A gardener took to Reddit to highlight the mind-blowing discovery they made when cleaning out their garden beds.
Posting in the r/gardening subreddit, they shared a photo of a pile of plastic that they had pulled from the soil of their organic raised beds.
"Periodically I give my raised beds a quick look-over for any plastics that have floated up over the course of the season," the original poster wrote. "I find about this much every time. I filled my raised beds with Kellogg's Organic raised bed soil and I always amend with commercial organic compost. It blows my mind how ubiquitous plastic is in our world."
Sure enough, the photo shows a small pile of tiny pieces of plastic that the OP cleared from their soil despite using organic soil and compost.
The image drives home just how widespread the plastic problem is across the globe. Plastic doesn't degrade; it sits in soil for hundreds of years while leaching toxic chemicals into the ground and depriving plants of crucial nutrients.
Research has shown that microplastics in the soil can hinder the growth of crops. Unfortunately, plastic seems to be permeating every environment on Earth, even using waterways to travel to remote areas previously thought to be untouched by this particular form of pollution. And while the impact of microplastics on the human body is still being studied, scientists have linked their presence to a variety of health problems.
One commenter had an interesting theory on where the plastic came from.
"I also use Kellogg's, and all the plastic I find is from local crows," they said. "I've caught them on camera, since I was trying to find what was digging holes in my garden bed. Turns out, they were exchanging plastic gifts for the grubs they were digging out of the beds."
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