One 2018 study, plastic contamination can also be found in bottled water, with 93% of 259 bottled water samples the scientists examined containing microplastics.Īccording to recent research, we constantly inhale and ingest microplastics during our daily lives. Because of their tiny size, microplastics are able to pass through filtration systems, making it very difficult to avoid them. Less than a millimetre in length, these fibres make their way into rivers and oceans, where they are eaten by fish and even corals. One load of laundry can release an average of 700,000 microplastic fibres. Microplastics are found in our clothes, cosmetics and cleaning products. And it was a serendipitous discovery on his local beach that gave him the idea for a new way to remove these tiny, omnipresent plastics from the oceans. We are going to be dealing with them long after we stop using plastic."Īs he learned more about the environmental impact of microplastics in the environment, Ferreira began to look for ways to combat them. "These plastics are going to be in our environment for thousands of years. "I got really anxious when I found out about microplastics," says Ferreira, who is now aged 20 and a chemistry student at Groningen University in the Netherlands. They are ubiquitous – they have been found at the bottom of the world's deepest ocean trench and lodged in Arctic sea ice. Microplastics are fragments smaller than five millimetres and either come directly from the products we use or are created as larger plastic objects break down in the environment. "It didn't look nice to me – the coloured bits of plastic all along the shore," he says.Īround the world, humans produce an estimated 300 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, and at least 10 million tonnes end up in our oceans – the equivalent of a rubbish truck load every minute.īut it was the plastic that Ferreira couldn't see which really concerned him. But the more time he spent on the sheltered, shingle-strewn coves nearby, he grew increasingly shocked by the large amounts of plastic litter he found strewn across the beach and in the sea. As a child, Fionn Ferreira spent hours exploring the coastline near his hometown of Ballydehob in south-west Ireland.
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