A few days into researching microplastic pollution, a friend asked me how my article was coming along.
“I threw out my plastic cutting board and have been scrolling through $250, 10-gallon stainless steel water jugs on Amazon for the past hour,” I admitted. After all, making probably meaningless purchases was the only way that I, a 33-year-old core millennial, know how to cope with my eco-anxiety.
Her response? A flood of Instagram memes. One of them was particularly strong: it compared humanity’s exposure to toxins with a classic Pokémon evolution. Asbestos was Charmander, lead poisoning was Charmeleon, and microplastics? Charizard — the final form, a fully evolved nightmare of environmental contamination. Another meme read: “The microplastics in me honor the microplastics in you.”
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