The Ocean Cleanup, the Dutch non-profit organization that made waves in 2015 with its grand plans and new approach to ridding the oceans of plastic, last weekend launched the world’s first ocean cleanup system from the San Francisco Bay. “System 001”headed to a location 240 nautical miles offshore f...
Vancouver city council this week targeted single-use plastic items, such as straws, but researchers wonder why the straw has been singled out when there are hundreds of plastic items making their way into the environment.Researchers have cited balloons, food containers, plastic cutlery and piec...
Discarded plastic will outweigh fish in the world's oceans by 2050, according to a report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. That is, unless overfishing moves the date up sooner.
The study, a collaboration with the World Economic Forum, found that 32 percent of plastic packaging escapes wast...
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The world's oceans are clogged with plastic debris, but how much of it finds its way into the seas annually? Enough to place the equivalent of five grocery bags full of plastic trash on every foot (30 cm) of every nation's coastline around the globe.
T...
Eight million tons of plastic is dumped at sea each year...that's five whole bags-full for every foot of the world's coastline
China topped the league, accounting for up to 3.5 million tons a year
Other main offenders are Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka
United States contribut...
Plastic bottles lying in the gutter. Grocery bags tangled in branches. Food wrappers scuttling across the ground on a windy day. Although such examples of litter easily come to mind, they only hint at the serious and growing problem of plastic pollution — a problem mostly hidden from view.
The prob...
Who's flushing plastic pollution into the oceans, creating tiny time bombs that kill fish, birds and sea turtles ingesting what they think is food? That question has been around since 1997, when the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" was discovered, and a new mathematical model could provide the tool nee...
To reduce fire hazard in the United States, wildland managers often utilize the silvicultural practice of mechanically cutting woody shrubs and suppressed trees (ladder fuels). These cuttings and other post-logging debris are then burned during periods of low fire danger in order to dispose of...
The tiny plastic particles polluting our seas are not only orally ingested by marine creatures, but also enter their systems through their gills, according to a new study led by the University of Exeter.
Scientists also discovered that when microplastics are drawn in through this ...
According to a new study, 99% of plastic waste that enters the ocean cannot be located. While initially hearing that there's less plastic in the ocean than we believed sounds like great news, it's actually a frightening prospect. After all, if the plastic isn't in the ocean ... where is it going?!
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From the shoreline at North Avenue Beach in Chicago, the blue water of Lake Michigan stretches as far as the eye can see. But beneath that pristine image, there's a barely visible threat, says Jennifer Caddick of the Alliance for the Great Lakes: microbeads.
These tiny bits of plastic, small scrubb...
The stomach of fledgling mutton birds, or Short-tailed Shearwaters, on Victoria’s Phillip Island have been found to contain an average of more than seven particles of plastic per bird – weighing some 113 mg.
This, says La Trobe University’s Dr Mark Carey, may affect the life cycle of this spe...
The long-term effects of synthetic chemicals used in packaging, food storage and processing food could be damaging our health, scientists have warned. Jo Adetunji reports. We actually know very little about how chemicals affect bodily functions or promote disease, or at what life stage we are s...
California has become an interesting test-case for both approaches to one plastic problem.Back in 2006, California passed a law that mandated a system for recycling plastic shopping bags. Today, supermarkets and other large stores have receptacles where plastic bags can be returned for recycling.
H...
There's more plastic floating around the ocean than any other type of marine debris—that we know. What's harder to figure out is just how much is out there. A recent survey of marine plastic debris found something surprising: Nearly 99% of it was missing.
"We were expecting values in excess of one ...
When did everything become Plastic?
When I was a kid, we collected shells on the beach, not plastic trash. There wasn't enough disposable plastic in those days for plastics to collect on the beaches. Plastic bags came into heavy use in American grocery stores when I was in high school in the late '...
We use plastics in our everyday life to put our things in when we only need something completely temporary. It is also because we would like to be able to know how to properly dispose these things because these can be considered harmful to the environment. It is really something that you need to con...
Very exciting news for Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles City Council voted on Tuesday, June 18 to approve a ban on single-use plastic shopping bags. The Council voted 11 to 1 in favor of the ordinance, and a final vote is scheduled for next week. Last year, the Council voted 13 to 1 to move f...
