Even at the Bottom of the World, the Ocean is Belching Plastic – EOS Magazine
Plastic fills the air above Auckland, New Zealand.
With its small population and remote location, New Zealand might hope to be sheltered from the world’s plastic pollution. But new research shows that’s far from the case. In a recent study published in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers report a mist of microplastics is constantly drifting across the country’s largest city.
“We don’t produce large amounts of plastics here in New Zealand,” said Joel Rindelaub, a research fellow at the University of Auckland in New Zealand who led the study. “But we did see large amounts of plastics falling out of the sky in Auckland.”
In 2020, Rindelaub and his colleagues installed two simple devices fashioned from glass bottles to capture plastic as it fell from the air—one in a suburban garden and the other on top of a six-story building in the heart of the city. They then used fluorescence microscopes to count the particles of plastic they collected in the contraption’s filter. The team was able to detect fragments as small as 10 microns (0.01 millimeter)—far smaller than previous studies could see.
“What got us to 10 microns,” said Rindelaub, “was mostly just the amount of time and effort that was devoted to this. A graduate student was working for months to scan the entire filter…”
His family fished for generations. Now he’s hauling plastic out of the sea – the Washington Post
One catch at a time, Lefteris Arapakis is cleaning the Mediterranean.
It was Lefteris Arapakis’s first expedition on a fishing boat, and he didn’t expect what the nets would pull up.
There were scorpionfish, red mullet and sea bream. But there was also a bright red can of Coke…
‘Seas are becoming landfills’: the Senegalese surfer saving a beach – and a way of life – from plastic – the Guardian
It took a wave of plastic-strewn water crashing over Babacar Thiaw as he paddled out to sea for him to decide to act.
By the time his surfboard had carried him back to Virage beach on the north shore of Senegal’s capital, Dakar, Thiaw had a plan that would make use of the surfing community he had built there…
Why Recycling Isn’t the Answer to the Plastic Pollution Problem – Scientific American
For many years, the transition to a circular plastic economy has been understood to require a combination of efforts… ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’. The principles are based on the top three levels of the waste hierarchy, whereby reducing is better than reusing, which is, in turn, more favourable than recycling. In practice, however…
Study finds widespread occurrence of microplastic in Monterey Bay – Santa Cruz Sentinel
In a study published in early November, UC Santa Cruz researchers examined how much microplastic is present in the Monterey Bay and some of its inhabitants, and found that the tiny pieces of plastic pollution are not only prevalent in the water, but also in the fish and seabirds they studied…
NGO retracts ‘waste colonialism’ report blaming Asian countries for plastic pollution – the Guardian
Ocean Conservancy apologises for ‘false narrative’ of 2015 study that put blame for bulk of world’s plastic waste on five Asian states.
The Reality of Recycling Plastic
Industry makes 380 million tons of plastic every year and none of it is truly recyclable.
Greenpeace has just released a report in October calling out the plastic industry for greenwashing the status of plastic recycling by continuing to employ the familiar “chasing arrows” recycling symbol on their products, when the truth is that recycling plastic has been a near-complete failure…
‘Plastics Detective’ Imogen Napper traces pollution to the source – National Geographic
As a marine scientist and researcher and National Geographic Explorer, Imogen Napper thinks a lot about plastic….(She) has spent years sweeping the world for traces of plastic where it doesn’t belong, and finding creative solutions to the problem of plastic pollution…
Beach “Sticky Zones” Act as Trash Magnets – Futurity
Citizen scientists recorded trash on Pacific Northwest beaches, from southern Oregon to Anacortes, Washington, to contribute to the growing study of marine trash.