The Quiet Rise of the Plastics Crisis

How to counter an insidious global threat.

Plastic food packaging blankets the world’s coastlines, study finds

Food packaging ranks among the top plastic pollutants littering the world’s coastlines, a new study confirms. The study, published May 20 in the journal One Earth, analyzed data from 112 nations, including 5,300 shoreline litter surveys, to produce the first global index of macroplastic pollution by usage type. Based on 355 peer-reviewed studies, it found […]

‘You have to be where the pollution is’: the inventor hoping to fix your washing machine to stop microplastics

Matter Industries founder Adam Root has developed a filter to trap microfibres at home and on an industrial scale. But is it just a drop in the ocean?

Toward standardized microplastics monitoring in rivers

Microplastics (MPs), defined as plastic fragments smaller than 5 mm, have become so pervasive that they are detectable in nearly every environment studied—from remote ocean trenches to urban air, tap water, and human blood. MPs are hardly uniform; they span an enormous size range. Larger fragments are visible to the naked eye, while the smallest ones have a diameter of a few micrometers. These variations in size are important, as smaller particles are far more numerous, behave differently in water than larger particles, and may pose greater risks to aquatic organisms and human health.

Sri Lanka bans single-use plastic bottles at government events, charges for plastic bags

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka banned the purchase and use of single-use plastic water bottles in all government institutions effective May 31, under a new government circular that targets reduction of wasteful plastic consumption within the state sector. The move is the latest in a long line of attempts by the island nation to reduce plastic […]

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