A Quest for Foods Free From Microplastic Contamination

For as long as I can remember, I've had issues with hormone disruption, and I know I’m not alone. The incidence of endocrine disorders is increasing globally, while 1 in 7 couples struggle with infertility. It’s no coincidence that plastics are found in human organs, including the blood, brain, and reproductive organs, with alarmingly rising levels year after year. Yet scientists are struggling to link the effects of microplastics in our bodies with specific health issues because they can’t find a control group. Microplastics have contaminated every corner of the planet—from the air we breathe to the water we drink and the food we eat—making it nearly impossible to study their impact on ecosystems and our health.

Despite this, we continue to see foods wrapped in plastic in shops, products shipped with excessive plastic, and animals trapped in plastic waste. The food industry is responsible for around 50% of the world's plastic pollution. I couldn’t help but wonder if some of my health problems could be alleviated if I weren’t ingesting the estimated 50,000 plastic particles humans consume annually.

WIth this thought, I set out on a quest to clean up my diet and attempt to live plastic-free. As I discovered, it’s almost impossible. However, cutting out plastic water bottles and drinking boiled or filtered tap water in a metal or glass bottle is one of the best and easiest things to do to cut your plastic intake.

Food is trickier—certain items like shellfish and beer have higher contamination levels. Buying food wrapped in non-plastic materials helps reduce plastic shedding, but if it was grown in a plastic greenhouse or transported in a plastic crate, it may not make much difference. Organic and naturally grown produce isn’t always free from plastic contamination either. An article from Cardiff University by Professor Catherine Wilson discusses how sewage sludge—the byproduct left after wastewater is cleaned—is commonly used as a natural fertilizer across European farmland. The article points out that "European farmland could be one of the biggest reservoirs of plastic." Even without sewage sludge, plastic-contaminated water taken up by plants and animals is nearly impossible to control.

This led me to an idea: Growing produce with low microplastic content is surprisingly easy and you can do it yourself at home! As it turns out, in areas of the UK with hard water, 90% of microplastic contamination can be removed from water by boiling and filtering, as the plastics get trapped in the limescale. Using glass-based growing equipment, hydroponics can be used to grow virtually any plant, and with the help of renewable energy, it may one day become as affordable as traditional farming.

This inspired me to start Plum and Puddle, a hydroponics farm focused on growing foods that, while not 100% free from microplastic pollution, make a conscious effort to minimize plastic contamination. Though this project is still in the early stages, I hope it will "grow and flourish". I can only hope that one day, it will be enough to influence large food corporations to follow suit—maybe not by making farmers filter all their water for microplastics, but at least by forcing corporations to no longer use plastic packaging when there are so many natural alternatives.