news.ucsb.edu

How plastic pollution flows from rivers to oceans — and how to stop it

Community-led research from UCSB’s Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory spans three years, four continents and eight countries to reveal the scale of river plastic waste and offer solutions to stop it at ...
Nature

Ending plastic pollution

Plastics are a crucial part of modern life, however tens of millions of tons of plastic waste is disposed of each year, much of which ultimately ends up in the ocean. Microplastics have been found in ...
Phys.org

Plastic pollution is worsened by warming climate and must be stemmed, researchers warn

Climate change conditions turn plastics into more mobile, persistent, and hazardous pollutants. This is done by speeding up plastic breakdown into microplastics—microscopic fragments of ...
Los Angeles Times

We’re losing the race against plastic, but there’s a solution

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. Within 15 years, a garbage truck’s worth of plastic could be entering our environment every second. Not every ...
Science Daily

Uncollected waste and open burning leading causes of the plastic pollution crisis

A new study shines a light on the enormous scale of uncollected rubbish and open burning of plastic waste in the first ever global plastics pollution inventory. Researchers used A.I. to model waste ...
C&EN

52 million tons of plastic slips into the environment every year

An estimated 52 million metric tons of plastic is spilling uncontrolled into the environment every year, according to a new study (Nature 2024, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07758-6). By weight, 43% of this ...
Mongabay

First review of Amazon plastic pollution finds widespread contamination

Plastic pollution is widespread across the Amazon Rainforest’s rivers, plants and animals, according to a recent study. Previous research suggests up to 10% of total plastics in the ocean arrive there ...
CNN

How extreme weather is making plastic pollution more mobile, more persistent and more hazardous

The surging tide of microplastics is already an environmental and health threat, but as the world heats up — driving increasingly extreme weather — it’s transforming them into “more mobile, persistent ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Humans Pollute the Environment With 57 Million Tons of Plastic Each Year, Study Suggests

Plastic pollution in Madagascar Mouenthias via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0 If you organized the plastic pollution that entered the environment in 2020 in a line, it could circle the Earth ...
Mongabay

New ventures set out to tackle the plastic choking Bangladesh’s ECAs

Bangladesh generates around 87,000 tons of single-use plastics annually, of which 96% are directly discarded as garbage. Due to lack of awareness, many people dump plastic waste at convenience, which ...
The Conversation

Chewing gum is plastic pollution, not a litter problem

University of Portsmouth provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK. Thousands of tonnes of plastic pollution could be escaping into the environment every year … from our mouths. Most chewing ...