TOXICITY OF PLASTIC AS A FOOD CONTAINER

When we choose a material for food serve-ware, reusables are proven to be the best option in most cases.*** That’s why you may already have switched to using washable plastic beakers for your cold drinks at your event and you no doubt already encourage self-supplied coffee cups and reusable, metal or hard plastic water bottles, yes?

Stainless serve-ware is better than any disposable for exactly the same, following reasons:

Stainless steel is not a fossil fuel material.

Stainless steel is infinitely recyclable as opposed to plastic, which degrades every time it is washed and recycled. Stainless steel in Europe already contains 90% + recycled content.

The recycling process gives us the same food grade, clean steel every time with a fraction of virgin steel needed (5%) but plastic degrades in quality very quickly during the recycling process and cannot be reused for food grade again.

This is just a handful of the hundreds of examples of evidence against using PLA or plastics for ANY food contact

Support Wash-Hubs as a Patreon Member to view our library of evidence.

Here’s just one example of how out of control the food and plastics contamination has become. https://youtube.com/shorts/7ztI2Ur0iFM?si=ZmYmiSh04M6PAd2O

We breathe plastics in and drink the leached chemicals on a daily basis. The overuse of Plastic is polluting every area of our planet and affecting every lifeform negatively.

Following paragraphs are brief snippets of a fraction of the evidence we have collected in recent months, about “forever chemicals” in food plastics. There’s so much evidence against the use of plastic for food delivery, that we remain baffled it is still allowed. The tide is turning and we want to make that tide a positive force for a cleaner future.

Over 40’000 chemicals are used in plastics production and the contents of any one plastic product mixture are not published openly for independent scientists to test easily. The plastics industry remains a law unto itself and the plastics lobby is a very powerful group of people with direct access to some of the biggest budgets for the best marketing resources on the planet. Plastics are made from the 30% of crude oil left over after petrol and diesel have been refined.

This was why the fabulous milk float system and the Corona pop refillables disappeared over night in the 1970’s. We were using so many cars, that we had to invent ways to handle all the crude waste.

You will hear “oh, but it was cheaper to use plastic bottles because glass was so expensive” but that was the narrow, financial-only view of our complex supply chains. In reality PLASTIC was and still IS HEAVILY over produced and SUBSIDISED and has never truly been “cheap” at all because the resulting environmental and health consequences are costing lives and wasting billions.

” By losing refillables, we have simply lost our way. Plastic abuse has cost us our health and that`s priceless. Plastics are amazingly versatile and useful materials but we have overused and misused them to such an extent, we have become addicted to them. We must wean ourselves off them by cutting them out of the food chain in all but but the most valuable applications. Takeaway food is not one of those exceptions because we can introduce affordable, generic, deposit systems using clean, green materials”.

Jo Blick. Founder of Wash-hubs

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“Researchers aren’t exactly sure how much chemical exposure occurs from food packaging and storage containers, but they know plastic isn’t a completely stable material….when exposed to heat – for example, in the microwave and dishwasher – polyethylene and polypropylene can break down, leaching unknown chemicals into food and drink (*hence into the water system). Oily foods are also thought to attract some plastic chemicals…

The complex chemistry needed to make plastics makes it hard to know exactly what other chemicals are found in plastic food containers”

Jane Muncke, managing director and chief scientific officer at the FPF

“many chemicals used in plastic are fat soluble and are more likely to leach into fatty food.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/18/are-plastic-containers-safe-to-use-food-experts

EA chemicals are present in most reusable plastics
https://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/microplastic-exposure-through-drinking-cups-and-human-health-impacts


Eight or more studies indicate that BPA Bisphénol A leaks into the drink from polycarbonate food grade plastic cups.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33882786

Even though BPA has been removed from plastic baby products:
“just because a product doesn’t contain BPA doesn’t make it safe. “In fact, there is considerable concern over the use of BPA substitutes and BPA polymer alternatives because they are largely understudied,” he says.

BPA-free products don’t contain BPA, but they still contain chemicals, asserts Dr. Bittner, who is also founder of the testing company CertiChem. “BPA is just one set of chemicals that have estrogenic activity,” he says. CertiChem found that 70 percent of products that are BPA-free still leach EA chemicals into beverages and food“
https://www.care.com/c/what-does-bpa-free-mean/

Most food grade plastics leach chemicals and little is known about their effects
https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2022/01/plastics-leach-toxins/#:~:text=All%20plastics%20leach%20chemicals,leached%20chemicals%20into%20the%20water.


” repeated high-heat treatment of plastic food containers results in the continuous leaching of microplastics”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9552567/#:~:text=We%20showed%20that%20repeated%20high,leading%20to%20direct%20human%20consumption


. “Removing PFAS from drinking water and wastewater is an environmental disaster because it is very energy-, resource- and cost-intensive, and it will add to tariffs,” he said. The EU is considering universal restrictions, regulating all 10,000 or so PFAS as one class, but this is not being looked at in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/18/scientists-call-on-ministers-to-cut-limits-for-forever-chemicals-in-uk-tap-water