Plastic pollution in the oceans is a serious and widely reported environmental threat which affects hundreds of marine species every year. What is perhaps less well known is the extent to which our oceans are now polluted with microplastics – tiny pieces of plastic measuring less than half a centimetre in size.
Unlike many of the environmental issues facing our planet today, the solutions to this one, start much closer to home…in fact, they might even start in your bathroom!
Amazingly, microplastic ingredients have been added to a wide range of toiletries and cosmetics – products that we unsuspectingly use in our bathrooms and on our persons on a daily basis. As they flow down our sinks and drains, these tiny ingredients can make their way out into the ocean through the nation’s sewage system where they will reside for many years, attracting toxic environmental pollutants to their surfaces and breaking down (very slowly) into ever smaller fragments which can be eaten by even the smallest of plankton.
‘Microbeads’ as they have come to be known, have been firmly in the UK media spotlight for the last few years and last summer, conservationists celebrated the announcement of a
UK Government ban on microbeads. In this session, we explore what microbeads are, where they might be lurking in your bathrooms and how a concerted, collaborative effort between the public, NGOs, businesses and policymakers has culminated in a conservation success story in just five years.
