Last week on Sea Change Radio, we learned that the plastics industry plans to triple production in the next 40 years, reaching 3 trillion pounds of plastic a year by 2060. This week, we have the second half of our discussion with Wired writer and author, Matt Simon, who talks about how microplastic waste has crept into every nook and cranny on the planet. In this episode, we discuss how microplastics are contributing to air pollution (both indoors and out), examine some innovative ways to reduce plastic waste, and discuss the overlap between plastic waste and climate change.

Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise. 

Matt Simon (MS) | 00:16 - We need to get rid of all the unnecessary plastic as quickly as possible because the, the trend here is not looking good. 

Narrator | 00:26 - Last week on Sea Change Radio, we learned that the plastics industry plans to triple production in the next 40 years, reaching 3 trillion pounds of plastic a year by 2060. This week we have the second half of our discussion with Wired writer and author Matt Simon, who talks about how microplastic waste has crept into every nook and cranny on the planet. In this episode, we discuss how microplastics are contributing to air pollution, both indoors and out, examine some innovative ways to reduce plastic waste and discuss the overlap between plastic waste and climate change. 

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:13 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Matt Simon. He's a senior staff writer at Wired Magazine, and his most recent book is A Poison Like No Other. Matt, welcome to Sea Change Radio. 

Matt Simon (MS) | 01:27 - And thank you for having me. 

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:29 - So Matt, I saw a documentary on makeup on Netflix. One of the episodes was about talc and how talc gets into our cosmetic industry in a, in a very pernicious way. And one of the ways that the talc industry and the cosmetics industry checked this off as being safe was that they just changed the measurements. They, they just use different microscopes and saying, yeah, it's not being detected by our microscopes, but they weren't using the best microscopes for this. So they, they kind of moved the goalposts in order to clear it for the public. It was devastating effects that it's had for many, many people. When you're talking about this plastics recycling and the effluence and trying to detect it, it, it made me think of that. It's just that they're not measuring it correctly and they need to get better microscopes or whatever, better filtration systems. Why don't, why don't you expand if you can.

MS | 02:22 - Sure. Yeah. There's, there's an interesting parallel here there, 'cause microplastics are involved in, in cosmetics as well. So about a decade ago in the United States, banned microbeads, right? That's this big famous environmental progress.

AW | 02:34 - They looked really cool in shampoo for a few years, right? Yeah.

MS | 02:37 - Yeah. So cosmetics and plastics industry had this truly insane idea, which is to, and like face washes and things to, uh, create this sort of abrasive effect with little bits of plastic. Um, instead of, you know, perfectly natural machine, you can do this with like, uh, stone fruit pits, right? 

AW | 02:55 - Oh yeah. I've seen like apricot scrub.

MS | 02:57 - Yeah. Yeah. They said, no, too expensive to do that. We will just put little tiny pieces of plastic, uh, these microbeads. So when that ban went into effect about a decade ago in the United States, that was only for wash off products, those face washes, um, that, that were using those sorts of scrubbing plastics that did not include cosmetics. So cosmetics to this day are chockfull of microplastics. So they are often used not for abrasive effects, but actually make makeup go on smoother. They act almost like a little tiny ball bearings. So when you wash off your makeup, that is washing into ecosystems,