Why are we addressing microplastics on MyWoodlot? Read on to discover how sawdust and other components of wood/plants can address the microplastics problem.
What are microplastics? They are little pieces of plastic that measure less than 5 mm (1/5”).
Where are they found? Those looking for them have found them pretty much everywhere in the world: air, drinking water, mountain tops, oceans, Arctic Sea ice and animal and human bodies. Microplastics are found in 99% of tap water samples in the US, Canada, and Europe. They are also in every single water body in the world. Health officials are concerned about their effect on animals and humans.
Where do they come from?
Why are they a problem?
- They can cause reduced feeding: animals ingest them and feel full.
- They cause physical damage internally through lacerations or irritations to gut tissue.
- They can poison animals and humans. They can carry heavy metals and organic pollutants into the body. They stimulate the release of endocrine disruptors.
- They help transfer contaminants along the food chain.
How do they get everywhere? Micro plastics primarily come from clothing, tires and city dust but end up primarily in the ocean via rivers or air currents. The ocean currents carry them around the world. They exist from the ocean surface down to the ocean bottom.
Let’s trace the path of a few:
- Synthetic clothing (it makes up two-thirds of our clothing) gets washed and microplastics rub off the clothing. They go down the drain to the sewage treatment plant. The microplastics are too small to get filtered out and end up in a river and eventually in the ocean.
- Tires: as they wear microplastics come off the tire onto the road. Rain washes them into a stream and eventually they end up in the ocean.
Can we get rid of them? Until recently microplastics could only be removed by synthetic filtration systems.
This is an expensive process compared to what was recently discovered.
A team from the University of British Columbia has discovered a way to capture these microplastics using sawdust and tannins. Tannins are natural plant compounds which create strong attractions with microplastics. The team calls the device bioCap.
When water containing microplastics is filtered through the sawdust/tannic acid mixture, 95 to 99% of the microplastics are filtered out of the water.
The research team says bioCap is simple and cheap to produce and can be scaled up or down, for example, in a commercial filtering system in the ocean or in a household. Here is a link to the original article about bioCap.
Here is yet another use of a plant-based product (i.e., wood) that can benefit us, animals, and the environment.
Want to check out other ways that wood gets used? https://mywoodlot.com/blog/wood-does-what
