People consume credit card’s equivalent of plastic each week: Study

Another study calculated that the average American eats and drinks in about 45,000 plastics particles smaller than 130 microns annually, while breathing in roughly the same number

People worldwide could be ingesting five grammes of microscopic plastic particles every week, equivalent in weight to a credit card, researchers said Wednesday. Coming mostly from tap and especially bottled water, nearly invisible bits of polymer were also found in shellfish, beer and salt, scientists and the University of Newcastle in Australia reported.

The findings, drawn from 52 peer-reviewed studies, are the first to estimate the sheer weight of plastics consumed by individual humans: about 250 grammes, or half-a-pound, over the course of a year. Another study calculated that the average American eats and drinks in about 45,000 plastics particles smaller than 130 microns annually, while breathing in roughly the same number.

“Not only are plastics polluting our oceans and waterways and killing marine life, it’s in all of us,” said Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, which commissioned the new report. “If we don’t want it in our bodies, we need to stop the millions of tons of plastic that continue leaking into Nature every year.”

In the last two decades, the world has produced as much plastic as during the rest of history, and the industry is set to grow by four percent a year until 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research. More than 75 percent of all plastics winds up as waste. A third of that — some 100 million tonnes — is dumped or leaches into Nature, polluting land, rivers and the sea.

On current trends, the ocean will contain one metric tonne of plastic for every three metric tonnes of fish by 2025, according to The New Plastics Economy report, published by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Plastic particles have recently been found inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean, and blanketing the most pristine snows in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain.

The authors of Wednesday’s report were up front about the limitations of their research, starting with the fact that little is known about health consequences. Gaps in data were filled with assumptions and extrapolations that could be challenged, though the estimates, they insisted, were on the conservative side…

E-wallets to the rescue: How to turn credit card money into hard cash

And it is free if done through e-wallets. But wallet companies can block repeat offenders

A few weeks earlier, Paytm had started charging its customers a two per cent fee for adding money to the wallet using their credit cards. However, the mobile wallet company withdrew the fee after a week, saying it would cause inconvenience to a large section of their customers.

So, how does one transfer credit card money into a bank account via an e-wallet? The mechanism is quite simple. A user sends money to the wallet through his credit card, say Rs 15,000. Well-established mobile wallets such as Paytm, MobiKwik and FreeCharge allow funds in the wallet to be sent to any bank account. All the person has to do is enter his account number and the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) code. He can send the entire Rs 15,000 to any bank account he wishes to.

 

Most wallet companies don’t allow transfer of funds immediately. One can send the money to a bank account only after 48 hours. The best part: There are no charges on deposit or on withdrawal of money from the wallet. The wallet provider bears the cost.

It’s a smart way to get a hassle-free loan. An individual does not need to fill up an application form, share documents, wait for the approval, and so on. There’s no fear of rejection because of a low credit score. It can also be at zero cost if the person pays back the issuer before the due date. To many, it may look line an easy credit line, but it’s not.

A few do it to earn points on their credit card without actually spending on anything. But banks have to report to the income-tax

(I-T) department all users who spend over Rs 2 lakh on their credit cards annually. If your income doesn’t justify such spending, the tax authorities could call you to explain the source of money.

Wallets players are watching: Mobile wallet companies absorb the transaction cost levied by banks, as they are focusing on acquiring new customers and on making their services popular. They want users to transact using their wallets and not use it as a medium to rotate money. They have started analysing the spending patterns of users and blocking those who are using their wallets for “unintended purposes”.

“We use algorithms, machine learning and other technologies to understand the spending patterns of users. The technology platform gets smarter every day. Narrowing down on users who are rotating money and blocking them is not difficult,” says Daman Soni, vice-president (growth), MobiKwik. He further explains that when the company studied spending patterns, it realised that many users who added money from their credit card to their wallet and then transferred the funds to their bank account were first-timers trying to understand how the platform works.

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