Animal Digestible Food Packaging Initiative

On July 30, 2020, researchers with University College Cork UK reported https://www.ucc.ie/en/news/ucc-researchers-make-major-concerning-microplastics-discovery.html that a “… small crustacean can fragment microplastics … [which] may have implications for the food chain ... [they] discovered that microplastics (plastic pieces smaller than 5 mm) in our freshwaters are being broken down into even smaller nanoplastics (smaller than 1 µm, at least five thousand times smaller in size) by a type of freshwater invertebrate animal, and that this may happen much faster than previously estimated … Until now, breakdown of plastics had been thought to occur mainly through very slow processes in the marine environment … the smaller nanoplastic particles could penetrate cells and tissues …” – The research report is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-69635-2 #MicroPlastics #PlasticWaste #NanoPlastics #SingleUsePlastic