Illinois and Ontario are implementing new regulatory approaches—such as waste reduction, wastewater monitoring, and producer-responsibility frameworks—to address the growing ecological threat of microplastics in the Great Lakes.
MANITOULIN—There is something unsettling about plastic. It is everywhere, and yet almost nowhere we can see. A bottle disappears into a blue box. A food wrapper disappears into a garbage can. A synthetic shirt goes through the washing machine. A cigarette filter falls into a ditch. Out of sight, the problem seems to have gone somewhere else.
But plastic does not disappear into the ether. It breaks down and fragments, becoming smaller and smaller until it can move through water, soil, air and living bodies in pieces too small for the human eye to see. Now, governments are beginning to grapple with what happens after the plastic has become almost invisible.
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