The bottle cap I threw on the road, where did it go?
Last Sunday morning was a windy one. An early morning coffee became so necessary, I had to go grab one. Before sipping on the coffee, I took a sip of water and suddenly the bottle cap got carried away by the strong wind like a flapping bird. I started to wonder how far did it go…and where did it end.
Short answer: Really really far; and will probably end up in my mouth.
Long answer: the bottle cap might have landed on the road a quarter miles away and got hit by a car. Getting hit by cars multiple times might have torn the cap in to pieces. The pieces were picked up by wind or birds or squirrel and ended up in some nearby natural reserve. A toddler 👶 that came for a picnic there might have tried to put it in its mouth. The mother had hard time slapping the toddlers back repeatedly to make it spit it out. But it did not end up in a trash can, rather it was spat back on the ground. The pieces started its journey again. Wind, water, earth, thunderstorms and what not. The pieces will get even smaller and granular and will eventually end up in the water bodies.
The tremendous pressure of the water might have further grinned the plastic particles into micro plastic or even nano plastic and got eaten by fish or entered through its gills. We all love to enjoy some fish and chips once in a while, don’t we?
- 11 million metric tons of plastic a year ends up in the ocean.
- Microplastics have been found in fruits and vegetables.
- 97% of children tested for a study had plastic byproducts in their blood and urine samples
ref:
