Plastic News

The Aldabra coral atoll is a place of mythical beauty, uninhabited and so lost to the world that chartered flights and boats are the only way to get there. But…

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…

In late February, a three-legged turtle nicknamed Futura was released back into the sea by caregivers at the Sea Turtle Recovery Center of Brancaleone in Italy. Futura, a loggerhead sea…

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…

BOSTON/JAKARTA — It had rained all morning across Jakarta on the first Tuesday in February. The rivers in the Indonesian capital quickly filled up, carrying all kinds of debris toward…

Remote islands are often held up as vestiges of pristine wilderness. In stark contrast, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Henderson Island are drowning in piles of plastic. A recent study…

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…

1. Climate change and oceans Climate change impacts on land made almost daily headlines this year: fires, floods, more extreme storms. Equally intense effects are being realized in our seas.…

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…

MANILA — In 2013, Coca-Cola Philippines released a new product for the local market: Coke Mismo, packaged in a 300-milliliter (10-ounce) PET bottled and launched at a star-studded event by…

JAKARTA — Indonesia earlier this year condemned the practice of wealthy countries sending it their waste, but is now doing the same by shipping that same waste to other countries…

On October 2nd, the Dutch non-profit The Ocean Cleanup announced that it has successfully developed a device that can capture and collect ocean plastic, moving the organization closer to its…

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…

JAKARTA — A ban on single-use plastics on the Indonesian island of Bali will stay in place, after the country’s top court rejected a challenge by the plastic-recycling industry. The…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government plans to burn waste to fuel power plants in four cities on the island of Java this year as part of efforts to tackle the…

New research finds that thousands of sharks and rays could be entangled in the plastic polluting Earth’s oceans. Scientists at the UK’s University of Exeter examined existing scientific literature and…

Some of the countries most responsible for the plastic waste that ends up in the oceans have pledged to tackle the problem together, but activists say they’re focusing on the…

SINGAPORE — The Philippines goes through more than 200 million pieces of single-use plastic each day, lending a real urgency to government efforts to adopt a consumption model that prioritizes…

Scientists have fretted over the expanding masses of plastic in the ocean for decades. Most have seen the rise with their own eyes, and yet the available datasets typically don’t…

Earth’s oceans are drowning in plastic. Humans created 311 million metric tons of the stuff in 2014, and it is expected that we’ll be making four times as much by…

WATAMU, Kenya — One Saturday mid-morning in late January, close to 100 people descended on the narrow streets of Watamu village along Kenya’s north coast to clean up the streets.…