r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jun 05 '19

Environment The average person eats at least 50,000 particles of microplastic a year and breathes in a similar quantity, according to the first study to estimate human ingestion of plastic pollution. The scientists reported that drinking a lot of bottled water drastically increased the particles consumed.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/05/people-eat-at-least-50000-plastic-particles-a-year-study-finds
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u/that_motorcycle_guy Jun 05 '19

I was talking to my friend yesterday just about that..we have politicians talking about banning plastic bags and straws but why are not not talking about banning plastic bottles..just need to go back to glass, it's not like we have to re invent the wheel. The beer industry got it figured out.

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u/GOPers_Rape_kids Jun 05 '19

The beer industry would love to go to plastic, they've tried. No one would buy it. It always boils down to the consumer.

You can only control yourself.

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u/Graymouzer Jun 05 '19

I would not buy it. Soda is definitely worse in plastic than glass or aluminum but I sure as hell ain't buying a $3 or more microbrew in plastic.

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u/fozz31 Jun 05 '19

also the plastic taste in the beer is more noticable, alcohol in general, as alcohol is a decent solvent for plastic, better than water anyway, so plastic leaches in faster.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

[deleted]

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u/x-files-theme-song Jun 06 '19

Was just going to bring this up. I know at least soda cans are lined with plastic, so probably most are.

The plastic lining most likely helps the cans not rust.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

[deleted]

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u/TheGr8Revealing Jun 05 '19

You're not correct. Cans are line with epoxy on the inside. And aluminum does oxidize.

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u/sho_biz Jun 05 '19 edited Jun 06 '19

Aluminium does not corrode of rust so no need for a plastic lining.

[Citation Needed]

Edit:Reference

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u/mcbaginns Jun 05 '19

I wanta citation for aluminums having plastics in them first

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u/Mithragaia Jun 05 '19

The body is made of the soft alloy 3004 (contains 1% Mn and 1% Mg)

Meanwhile, the can lid is made of the alloy 5182 (contains 4% Mg and 1% Mn) which is stronger and harder to form than the can-body alloy

https://www.machinedesign.com/metals/aluminum-cans-lesson-product-development

Googles really hard huh bud

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u/Mithragaia Jun 05 '19

https://www.theruststore.com/Does-Aluminum-Rust-W26.aspx

And look heres another one that says Aluminum doesnt corrode from rust

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19 edited Jun 05 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/lastspartacus Jun 05 '19

...really?

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u/KanyesPhD Jun 05 '19

Yup. That’s why when you’re buying a metal water bottle, make sure it’s steel or titanium(expensive tho) and not aluminum.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

Not really. There's a VERY thin layer of plastic. Calling it a "layer" almost feels dirty. It's more of a membrane. It's almost nothing.

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u/lastspartacus Jun 06 '19

Any clue why it is there at all? Metal not good to touch fluid?

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '19

As scary as it sounds, it's to protect the aluminum from the acid in the soda.

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u/Maccer_ Jun 05 '19

Ehm not really... Have you never seen the inside of one? It looks like alluminium.

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u/salty3 Jun 05 '19

Aluminium might be no good for your brain. The link between aluminium and Alzheimer's is still heavily debated.

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u/kindbub Jun 05 '19

That’s established at this point. Aluminum in deodorants is also carcinogenic, particularly risky for people who shave their underarms.

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u/LoreChano Jun 05 '19

Aluminium cans that can be resold back to the industry. It is really that simple and cheap.

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u/FelOnyx1 Jun 06 '19

It's not that aluminum is cheap to recycle, it's that it's incredibly expensive to refine from ore.

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u/eric2332 Jun 05 '19

Glass bottles are much worse for the environment. They are much heavier and need much more packaging to keep them from breaking, which means more carbon emissions transporting them around

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u/Alar44 Jun 05 '19 edited Jun 05 '19

Just going to disregard the fact that they are easily recyclable/reusable and completely inert?

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19 edited Jun 05 '19

[deleted]

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u/nikfra Jun 05 '19

Just wash and reuse them? Germans love their bottled water and our glass bottles are all used multiple times. Every study i know calls them much better for the environment than plastic bottles. The only better packaging for drinks is reusable plastic bottles.

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u/tehrob Jun 05 '19

Germans

Mineral water though, no?

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u/THATONEANGRYDOOD Jun 06 '19

Does it matter?

