Bérangère Couillard, Secretary of State for Ecology, relaunched the debate on January 30 on the implementation of instructions for plastic bottles in France, within the framework of the anti-waste law. Its goal: to aim for 100% recycled plastic. But why aim for this objective when we know today that plastic poses serious problems for our health and that of future generations?
Every minute a million plastic bottles on average are sold worldwide. A million bottles that generate microplastics throughout their life cycle. A million bottles that poison adults and children with microplastics they ingest while drinking their contents. All these plastic bottles are made of PET [polyéthylène téréphtalate, une variété de plastique transparent] which is the most toxic category of plastic there is, and paradoxically “the most recyclable”.
PET generates antimony, a carcinogenic metal, close to arsenic. The longer a content is kept in this material, the more toxic substances contaminate it. Despite popular belief, plastic pollution begins long before a plastic product becomes waste. Plastic pollution starts as soon as it is created. Plastic generates microparticles, nanoparticles of plastic throughout its life cycle. This invisible pollution poisons us daily.
Every week we ingest 5 grams of microplastics, the equivalent of the weight of a credit card. The extent of the impact of plastic pollution is far greater than you might think. It affects us all, when we drink mineral water from a plastic bottle, when we wash. It also affects us through the pores of our skin which absorb microplastics or nanoplastics, when we wear a garmentsynthetic material bottoms (nylon, polyester, recycled plastic).
Finally, it affects women in particular, because their organism more easily absorbs the toxins of the chemical substances contained in the plastic, knowing that they consume much more of them, by putting on make-up, by using tampons or sanitary napkins every month, because all these products contain it and are very often contained in plastic.
THE pregnant women have them in all parts of the placenta. Microplastics have been found in breast milk. The more we are exposed to plastic, to its recycling, and therefore to its pollution in microplastics, the more this quantity of ingested plastic increases.
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