Microplastics

"I'm very conscious of plastic waste and do all I can to avoid it. One of the main concerns is the amount of micro-plastics there are in the sea as well as our food and drink so this is the area I wanted to look more into and create a design around." 

There are (far too) many different types of plastic out there, if we narrow down to just plastic bottles for instance, it's estimated that we use over 500 Billion bottles every year, and less than half of those are recycled. And when you realise that plastic can only be recycled a couple of times before it can't be reused again - that's a lot of waste to end up in our oceans and landfill. 

Over time all that plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, some into nano-sized bits, that can end up passing through the food chain and water supply, even the air and dust we breathe in now has nano particles of plastic. Scientists have also recently discovered micro-plastics in human blood and the foetuses of pregnant women. It's estimated we are consuming the equivalent of a credit card every week in micro-plastics. 

Little is known about the harmful effects of all that plastic in our bodies and scientists are looking into it, but it will take a long time to realise. In the meantime the amount of plastic already out there, that will eventually also breakdown, is only increasing.  

The problem of plastics ending up in our food and water is a common area for everyone. Everyone has to eat and drink but not everyone is aware of the issue. For my design I went with an informational style poster - explaining the facts with simple imagery - I used restricted colours to use less ink if printing. I kept the theme of the plastic bottle as this is what a lot of people think of when talking about plastic. I added in the five 'R's' of how to reduce your consumption of plastic as a reminder for what people can do to help. Because I found the latest info about finding plastic in foetuses and blood I wanted to also include a poster about that. I added the baby in the womb poster and created these mock-ups of it on popular magazines - it's quite scary to think that this is actually happening!