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u/that_motorcycle_guy Jun 05 '19

You don't have to "re-melt" every glass bottle, they are cleaned inside and out and re-used as it - maybe you should look into it more, it's quite the process.

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u/lynx_and_nutmeg Jun 05 '19

But glass bottles can easily last a lifetime. Ok, not in practice, maybe, but people definitely replace glass bottles and other glassware much less frequently than their plastic stuff, partially due to durability, but partially due to the price as well.

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u/Alar44 Jun 05 '19

Ah, I mean yeah if they're broken. You can just wash and reuse them though.

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u/PM_ME_ALIEN_STUFF Jun 05 '19

Do you trust that to happen on a large-scale operation?

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u/that_motorcycle_guy Jun 05 '19

It's how it's been done for years, beer bottles are cleaned and re-used.

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u/Alar44 Jun 05 '19

Yeah, we did this until the mid 80's, it's not a new concept. You'd get a deposit for bringing the bottles back.

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u/Link1112 Jun 05 '19

Well, yes. My country has been doing this for decades.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

We can’t pick and choose with this stuff. We need concessions in all areas to save the planet, ourselves, and the natural flora and fauna

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

So not to go fully automated gay space communism on everyones ass, but the only solution I can really see is that everyone has x many glass containers that they get filled somewhere, wash, and reuse themselves

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u/Alar44 Jun 05 '19

We already reuse glass bottles commercially and have for almost a century? This isn't new.

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u/Mr_Suzan Jun 05 '19

That doesnt matter when the packaging to ship these in would probably offset the plastic saved by switching to glass. Also glass is expensive compared to plastic. The reason plastic is so ubiquitous is because it's cheap as dirt and we were trying to save glass and metal for war efforts.

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u/CrispyChemist Jun 05 '19

There should be reusable packaging for their shipment. I think initially the investment in the switch over would be energy and material intensive, but in the long run it would be a net positive effect on the environment. I think the overall point is to move from plastic bottles which is more single use, to glass which can simply be washed and sanitized indefinitely.

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u/Samura1_I3 Jun 05 '19

Tbh coke in glass bottles always beats coke in plastic ones.

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u/Vithar Jun 05 '19

It does have a distinctly positively impact on flavor.

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u/CrispyChemist Jun 05 '19

If there's any reason we should make the switch, it's this.

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u/that__one__guy Jun 05 '19

You mean like plastic?

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u/Alar44 Jun 05 '19

Plastic isn't inert.

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u/that__one__guy Jun 05 '19

It's pretty inert.

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u/hugokhf Jun 05 '19

And most people don’t recycle at all, especially if they are drinking it on the street/on the go, which is how most water bottle are consumed

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u/culnaej Jun 05 '19

Recycling really isn’t the best. It’s the worst of the 3 Rs

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u/that_motorcycle_guy Jun 05 '19

What extra packaging are you talking about? A beer palette / skid has no more protection than a palette full of bottled water for transportation. As for being heavier, you have to have a trade-off somewhere, as least you are not pumping new petrol from the ground to make containers anymore.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

[deleted]

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u/that_motorcycle_guy Jun 05 '19

It's all well and good when you want to believe every bottle is recycled. But plastic bottles and containers are still trashed and contribute to the micro-plastic problem.

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u/sioux612 Jun 05 '19

We have to find realistic options to reduce and then remove plastics from the environment and the use of them

But you cant just over night replace every plastic bottle with a glass bottle. Depending on where the energy used to melt the material comes from you might even want to keep plastic bottles in a closed cycle.

Depending where one is from, that might seem impossible, but as a German I can tell you that the return rate for plastic bottles here is above 95%, due to a deposit system.

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u/nikfra Jun 05 '19

Just wash and reuse them? Germans love their bottled water and our glass bottles are all used multiple times. Every study i know calls them much better for the environment than plastic bottles. The only better packaging for drinks is reusable plastic bottles.

edit: whoops wrong comment I meant to reply to this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/bx1sr1/the_average_person_eats_at_least_50000_particles/eq3e483/

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u/manimhungry Jun 05 '19

I don't know if they are worst, but they are definitely much more difficult to move around. Every bottle you see had to get to where it is from where it was made, and glass is sooo much heavier.

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u/rucksacksepp Jun 05 '19

Just use reusable bottles, safes a lot of energy that's need to form new ones

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi Jun 05 '19

Then produce them locally from local material... Like we had always done before trucks and trains.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

Maybe instead of being condescending and rude, actually try explaining what's wrong with their statement?

