Plastic Pollution

In a back room at his home in Santa Cruz, California, George Leonard is amassing a stockpile of plastic bags. Most of the time, he eschews the things. As chief scientist at Ocean Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit based in Washington, DC, Leonard spends his time campaigning against single-use plastics that…

The impact of plastic on the many species that call the ocean home is a huge unknown, but scientists are starting to piece together the kinds of risks this pollution poses to the marine ecosystem. The latest finding in this area concerns a common seafood in blue mussels, which researchers…

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the plastic bag was in retreat.Single-use plastics had become the subject of aggressive — and increasingly successful — restrictions. Consumers were becoming mindful of the need to reduce the amount of plastic they used. Companies were switching to more sustainable materials.Now, rollbacks of regulations, sanitary concerns…

(Natural News) As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, many environmentalists are now sounding an alarm over another enemy this global outbreak is highlighting: plastic. Millions of people around the world are now living in a country where wearing masks has been deemed mandatory. From Vietnam, Israel to Cuba, Germany and…

Rotterdam, October 26, 2019 - The Ocean Cleanup unveils the Interceptor, the first scalable river ... cleanup technology. Pierre AUGIER for The Ocean Cleanup Deloitte has calculated the annual cost of marine plastic pollution to be $6-19 billion a year to key economic sectors for coastal communities. One of the…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Dr. Fengwei (David) Xie is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at the International Institute for Nanocomposites Manufacturing (IINM), WMG, University of Warwick. His research focuses on "green"/bio-polymers for sustainability, environmental protection, people's better life and health. He works on developing "green" processes and "green" materials…

COVID-19 has sparked a global arms race for personal protective equipment (PPE) as governments scramble to protect frontline workers.But while no-one disputes the current urgency, campaigners are concerned it could worsen another epidemic: plastic pollution.The UN estimates that 13 million tons of plastic are dumped in the sea each year…

Yorkshire-based British textiles manufacturer, Camira, has teamed up with the SEAQUAL Initiative – which turns waste plastic captured from the sea by fishermen into yarn – to make the industry’s first upholstery fabric to contain ocean plastic. We caught up with Camira’s group design manager Ciara Crossan to find out…

AbstractMicroplastics are ubiquitous in estuarine, coastal, and deep sea sediments. The impacts of microplastics on sedimentary microbial ecosystems and biogeochemical carbon and nitrogen cycles, however, have not been well reported. To evaluate if microplastics influence the composition and function of sedimentary microbial communities, we conducted a microcosm experiment using salt…

One winner in the coronavirus pandemic: single-use plastic. Just a few weeks ago, states were implementing sweeping plastic bag bans and limiting the availability of plastic straws. But as the virus has spread through the U.S., states are rolling back their plastic bag bans, stores are banning the use of…