[W Forum] Midas's Plastic

Seojaeyeon, Executive Director of Galleria WM at Mirae Asset Securities.
Photo by Asia Economy DB

A famous gamasot gukbap (cauldron rice soup) restaurant appeared on TV. I felt a sense of familiarity since I had been there a few times. What caught the reporter’s eye was the red plastic dipper next to the gamasot. While picking up the half-worn dipper and talking with the owner grandmother about the history of the restaurant, a dreadful thought crossed my mind: ‘Where did the disappeared plastic go?’

Professor Ahn Yoon-joo, who studies ecotoxicology, said this: We are consuming the equivalent of one credit card or one pen’s worth of plastic every week. At first, I thought this was an exaggeration or a flawed study. But now, about a year later, I live in the shock of an undeniable truth.

Famous photos show an adult albatross feeding plastic pieces to its chick, mistaking them for food, resulting in the chick’s stomach filled with plastic and its death. Photos of plastic waste floating down rivers the day after rain in places like the Philippines and Brazil are astonishing due to their unimaginable scale. There are plastic islands in the ocean several times larger than the Korean Peninsula, and plastic breaks down into smaller pieces accumulating inside marine animals. Microplastics have been detected not only in the fish we eat but also in shellfish.

Microplastics have even been detected in milk. This means there is no food on Earth that can be considered safe. Microplastics have been found in globally famous bottled water as well. After detecting plastic in our excrement, it has now been confirmed that microplastics are present in children’s blood.

Professor Dick Betak’s team revealed that half of adult blood samples contained PET (polyethylene terephthalate), the material used in beverage bottles, and one-third contained polystyrene (PS), used in disposable packaging containers. One-quarter of the blood samples contained polyethylene (PE), used in packaging wraps. Many samples showed mixed types of plastics.

Nano-sized plastics that enter the bloodstream through the skin are bound to accumulate in organs like the liver and lungs. Negatively charged microplastics’ effects on the brain could be more dangerous than COVID-19.

Plastic is present not only in the water we drink from PET bottles in the morning but also in water purifier filters. Everything we touch?clothes, bags, chairs, office supplies, masks, carpets, bedding, and pillows?is turning into plastic.

Plastic was created as modern alchemy to replace ivory billiard balls. Although it did not turn into gold, it achieved economic utility beyond gold. Like King Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold, turning even his beloved daughter into a gold lump, everything is turning into plastic.

The threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2019, is gradually fading. When we first faced COVID-19, we were shocked. I hope that even one-hundredth of the vigilance we had during the mask shortage is now directed toward plastic.