Plastic Pollution in the Ocean and Our Planet

Products made entirely of plastic bags are pictured at the Plastic Bag Store, a pop-up to raise awareness of the environmental issues with plastics in Times Square in Manhattan, New York City, October 16, 2020. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri Reuters / Friday, October 16, 2020 Products made entirely of plastic bags are pictured at the Plastic Bag Store, a pop-up to raise awareness of the environmental issues with plastics in Times Square in Manhattan, New York City, October 16, 2020. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri Close

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Outrage over last month’s sprawling Mississippi River nurdle spill in New Orleans and the lax government response to it has inspired a bill in Congress to prevent similar incidents.Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., had already introduced a wide-ranging bill to reduce plastic pollution, and last week he drafted a new one aimed specifically at prohibiting the discharge of plastic pellets, called nurdles, into rivers and oceans.While plastic pellets, known as nurdles, pile up along the Mississippi River bank in Algiers Point on Aug. 17, 2020. Tristan Baurick, Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate “There should be no questions about who is responsible for the damage these discharges have already caused,” Udall said. “That is why my legislation would prohibit companies from discharging this dangerous waste into our environment â€" to put an end to the tragic spills we’ve seen in states like Louisiana.”The dumping on Aug. 2 of about 740 million nurdles from a cargo ship moored in…

The skyrocketing use of disposable plastic masks and gloves. Lockdowns on movement and shuttered recycling facilities. Suspensions or delays on laws that would have restricted singleuse plastic bags in shops and markets. The plastic pollution crisis, already sharply escalating over the last decade, has been significantly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.The resulting crisis is not only environmental, but also starkly humanitarian. At the local level, informal sector waste pickers and others working in waste management are facing evaporated livelihoods and high risk of infection. Women and girls, traditionally marginalized by harmful societal norms and excluded from employment and protections in the formal sector, are disproportionately affected.When we started the Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) two years ago to translate commitments to reduce plastic pollution into concrete action, we knew this would be a daunting and complex task. But we could have never anticipated the…

A newly published study is warning that there will be 53 trillion metric tons of plastic pollution in the world's rivers, lakes, and oceans by 2030.The research, published in Science, found that humanity is on track to put 53 million megatons (the equivalent 53 trillion tons) into the world's waterways, even if severe measures are taken to reduce the plastic waste currently being produced."Unless growth in plastic production and use is halted, a fundamental transformation of the plastic economy to a framework based on recycling is essential, where end-of-life plastic products are valued rather than becoming waste," said University of Toronto assistant professor and study co-author Chelsea Rochman, in a statement.Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean is yet another remote island littered in plastic waste (Credit: Marcus Eriksen) PLASTIC WASTE IN OCEANS WILL TRIPLE BY 2040, RESEARCHERS SAY"Even if governments around the world meet their ambitious global com…

A vital refuge for rare wildlife has been polluted by the largest accumulation of plastic waste of any island on the planet.Aldabra, a remote atoll in the Indian Ocean, has 513 tonnes of plastic washed up on its shore, including 360,000 flip-flops, according to researchers from the UK and Seychelles.Sky News joined the team from The Queen's College, University of Oxford, and the Seychelles Islands Foundation last year, as they removed 25 tonnes of marine plastic.We saw turtles attempting to nest on beaches littered with an extraordinary number of flip-flops, bottles, lighters and other plastic debris that had been carried thousands of miles by ocean currents.The three-week clean-up of Aldabra, described by Sir David Attenborough as one of the world's last remaining natural treasures, underlined the logistical challenge of removing piles of plastic from remote islands.New calculations by the team, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, suggest that despite the effo…