Microplastics Are Now In Our Food And Bodies
John Fisken is a third-generation animal feed maker at H.R. Fisken & Sons in rural Pukekohe, south of Auckland. When John discovered that we’re unknowingly consuming 5 grams of plastic a week – that’s like eating a credit card – he decided it was time to act.
John
said:
“I read that micro plastic particles are now
showing up in our food, our bodies* and our pets. That
sounded serious and I set about researching it. I discovered
that not only is microplastic contamination now in all our
major organs, but the chemicals in the plastic in our bodies
may well be damaging to our health. What’s more,
scientists worry that the plastic particles in our bodies
could turn out to be carcinogenic irritants, like asbestos.
I don’t want to leave that legacy to leave to my children
and their children. So I decided to take action on our
plastic bags!”
Animal feed in NZ is a large industry, feeding calves, horses, chickens, birds, goats and other animals. Most packaged feed – except from Fiskens - comes in plastic bags. That’s tens of millions of polypropylene bags a year. These bags often have a shiny coating to enable printing colourful images and branding. Marketers love them. But our environment doesn’t. These bags break down into tiny microplastic particles and that cause massive problems. The particles are damaging to most life forms - from humans to pets to fish.
Plastic in
Our Food
These tiny plastic particles are now in our
water, in the air and even in our food chain. What’s
worse, plastic feed bags – polypropylene - have been
difficult to recycle, especially in large numbers. But -
recycling isn’t really that helpful as it just keeps
plastic in our environment for longer. It doesn’t reduce
the amount of plastic in our environment. Recycled plastic
in our environment continues to break down into tiny
micro-particles.
John Fisken added:
”We’ve been
making feed for horses, chickens, calves and goats since
1957.
Back then, my grandfather used natural, recyclable,
bio-degradable hessian bags for our feed and an entire
industry sprang up devoted to collecting, washing and
re-selling the bags. Green before their time! Then plastic
bags came along. They were so much cheaper that they took
the entire market.
The hessian bag industry vanished.
Even now, plastic is cheapest – our new paper bags cost us
twice as much as plastic bags.”
Another Green
Inspiration
One day last summer, John Fisken was standing
outside looking at his feed mill, and he was struck by the
size of the roof area. An idea started forming – how to
harness all that roof space and all that sunshine. He’s
just installed Solar Panels - 200 of them! NZ's first
Solar-Powered stockfeed manufacturer! With enough surplus to
feed back to the national grid.
Sunshine
Energy
John said: “On a sunny day, our new solar panels
generate more than 4X the power used by the average NZ
household. That's enough electricity to produce our feed AND
send some to the national grid - we're a net electricity
generator! And it’s all clean, renewable
energy.
We've set up a cool digital display in the Shop Entrance. People can see in real time the power being generated by the sun and our atmospheric CO2 emission savings, compared to conventional power.”
Fiskens Feeds in paper bags are available from Fiskens in Pukekohe, online and from feed and farm supply stores around NZ - https://hrfisken.co.nz/