This month, a new era began in the fight against plastic pollution. In 2019, 187 nations within the United Nations amended the 1989 Basel Convention, which governs trade in hazardous materials, to include plastic waste. The historic treaty created a legally binding framework to make global trade in plastic waste more transparent and better regulated, […]
A new study finds that plastic water bottles submerged three weeks at sea contained more detrimental bacteria than seawater, creating conditions that lead to ocean acidification. In the study, published last week in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, international scientists concluded that plastic pollution, particularly single-use plastic water bottles, collected harmful bacteria and microorganisms, which […]
The U.S. is the No. 1 generator of plastic waste in the world and as high as the No. 3 generator of ocean plastic waste. That’s the finding of a new study published in Science Advances last Friday that sought to paint a more accurate picture of the U.S. contribution to the plastic crisis. While […]
Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered a link between air pollution, food delivery and plastic waste. In a study published in Nature Human Behavior, the researchers found that the more polluted air outside is, the more likely office employees are to use food delivery services. This, in turn, increases the waste […]
By Dr. Kate Raynes-Goldie Of all the plastic we’ve ever produced, only 9% has been recycled. So what happened to all that plastic you’ve put in the recycling bin over the years? Hands up if you grew up thinking that recycling plastic waste is key to saving the environment. It turns out that for decades […]
A new study from the University of California at Santa Barbara has found that synthetic clothes released about 4,000 metric tons of plastic microfibers into California’s environment in 2019. For context, that’s about 80 million plastic rubber ducks in California, or 130,000 times as many stars as there are in the Milky Way galaxy, The […]
Microplastics can be found everywhere from Antarctica to the Pyrenees. A significant amount of plastic waste ends up in the ocean, but very little has been known about how much ends up on the ocean floor — until now. A new study has found that the ocean floor contains nearly 15.5 tons of microplastics, CNN […]
Scientists are on the brink of scaling up an enzyme that devours plastic. In the latest breakthrough, the enzyme degraded plastic bottles six times faster than previous research achieved, as The Guardian reported. This new super-enzyme is able to break down plastic at room temperature, setting it apart from the enzyme that the French company […]
The plastic recycling model was never economically viable, but oil and gas companies still touted it as a magic solution to waste, selling the American public a lie so the companies could keep pushing new plastic. “The bottle may look empty, yet it’s anything but trash,” claims a 1990 ad showing a plastic bottle bouncing […]
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