plastic – Desdemona Despair

The carcass of an elephant seal is seen next to plastic garbage on a beach, in Pico Sayago, in the Patagonian province of Chubut, Argentina, 26 September 2024. Photo: Agustin Marcarian / REUTERS

October 5, 2024

Fishing waste chokes marine wildlife, threatens human health in Argentina’s Patagonia – Mountains of plastic waste from the fishing industry cover the coast along the Valdes Peninsula

By Miguel Lo Bianco 4 October 2024 VALDES PENINSULA, Argentina (Reuters) – Mountains of plastic waste from the fishing industry have covered the coast along the Valdes Peninsula in Argentina’s Patagonia, threatening the lives of sea lions, fish, penguins and whales and also endangering human health. The coasts of the peninsula on Argentina’s Atlantic coast, […]

Diagram showing how microplastics enter the human body and are detected in semen by using Raman spectroscopy. Graphic: Li, et al., 2024 / Science of The Total Environment

July 5, 2024

Microplastics found in every human semen sample tested in study – “There is a need for action to avoid additional permanent damage to the planet and the human body”

By Damian Carrington 10 June 2024 (The Guardian) – Microplastic pollution has been found in all human semen samples tested in a study, and researchers say further research on the potential harm to reproduction is “imperative”. Sperm counts in men have been falling for decades and 40% of low counts remain unexplained, although chemical pollution has been implicated by many […]

U.S. landfill tonnages by waste type, 1960-2018. In 2018, about 146.1 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) were landfilled. Food was the largest component at about 24 percent. Plastics accounted for more than 18 percent, paper and paperboard made up about 12 percent, and rubber, leather and textiles comprised over 11 percent. Other materials accounted for less than 10 percent each. Graphic: EPA

December 25, 2023

I’m appalled by what I learned about recycling. But we can fix it.

By Oliver Franklin-Wallis 29 November 2023 (The New York Times) – It happened again the other night: Washing up after dinner, I went to throw out a packet of just-eaten instant tortellini and was flummoxed. It was plastic, sure. But what kind? There was no resin code or recycling symbol on the package. Nothing on […]

A beachgoer walks through sargassum seaweed that washed ashore on 18 May 2023, in Key West, Florida. A huge mass of sargassum seaweed formed in the Atlantic Ocean is headed for the Florida coastlines and shores in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images

June 3, 2023

Seaweed full of flesh-eating bacteria hitting Florida, creating a “perfect pathogen storm”

By Jess Thomson 30 May 2023 (Newsweek) – The massive blob of seaweed creeping across the Atlantic Ocean toward Florida may contain deadly flesh-eating bacteria. The 5,000-mile wide clump of seaweed is made up of sargassum seaweed, which has bloomed massively to form the “Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt.” A study from Florida Atlantic University published […]

Coastal anemones found side-by-side with pelagic (open ocean) gooseneck barnacles and pelagic bryozoans on a derelict fish crate recovered from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Photo: Linsey Haram / Smithsonian Institution

April 19, 2023

Ocean plastic pollution reaches “unprecedented” levels – The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now so huge and permanent that a coastal ecosystem is thriving on it – “The problem is getting bigger and bigger by the minute”

By Ivana Kottasová 18 April 2023 (CNN) – Scientists have found thriving communities of coastal creatures, including tiny crabs and anemones, living thousands of miles from their original home on plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a 620,000 square mile swirl of trash in the ocean between California and Hawaii. In a new study published in the Nature […]

Number of U.S. dollar billionaires in China, 1999-2022. The year 2022 saw the biggest fall in the Hurun China Rich List in the 24 years of its existence. Data: Hurun Research Institute. Graphic: James P. Galasyn

November 20, 2022

China’s superrich decimated as economic downturn wipes out billions – “This year has seen the biggest fall in the Hurun China Rich List of the last 24 years”

By John Feng 8 November 2022 (Newsweek) – China’s wealthy lost hundreds of billions of dollars in 2022 as the global economic downturn also shook up the country’s typically high-growth industries, according to an annual rich list published on Tuesday. The number of Chinese entrepreneurs worth 5 billion Chinese yuan ($710 million) or more on September 15 […]

Plastic Waste in Canggu Beach, Bali. A tourist walks along a beach covered in piles of debris and plastic waste in Canggu, Bali, Indonesia, 12 December 2021. Photo: Made Nagi / Greenpeace

October 26, 2022

Plastic recycling is a dead-end street: year after year, plastic recycling declines even as plastic waste increases

WASHINGTON, D.C., 24 October 2022 (Greenpeace USA) – Most plastic simply cannot be recycled, a new Greenpeace USA report concludes. Circular Claims Fall Flat Again, released today, finds that U.S. households generated an estimated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, only 2.4 million tons of which was recycled. The report also finds that no […]

A sea turtle tries to eat a plastic cup: consumer items such as food containers make up the largest share of litter origins, according to a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability and funded by the BBVA Foundation and Spanish science ministry. The study concluded: “In terms of litter origins, take-out consumer items – mainly plastic bags and wrappers, food containers and cutlery, plastic and glass bottles, and cans – made up the largest share.” Photograph: Paulo Oliveira / Alamy Stock Photo

September 5, 2022

Plastic certificates: Greenwashing or a step to climate neutrality? – “It’s quite misleading for a company to make a claim like ‘plastic neutral’ when you could still find their products in nature”

By Tim Schauenberg 5 September 2022 (DW) – Plastic waste and microplastics are everywhere. On Mount Everest, in Arctic ice and the deepest ocean trenches, in the stomachs of animals, in our food, drinking water and even our blood. Such ubiquity is a reflection of how much plastic we make, which is now 200 times more than back […]

Concentrations of plastic particles by polymer type in whole blood samples of 22 donors (duplicates a and b, except for No. 6, 9, 15 and 18). All values are greater than the limit of quantification (LOQ). Graphic: Leslie, et al., 2022 / Environment International

March 27, 2022

Microplastics found in human blood for first time – “Our study is the first indication that we have polymer particles in our blood”

By Damian Carrington 24 March 2022 (The Guardian) – Microplastic pollution has been detected in human blood for the first time, with scientists finding the tiny particles in almost 80% of the people tested. The discovery shows the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs. The impact on health is as […]

Micrographs showing microplastic particles embedded within a marine organism: (a) fluorescent PET MFs (23 × 100 μm) at 515–560 nm excitation; (b) fluorescent PP MF (28 × 100 μm) at 450–490 nm excitation; (c) fluorescent Nylon MFs (10 × 40 μm; yellow arrows) in the intestinal tract of a 50 h.p.f. brine shrimp (Artemia sp.), with 515–560 nm fluorescent excitation. Images taken at x25–200 magnification (Zeiss Observer Z1; AxioVision LE). Photo: Cole, 2016 / Scientific Reports

December 14, 2019

Microplastics are a million times more abundant in the ocean than previously thought

By MacKenzie Elmer 3 December 2019 (UCSD News Center) – Nothing seems safe from plastic contamination. It is pulled from the nostrils of sea turtles, found in Antarctic waters and buried in the fossil record. But a new study by researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego suggests there could […]