Can Veggies Clean up Microplastics?
Veggies, they’re so good for you AND the planet!
A new study is taking the power of veggies to a whole new level with two tasty plants—okra and fenugreek. If you’ve ever eaten okra, you know that it can have a slimy texture, which is the secret to a surprisingly effective way to remove micro-plastics from water!
The sticky polymers that create okra’s slime and fenugreek’s gel-like textures were extracted by scientists.They observed that these plant-based polymers grab onto tiny plastic particles, causing them to clump together and sink so they can be separated from the water.
In lab tests, fenugreek gel-extract removed 93% of microplastics within an hour, while okra removed nearly 67%. And when combined, an equal mixture of the two removed about 70% of microplastics within only 30 minutes.
When tested with real-world water samples, okra removed about 80% of microplastics from ocean water, fenugreek removed 80–90% from groundwater, and their combo-goop removed 77% from freshwater.
Think of it this way: adding around a teaspoon of the powdered fenugreek extract to a two-liter bottle of well water would remove almost 90% of the microplastics in just an hour!
Okra and fenugreek extracts also performed better in these experiments than polyacrylamide, a synthetic polymer currently used in wastewater treatment. Researchers envision these plant extracts as biodegradable, nontoxic alternatives that could remove pollutants without adding additional potentially harmful treatment substances.
For Virginians, this research hits close to home because our rivers ultimately connect to major aquatic systems such as the Chesapeake Bay, where water quality remains an enormous environmental priority. Microplastics are also being studied here in Virginia, including research in the York River and Chesapeake Bay that examines how microbial communities develop on microscopic pieces of plastic, affecting aquatic ecosystems.
The okra-fenugreek technique is still research that needs to work on scalability. It's not a ready-to-install solution for Virginia water-treatment plants, but it points toward a remarkably simple idea: plants themselves could help us deal with some of the pollution created by plastics. For a state built around rivers, the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic coastline, finding inexpensive and environmentally friendly ways to remove microscopic plastic pollution could eventually have significant impacts on Virginia’s drinking water, wildlife and aquatic ecosystem.
Again: veggies, they’re so good for us!
