Why 2021 might become the tipping point for sustainable food packaging?

You’d think that you might be the last person in the world to do something as squirrely as eating plastic. Don’t you? Well, to break your illusion, not only do we eat plastic, but we also ingest it in multiple other ways day in and day out. Our daily plastic intake could be through plastic water bottles or food served in plastic containers, or even via the air that we breathe. Don’t you think that this simple fact is enough to make all of us concerned? Yes, it should. Yet, it’s a wonder how the topic isn’t a rage already.

A study by the journal Environmental Science and Technology indicates that humans might be consuming an average of 39,000 to 52,000 microplastics every year. If we add our intake through the air as well, the figure immediately climbs to more than 74,000. Still, this is just a ballpark figure that varies with our lifestyle. For instance, if you only drink tap water or bottled water, you might need to add another 4,000 to 90,000 plastic particles annually to the same. Fruits and vegetables, such as apples, can contain an average of 195,500 plastic particles per gram.

There are studies that also suggest that these figures could be highly underreported. It is because we only take raw eatables into our consideration. We typically don’t delve into the multiple layers of plastic packaging that virtually go hand in hand with every packaged eatable. Just try and imagine your plastic intake based on the packaged food items that you consume. But how harmful can such plastics be? Frankly, quite a lot.