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In Canada alone,15 billion plastic bags get used every year, with nearly 57 million straws get used daily! These NEVER EVER decay naturally, without the same human activity that is filling our world in plastic - including ourselves! Recycling does not happen by nature to plastic with even so-called bio-degradable plastic bags lasting far more than 5 years and able to be re-used continually throughout that time!
You may take a blind eye to fish, mammals, and birds being chocked to death on the plastic bag you used 12 months, or even 5 years ago; but you and your children are absorbing molecular level plastics whilst your DNA is being altered by plastic molecules and pollutants from multi-national corporations that churn out this stuff minute after minute, day after day! With urgent action being required, one supermarket chain in Canada has decided that embossment attached to buying their plastic shopping bags; may just do the trick of getting the message home that customer's should bring their own shopping bags as once was the case way back in the 50s and 60s! Just like many grocery stores in Canada, East West Market charges 5 cents per plastic bag. But there’s something very unique about their bags — instead of the market’s logo, they have embarrassing slogans that might just make them uncomfortable to carry for some shoppers, reports Global Citizen: “We redesigned our bags to stop people from taking them,” the store said in a recent video on Facebook. The bags say things like, “Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium,” “Dr. Toews Wart Ointment Wholesale,” and “Colon Care Co-Op.” The slogans are printed in large coloured fonts on the white plastic bags, so they are easy enough to read — which makes it a good shaming tactic. East West hopes the funny bags will remind people to bring their reusable bags, but also spark a conversation about single-use plastics. With the Canadian consumers showing the way, many Canadian business are also showing their concern for the environment. Businesses in the country have taken steps to minimize their contribution to plastic pollution and have used clever tactics like East West Market. A&W, for example, no longer uses plastic straws and they announced it by creating a straw sculpture that reads “Change is good.” A number of zero-waste stores have also opened across the country. The Canadian government also announced earlier this month that it will be banning single-use plastics as early as 2021, an important step in mitigating the effects of plastic pollution on the longest coastline in the world. However, the evidence is not clear of how worried we humans should be about the fact that even our poo, now contains elements of plastic!
The study also available from the Unionsafety E-Library, published in August 2018, confirmed for the first time that microplastics are deep inside humans. All eight volunteers were found to have particles of most of the nine most common classes of plastics, including polypropylene and PET. On average, the researcher found 20 particles per 10 grams of stool. Some of the most common are bisphenols and phthalates, used in everything from food packaging and toys to floor tiles and water bottles. They have been connected to childhood obesity, asthma, cardiovascular diseases and even cancers. Many countries have either banned bisphenol A or advised that it may be dangerous to children. The United States’ National Toxicology Program has “some concern” for bisphenol A’s effect on the brain, behavior and prostate gland in fetuses, infants and children. It is still used widely in Europe. But other bisphenols and phthalates are not banned and are used frequently in the production of consumer goods. Many, may be similar or even more toxic than those banned. You can read the full Huffington Post news report here Download the study from the Unionsafety E-Library here using search word 'humanpoo' See this Guardian News report from October 2018 about plastic in your poo! Or this report from the Daily Telegraph in 2017 headlined "Seafood eaters ingest up to 11,000 tiny pieces of plastic every year, study shows" Source: The Guardian / Global Citizen / East West Markets / The Telegraph / Geology and Human Health / Huffington Post /
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Everyone one of us has plastic inside our bodies, whether it be from food, drink, make-up or simply from pollutants that have now invaded the food chain throughout the planet!