Many thousands of human-made chemicals and synthetic pollutants are circulating throughout our world, with new ones entering production all the time — so many, in fact, that scientists now say…
COLOMBO — There was little relief from the scorching sun on the beach, but the volunteers kept at their work, scouring the sand for small plastic pellets known as nurdles.…
The disposable face mask has become the poster child for COVID-19-related waste since the start of the pandemic, showing up on beaches and in waterways all over the world. Hong…
MARSEILLE, France — Pascal Hagmann lowered a manta trawl — a ray-shaped, metal device with a wide mouth and a fine-meshed net — off the side of his sailboat and…
Plastics will outpace coal plants in the U.S. by 2030 in terms of their contributions to climate change, according to a new report released Oct. 21 by Beyond Plastics, a…
Our pollution of the planet with heavy metals, plastics, industrial chemicals, pesticides and more is pushing Earth systems to the limit, and us closer to crossing a dangerous planetary boundary we don’t understand.
Humans have created so much plastic that it now exists from the slopes of Mount Everest to the extreme depths of the oceans. When we consider the effects of plastic…
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sunitha Rathnayake, a homemaker in southern Sri Lanka, was down to the last of her salt and planned to order some more from an online grocery…
COLOMBO — Authorities in Sri Lanka say they have largely contained a fire on board a cargo ship off the island’s west coast, but now face the task of cleaning…
The United Nations Basel Convention regulates international transport of hazardous waste, which in 2021 expanded to include plastics. But the U.S. has never fully implemented the agreement; Biden may change that.
Take a deep breath. The air that fills your chest and lungs is a vital mix of oxygen and nitrogen. Other things might be mingled in the air, too. For…
A lone figure kneels at the high-tide line of Tregantle Beach. A 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) sweep of golden sands that hugs the coast of Cornwall in southwest England, Tregantle is bound…
Underwater meadows of a seagrass endemic to the Mediterranean appear to trap some plastic debris that would otherwise drift out into the open ocean and pollute the bottom of the…
Plastic is everywhere — literally everywhere. A growing body of research shows that plastic is not only filling the world’s oceans and wilderness regions, it’s also invading our bodies through…
The Ocean Cleanup is a highly touted nonprofit with the ambitious goal of cleaning up 90 percent of the ocean’s plastic. In reality, the initiative’s impact on the world's floating…
Marine mammals stranded on beaches in the southeastern United States died with high levels of pollutants stored in their organs and blubber, researchers reported recently in Frontiers in Marine Science.…
JAKARTA — Proper management of plastic waste is lacking in coastal communities in Indonesia, the No. 2 contributor to the ocean plastic crisis. That’s the conclusion of a recently published…
There are trillions of microplastics in the ocean — they bob on the surface, float through the water column, and accumulate in clusters on the seafloor. With plastic being so…
In 1997, Charles Moore was sailing a catamaran from Hawaii to California when he and his crew got stuck in windless waters in the North Pacific Ocean. As they motored…
A microplastic is a tiny speck of a thing. At its largest, it’s about the size of a linseed, but smaller microplastics can’t be seen with the naked eye. Minuscule…
In 2018, Lauren Biermann was scouring a satellite image of the ocean off the coast of the Isle of May, Scotland, searching for signs of floating seaweed for a project…
Fast fashion and the environment We live in a world of fast fashion, a model that relies on frequent, trend-driven, impulse buying of cheaply manufactured clothing that often ends up…
BALI, Indonesia — It’s just after sunrise here in Bali, and a group of locals are preparing to sail their wooden boats out to a bay off Nusa Lembongan, a…
In late 2018, researchers announced that they had found synthetic particles like microplastics in the intestinal tracts of every single sea turtle they’d studied in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans…
BALI, Indonesia — Waves roll in over the black volcanic sand on Sogsogan, a beach in southern Bali. Further out, surfers prepare to master the swell. Bali has long been…
DUMAGUETE, Philippines — Microplastics for breakfast? It might be likely as a newly published study shows concentrates of small plastic particles, or microplastics, inside the digestive systems of rabbitfish (Siganid…
DAVAO, Philippines – On August 4, 2018, a fisherman found an endangered green turtle (Chelonia mydas) floating weakly in the Davao Gulf, a diverse marine ecosystem and rich fishing ground spanning 308,000…
Over the past decade, the world has begun to realize that microscopic plastic particles infest our lakes, our seas, and even our bodies. A new study reveals that even the…
New research finds that large filter feeders in the waters of Indonesia could be ingesting dozens to hundreds of microplastic particles every hour. Due to their filter feeding strategy, manta…
A new report from the environmental organization Greenpeace warns that large companies are only deepening the world’s plastic crisis, even as they voice support for supposed solutions. “Due to public…