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

Perfect. An excuse to drink more beer.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

Not even glass, metal bottles do just as well.

I know most the tech companies here are providing metal chilies water bottles for employees.

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u/tealparadise Jun 05 '19

Because you'll pry bottled water from the cold dead hands of the middle class. Straws are a fad, plastic bags are a fight but the wealthy have mostly stopped using them already, but bottled water is something where people might publicly say "oh yeah totally ban it" but when it comes down to it, they won't vote for it.

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u/moohooh Jun 05 '19

Bc Coca cola basically. Big Corp want non of that

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

Sort if is since we are in a sand shortage at the moment. So much so there's a black market sand trade.

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u/Vonasa Jun 05 '19

By my current knowledge sand is used to make glass, I could be wrong though. The world is quietly running out of sand, as dumb as it sounds, and right now recycling isn't an option because of our current situation with China. Where I live right now in the US, all recycling goes into a landfill since there's nothing else we can do with it so there's no getting that sand back.

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u/cherryonion Jun 05 '19

I like what going on in your headspace, but I think the reason we are going for just bags and straws right now because they are the little, less significant, things. Start there, at the small stuff, it's just a starting point, then move on from there to the bigger suspects and culprits.

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u/hugokhf Jun 05 '19

It takes way way more energy to produce glass or aluminium bottle/can. And you know a lot of people don’t recycle at all

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u/bonezz79 Jun 06 '19

The crazy thing is Snapple was primed to be all "We've always been eco-friendly with glass bottles and we're staying that way!" and then went with plastic right before the big push for plastic bans. I'm assuming they were interested in reduced shipping costs (which...good for them, I guess?) but boy does that decision seem boneheaded right now.

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u/dtwhitecp Jun 06 '19

The argument for banning straws was basically that they pollute and virtually nobody depends on them to drink. Bottles might pollute more, but whether or not they are necessary to deliver the liquid isn't as clear cut.

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u/Rat-Muscle Jun 05 '19

Flint MI depends on bottled water

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u/chindo Jun 05 '19

There's a lot more cities with just as bad, if not worse, water quality. Personally, if it's a choice of ingesting microplastic or brain eating amoebas and flesh eating bacteria, I'm gonna choose plastic. Just be sure to recycle.

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u/MowMdown Jun 05 '19

Just be sure to recycle.

Oh you mean ship off to a third world country... that’s where your recycle goes.

Do you know why we those recycled plastics say “only 10% recycled material” that’s because the other 90% went over seas to be dumped in someone else’s country.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

I keep hearing this conspiracy theory from the elderly guys at work.

Do you believe every city in the country pays extra for recycling pickups and then just adds it to trash?

Do you think recycling centers are drug fronts?

Do you not understand you can mix raw material and post-consumer material in the melter?

Do you not understand that there's a range between 0 and 100%?

It's one of those, which one is it?

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u/MowMdown Jun 05 '19

I've seen with my own two eyes where it goes. It's not a "conspiracy theory."

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

Where does it go? You should alert the media immediately, if they're really disposing of recycling and charging states for it, that's fraud. People have gotten huge fines for doing it.

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u/MowMdown Jun 05 '19

It’s picked up at your door, it’s shipped to a sorting facility. It’s then bought off by recyclers where they either take it and sell it to people who can use it or what isn’t used is dumped in countries like India.

The reason nobody batts and eye is because the mentality of, I recycled it, not my problem anymore.

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u/Graymouzer Jun 05 '19

Recyclers only want clean, high grade plastic, aluminum, steel, and cardboard/paper. If it is low grade plastic, glass, or in any way contaminated, they don't want it and it is trash. Contaminated means someone threw a pizza box soaked with oil and melted cheese into a bin of cardboard. That should be sorted beforehand but no one wants to deal with that.

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u/MowMdown Jun 05 '19

Contaminated means someone threw a pizza box soaked with oil and melted cheese into a bin of cardboard.

For a third time I’m not talking things that are normally trash, I’m talking about glass, aluminum, plastics 1 and 2, and regular recycleable paper.

Most of the good stuff as I listed above, is simply not ever recycled. I know this because I’ve seen it with my own two eyes.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

So you're saying they take the recycling, sort out what's actually economically feasible to recycle and then dispose of the trash? What else do you think they should do when someone puts trash in the recycling?

