If you ever feel lonely, there is always someone to share your stories. Sit near a plant or a tree and talk to it, and you will feel better. Now, the plants want to tell you a story to you. Let’s start from its origin. A plant may grow on its own from the seeds which fly or get carried by the insects. There can be a possibility that you might plant a sapling on your birthday. It’s a widespread practice, and it’s done even on some occasions like Environment Day or as a part to save nature. But it may not last forever, it’ll leave you one day, you may not feel this, but some people are very much attached to nature.

They grow up with the plants, use their products, and build homes using bamboos, now and even it was a practice in the past. Plants have no opportunity left where they can’t help us. Right from feeding us, fulfilling our daily requirements for essential nutrients, and provide shade during sunny days, it has a long journey to convey to us. But the most severe issue is that due to our activities, the plants are indirectly getting harmed and pushing them slowly to death. Yes, the plants unknowingly accept the plastic we humans created, and we litter it without being concerned about the future. Such minor activities summing leads to global warming when plastics are burnt openly in air and damaging the ozone layer.

Thale cress, scientifically called as Arabidopsis thaliana, a weed that mostly grows on the edges of roads, was a part of a test where the plastic material is mixed in the soil. The results were devastating. The plastic molecules were less than 100 nanometers made its way in the plant, tested with another batch with clean soil. They were left to grow for ten days. It reduced the biomass of the growing plant, with shorter roots and lack of nutrients due to the ground’s impurities. This research took up at Shandong University, China. They also mentioned that new seedlings grew slower in contaminated soil.

This research can be such a critical issue; unknowingly, we consume plastic, it is even present in table salt, bottled water, and now through plants for a very long time. According to an estimate, 52 thousand tiny plastic molecules go into the body every year. It’s similar to consuming a credit card every week, not the money, but equivalent plastic weight.

There are already more than five trillion bits of plastic on the ocean surface. Initially, the production of plastic was slow from 2.1 million tonnes back in 1950. In 2015, this reached up to more than 406 million, out of which exponentially 6.3 billion tonnes of waste got generated. A mere 9 percent of waste was recycled, it can make situations where every seabird species will be consuming plastic instead of actual food. The dominant firms are on the way to find alternatives to reduce waste, and we can be a part of it, say no to plastic, and be a hero to save the planet Earth.