STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN—Bluewater, a world leader in innovative water purification, beverage and bottle technologies for homes, businesses and public dispensing, called on governments worldwide to ban the production of single-use plastic bottles. The call came in response to a new French study showing that 78 percent of French bottled mineral water tested in a study contained microplastics.
“The findings that seven out of nine bottles tested contained microplastic are horrifying not least because we still do not know enough yet about the consequences posed to human health by the chemicals in the plastic,” said Bluewater founder and CEO Bengt Rittri, a Swedish environmental entrepreneur. He said the scale of the issue was underlined by statistics indicating that 50 percent of people in France consume bottled water every day, with annual sales topping 8.8 billion liters in 2019.
Earlier this year, Buewater said there was an urgent need to double down on tackling micro-plastic pollution when research by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands revealed the presence of microplastic particles in human blood for the first time.
Extent of Microplastics Varies by Bottle
The new French study was published in a report by environmental group Agir pour l’environment based on analysis by a public laboratory, Labocea. The plastic particles identified were polyethylene terephthalates, which is used in plastic bottles, and polyethylene, that is used in caps, while one specific brand of water marketed towards children had 20 times higher levels of microplastics than the others.
An Agir pour l’environment official told journalists the contamination was believed to originate from the bottle itself, lid or cap. The French study mirrors American research from 2018 that detected microplastics in 93 percent of samples analyzed from 11 brands in nine countries.
An indepth Bluewater report, ‘The Global Plastic Calamity’, saw one of the world’s top medical experts on human hormones, Portugal’s Dr. Ivone Mirpuri, warn how human hormones are being disrupted by the thousands of chemicals found in plastic. She warned humankind faces possible extinction within 200 years unless urgent steps are taken to reduce the use of plastics in our lives.
“I’ve spent most of my business life as an entrepreneur bringing technologies to market that help the health and wellbeing of people, from indoor air purifiers to water purifiers, but in the face of the expanding climate emergency and contamination by microplastics of the water we drink, the food we eat, and air we breathe, I am increasingly worried that humanity is close to the edge unless we can encourage governments to act faster with more determination,” said Rittri.
