Creating Awareness

The first step in solving the plastic pollution problem is to create awareness across the full lifecycle of plastic:

Understanding the real problem: Microplastics never go away and are everywhere around us:
- In plankton the oceans worldwide – plankton is at the start of our food chain. Plankton is responsible for ±60% of the carbon dioxide absorption capacity of our planet. The functioning of plankton has reduced with about 40% in the past 15 years. This has an impact on climate change.
- Plankton is also responsible for 60-70% of the oxygen production on our planet: the oceans are our lungs.
- Microplastics impact biodiversity on land and in the oceans, killing marine live and other animals.
Being aware of the impact on our health: Microplastics are in the air and in our bodies, threatening our health. More research is needed to understand the impact on the unborn child, our hormone system and brain diseases.
Avoiding the problem: burning waste to energy and plastic recycling are not the solution. We need to rethink our economy and our consumption behavior: start ‘upstream’ in a holistic way, reduce the use of new plastic and create a new plastics circular economy, becoming ‘regenerative’ for all materials and resources.