The Problem With Plastic

Plastic is responsible for over 90% of the damage caused by our waste to marine wildlife: on a global scale it threatens about 700 marine species and 17% of these have been labeled by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) as "threatened" or "Critically endangered".

Every year about 8 million tons of plastic rages in the seas and oceans and about 4 million tons come exclusively from rivers; once the oceans are reached, enormous quantities of plastic are constantly exposed to sunlight, which over time leads to the decomposition of the material into small fragments, the microplastics. The term microplastic refers to plastic fragments smaller than 5 mm, often invisible to the naked eye and therefore impossible to recover. Their destiny is to settle on the seabed causing irreparable damage to the ecosystem.

Large quantities of microplastic are systematically ingested from aquatic fauna, putting life of many species at risk; only in the Mediterranean Sea there are 134 fish, turtles and sea birds. If we consider that some of these end up on our plates and that extremely small fragments of microplastic are not filtered by the taps present in our structures, it is not hard to believe that plastic has entered in our food chain.

The situation is incredibly complicated if we consider that the annual production of plastic in the world is constantly increasing. For this reasons we need to take action, now.