ExxonMobil, aims to provide that recycling has been pushed by producers as a “cure-all” for plastic waste. When in fact no more than 9% is recycled.

And that basis there is plenty of research to be done in your area to see what happens to plastic wastes. Do they get recycled or not. Where do they go. In the Uk we saw how our segregated (not recycled) waste gets exported to countries where it is not recycled.

2 –  Microplastics from Sewage Sludge (Added October 2024)

When sewage is treated at a sewage treatment works, or a smaller treatment system, a sludge is created. How much microplastic is in this sludge? And what happens to it? WHich types of treatment create the most, and is ther a way of reducing it?

1 – Microplastics from Car Tyres (Added October 2024)

Over the lifetime of a tire, whilst is wears down, it loses about 30% of its weight. These tiny abraded particles end up where? What is there volume? Where can we do to stop this? Are there additional materials that we could use that are better than materials at present?