People ingest 5 grams of plastic per week

Did you know?

A new study by the University of Newcastle in Australia has found that in average, people ingest 5 grams of plastic every week, or 2,000 microplastic particles.

This is equivalent to eating a credit card every week!

Microplastic particles generally come from plastic gradually breaking down into small pieces in nature. They make their way into our rivers and ocean, and can be eaten by fish.

However, microplastics have also been found in many everyday food and drinks, such as water, beer, shellfish or salt.

Surprisingly, where we find the most microplastic is in drinking water. Every person consumes around 1,769 microplastic particles every week just by drinking water. It is even more when drinking bottled water!

Shellfish is the second biggest source with 182 microplastic particles ingested per week, followed by salt and beer with 10 microplastic particles per week.

What can we do about it?

The only way to reduce the amount of microplastics in the environment is to reduce the amount of plastic we use:

For more ideas, have a look at our eco tips, we have hundreds of them! 😉 Easy!

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Author: easyecotips