Author: Carolyn Wilke

Microplastics have turned up in some of the most remote places, such as the Antarctic and the summit of Mount Fuji. Yet models of atmospheric transport haven’t been able to fully explain how these plastic bits stray so far from the people that produced them. A new study finds that the shape of microplastics influences the distances they fly (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2023, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.3c08209). “You find these microplastics worldwide, even far away from likely sources,” says Andreas Stohl, a meteorologist at the University of Vienna and one of the study’s authors. Most of these microplastics seem to be fibers or relatively complex shapes, he says. “But most models assume that particles are spherical.”

Author: Miquéla Thornton

“Big Oil Is in Trouble. Its Plan: Flood Africa With Plastic,” a headline in The New York Times read in 2020. The “trouble” the Times referred to was the decline of fossil fuels amid the climate crisis. “Big Oil” referenced the lobby group the American Chemistry Council (ACC), which includes the likes of Exxon, Dow, Shell, Dupont and Total. As the industry ramps up plastic production to make up for lost profits, the plan was to find somewhere to dump all the waste.

Author: Karen DeWitt

Environmental groups in New York say a top priority in 2024 will be getting a law approved that would cut the amount of plastic packaging in consumer products in half over the 12 years and help combat climate change. It faces fierce opposition from the plastics industry. The bill would also step up recycling efforts and ban a form of plastics recycling known as chemical recycling, which heats the plastic waste to a high temperature and converts it into a form of fossil fuel.

Author: Chris McCrory

WASHINGTON — Aldi, the popular discount grocery chain, will no longer sell plastic shopping bags to customers, becoming the first major retailer in the U.S. to completely eliminate the environmentally-problematic checkout staple. In a statement released earlier this month, Aldi officials said they had met their goal of removing all plastic shopping bags by the end of 2023, eliminating them from the chain's 2,300 stores across the U.S. 

Author: Josh Jackman

Plastics release 1.8 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases per year, which equates to 3.4% of the world’s emissions. That means plastic has a bigger effect on climate change every year than all aviation and shipping. We can’t effectively address climate change without massively reducing the amount of plastic we create, use, and throw away. Here are the main ways in which our addiction to plastic contributes to climate change, and the actions we can all take to help solve this issue.

Author: Bethanie Carney Almroth and Eric Carmona Martinez

Plastic pollution is a menace worldwide. Plastics are now found in every environment on the planet, from the deepest seas to the atmosphere and human bodies. Scientific evidence describing harm to the environment and humans is growing. Hence, the United Nations has resolved to negotiate a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution.

Author: Katharine Gammon

On the top of Mount Everest, in the Mariana Trench, in the human placenta, and babies’ feces: Plastics are everywhere. They are built to last, and last they do: A plastic bag can endure for 20 years in the environment, and a disposable diaper, soiled or not, up to 200.

Author: Natalie Muller | Neil King

Tiny particles of plastic have spread to every corner of the planet — from the deepest parts of the ocean to the heights of Mount Everest. "We find microplastics in just about every animal species that we've studied," Tamara Galloway, professor of ecotoxicology at the University of Exeter in the UK, told DW.

Author: Angela Symons

The average litre of bottled water has nearly a quarter of a million pieces of microplastics and tiny, invisible nanoplastics, new research has found. These have been detected and categorised for the first time by a microscope using dual lasers. Scientists had long figured there were lots of these microscopic plastic pieces, but until researchers at US universities Columbia and Rutgers did their calculations they never knew how many or what kind.

Author: Seth Borenstein

The average liter of bottled water has nearly a quarter million invisible pieces of ever so tiny nanoplastics, detected and categorized for the first time by a microscope using dual lasers. Scientists long figured there were lots of these microscopic plastic pieces, but until researchers at Columbia and Rutgers universities did their calculations they never knew how many or what kind. Looking at five samples each of three common bottled water brands, researchers found particle levels ranged from 110,000 to 400,000 per liter, averaging at around 240,000 according to a study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Author: Joseph Winters

At this point, it’s common knowledge that bottled water contains microplastics — fragments of the insidious material that can be as small as a bacterial cell. But the problem is much worse than previously known: It turns out that bottled water harbors hundreds of thousands of even tinier pieces of the stuff.

Author: Joseph Winters

In 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency flagged vinyl chloride — a hazardous chemical that’s used to make PVC pipes and other plastic products — for further assessment and potential restrictions under the Toxic Substances Control Act, a federal chemical safety law. But it’s taken nearly a decade for the agency to begin that assessment.

Author: Pandora Dewan

Plastic is everywhere, from the Arctic ice to human placenta. In fact, previous estimates suggest that the average person ingests a credit card-worth of microscopic plastic particles every week. But new research shows that this could actually be an understatement. Microplastics refer to any plastics that are smaller than 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) long. They can be found in industrial waste and various beauty products and can also be formed during the degradation of larger pieces of plastic waste.