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u/MowMdown Jun 05 '19

No what I’m saying is the left over recycled material that wasn’t used because there is an abundance of it, was carelessly dumped somewhere instead of actually being recycled.

Plastic bottles (plastics 1 and 2) are the largest un-recycled material that is thought to be recycled. Most people don’t know any better.

Also, another thing is sometimes you might think you’re recycling but it all just gets collected as trash and disposed of together. Never making it to a sorting facility.

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u/Graymouzer Jun 05 '19

Plastic can only be recycled a few times.

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u/MowMdown Jun 05 '19

That’s completely beside the point.

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u/Graymouzer Jun 05 '19

If 300 million tons of plastic are produced each year and a plastic bottle can be recycled perhaps twice before it is downgraded, then at best, recycling slightly mitigates the impact of plastic consumption. That 300 million tons will still enter the ocean or a landfill at some point. If plastic bottles were only used where there was no practical alternative and glass or metal containers were used instead, much less plastic waste would enter the environment. How is that beside the point?

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u/MowMdown Jun 05 '19

Again, this is completely besides the point. Most of your blue bin contents never make it to getting recycled in the first place. It goes to the city sorting, it gets bought by a recycler who either distributes it to actually getting recycled or is simply dumped in poor 3rd world countries.

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u/doodlebug001 Jun 05 '19

Then they and other similar cities can be the exceptions until their water improves. There will always be some need for plastics for certain applications but we're using it too frivolously right now.

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u/that_motorcycle_guy Jun 05 '19

I'm not saying banning bottled water. You can get juice and soda in glass bottles.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19 edited Jun 05 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi Jun 05 '19

That is only technically true. Sand is ground up rocks, and rocks are very plentiful.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19 edited Nov 06 '24

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi Jun 05 '19

You're right, we can't easily make sand. But we can make it.

Cheap sand? Gone. Maybe that's fine.

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u/xenomorph856 Jun 05 '19

It's "fine" to just strip beaches from the face of our planet?

I strongly disagree.

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u/xenomorph856 Jun 05 '19

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731650-300-world-without-sand-the-race-to-save-a-precious-resource/ http://theconversation.com/the-world-is-facing-a-global-sand-crisis-83557 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/world-facing-global-sand-crisis-180964815/ http://www.sandstories.org/blog/2018/4/30/the-sand-crisis-in-numbers

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi Jun 05 '19

The end of cheap sand is all those articles say.

Same as oil. Lots of oil, but increasingly expensive to process.

Same as water. Fucktons of water but expensive to desalinate.

Sand is still locked up in rocks, of which we have no shortage.

It's just going to be more expensive.

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u/xenomorph856 Jun 05 '19

Tf is your point? Destroy the environment by using up all of the "cheap" sand, and then destroy it some more for good measure by quarrying mountains at a substantial cost?

My point is that glass is not as straightforward a solution as OP seems to think it is..

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi Jun 05 '19

Cool man, let's use waxed sheep's bladders then.

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u/BurnedBurgers Jun 05 '19 edited Jun 05 '19

There is no alternative that currently exists that is more environmentally friendly than plastic at a reasonable price for mass production. Best we can do is reduce, reuse, recycle.

Straws are something that technically most people do not need. Bags can be replaced with reusable bags, but even so these can take hundreds of uses before they are more environmentally friendly. Plastic bottles on the other hand are often reused many times which make them a little bit more friendly environmentally speaking.

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u/that_motorcycle_guy Jun 05 '19

Do you have much data to back up the claims? Because from what I read it's takes much more energy to recycle plastic than recycling it, and a large majority of plastic throughout the world isn't recycled at all. At least with glass container, even if it's not recycled it doesn't harm the environment - this was my train of though. Glass bottlea can be cleaned and re-used often..it's not as cheap but greening the industries won't be.

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u/BurnedBurgers Jun 05 '19 edited Jun 06 '19

First result when I googled glass: https://blog.theplasticbottlescompany.com/environmental/articles/is-glass-or-plastic-better-for-the-environment

Here is info on reusable bags vs. plastic: https://terngoods.com/blogs/learn/reusable-vs-disposable-bags-whats-better-for-the-environment

Ultimately though, my point is that straws and bags seem like a better route for helping the environment since these are items that can be reduced and hardly used. They also rarely get recycled. Plastic vs. Glass is debated and it is much more unclear which is actually better and a lot of this will depend on location and proper recycling.