Microplastics News

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Deadlocked plastic treaty talks will lead to renewed negotiations in 2025

Charles Pekow 10 Dec 2024
Food can pick up chemicals from to-go containers and everything else they contact on their way to your table. Credit: Taklamacuwv Lamia on Wikimedia Commons

Thousands of chemicals from food packaging found in humans, a major study reveals

Rita Aksenfeld 25 Nov 2024
People clean up plastic trash at a beach in Bali, Indonesia.

Plastic pollution pushing Earth past all nine planetary boundaries: Report

Alden Wicker 25 Nov 2024
A bottlenose dolphin.

Microplastics are sickening and killing wildlife, disrupting Earth systems

Sharon Guynup 21 Nov 2024
Workers sort through discared plastic in Bangladesh.

The plastics crisis is now a global human health crisis, experts say

Alden Wicker 19 Nov 2024
A plastic beverage bottle floats in the shallow waters of Sand Island in Hawaii. Image by David Slater / NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program Marine Debris Team, 2015.

How ‘waste colonialism’ underpins Asia’s plastic problem (commentary)

Coleen Salamat 18 Nov 2024
A woman pulls a large bag filled with plastic in a landfill in Bangladesh.

U.S. toughens stance on plastics production in run-up to key treaty summit

Charles Pekow 5 Nov 2024

Studies identify microplastics contamination along entire Brazilian coastline

Luís Patriani 23 Oct 2024
Two workers sift through plastic waste collected for recycling.

Bangladesh’s new government implements strong measures to eliminate single-use plastic

Abu Siddique 2 Oct 2024

What will the Brazilian food industry do about plastic packaging?

Ellen Nemitz 19 Sep 2024
Plastic containers piled up.

Biden-Harris Administration must strengthen position on plastic reduction treaty (commentary)

Tim Grabiel 27 Aug 2024
Bioplastics drying during a testing setting.

Most ‘compostable’ bioplastics are anything but, says new report

Alden Wicker 31 Jul 2024

Saving Lake Victoria from plastic: Interview with Kenya’s teenage Muchilwa siblings

Juliet Akoth Ojwang 31 Jul 2024
Green Phenix artist Erwin Sprot with one of his creations, a human figure made with beer crown caps.

Can the circular economy help the Caribbean win its war against waste?

Sandra Weiss 20 May 2024
Microplastics

Scientists explore nature’s promise in combating plastic waste

Claire Asher 8 May 2024
Egrets at a landfill in Riau.

As plastic talks wrap up in Canada, fishers in Indonesia count the costs

Falahi Mubarok, Yogi Eka Sahputra 8 May 2024
The plastic pollution art installation outside Ottawa's Shaw Centre where the summit took place.

At its fourth summit, 170 nations strive toward a global plastics treaty by 2025

Charles Pekow 7 May 2024
Indigenous people with sled dogs in Greenland.

Plastic pollution talks end & Arctic peoples return home to a ‘sink’ of plastic

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 7 May 2024
Bioplastic samples in a lab.

Bioplastics as toxic as regular plastics; both need regulation, say researchers

Alden Wicker 22 Apr 2024
Fakir Altaf Hussain, a fisher in Bangladesh, fishing in his pond.

Pollution poses big risks to global clean water supplies, study shows

Sean Mowbray 6 Mar 2024
Plastic waste in water.

New AI model helps detect and identify microplastics in wastewater

Abhishyant Kidangoor 16 Jan 2024
Rubber duckies

As the world swims in plastic, some offer an answer: Ban the toxic two

Alden Wicker 2 Jan 2024
James Njuguna, a shepherd who lives near the Manguo swamp.

In 2023, Mongabay’s reporting fellows covered Earth amid crisis — and hope

Karen Coates 27 Dec 2023
Throwaway single-use plastic trash at a festival in Germany.

Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran & petrochemical industry stall plastics treaty: Critics

Charles Pekow 22 Nov 2023
Fossils fuels are emblematic of a “take-make-waste” economic model that is pushing humanity beyond safe limits, experts say.

Circular economy poised to go beyond outdated oil, gas and coal, experts say

Sean Mowbray 16 Nov 2023
A young boy tries to help a fallen donkey stand during a severe drought that struck the Horn of Africa.

Beyond Climate: Fossil fuels rapidly eroding Earth’s ‘safe operating space’

Sean Mowbray 15 Nov 2023
Workers clean an oil spill that has polluted a beach on Salamina Island, Greece.

Beyond climate: Oil, gas and coal are destabilizing all 9 planetary boundaries

Sean Mowbray 14 Nov 2023
Plastics of all shapes, sizes, colors and composition enter the ocean every day, with largely unknown impacts.

Microplastics pose risk to ocean plankton, climate, other key Earth systems

Claire Asher 9 Oct 2023
Clouds over mountains in Japan.

Up in the air: Study finds microplastics in high-altitude cloud water

Elizabeth Claire Alberts 5 Oct 2023
Tires by the road.

Rolling car tires into the global circular economy

Sean Mowbray 21 Aug 2023

Plastic ‘Frankenrocks’ pose new pollution threat to coastal environment

Basten Gokkon 2 Aug 2023

The endless struggle to clean up Rio de Janeiro’s highly polluted Guanabara Bay

Andrew Johnson 1 Aug 2023

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