With about 7 billion metric tons of plastic waste already in our environment and over 20 million metric tons of plastic produced annually, plastic waste has become a major global problem. Current ...

Seabirds in the Pacific Ocean are eating plastic and feeding it to their chicks. But we know precious little about why the birds are doing this. By properly classifying the shards of plastic removed ...

How plastic sinks to the deep sea — over time, sunlight and waves break large plastic items into tiny fragments that stick to marine snow. These particles gradually sink through the ocean, carrying ...

New research from CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, and the University of Toronto in Canada, estimates up to 11 million metric tons of plastic pollution is sitting on the ocean floor. The ...

Community-led research from UCSB’s Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory spans three years, four continents and eight countries to reveal the scale of river plastic waste and offer solutions to stop it at ...

A new report has been released by Germany-based ocean plastic recovery startup CleanHub that highlights ocean plastic pollution this year, as well as a look into its complex origins and what the ...

AI-powered detection systems from Amazon Web Services will help The Ocean Cleanup pinpoint plastic hotspots and steer vessels to the most effective collection zones. Courtesy The Ocean Cleanup The ...

Scientists have discovered that the ocean’s “missing” plastic hasn’t vanished—it has broken down into trillions of invisible nanoplastics now spread through water, air, and living organisms. These ...

Plastic pollution is accumulating in marine and coastal ecosystems 1,2,3,4,5, causing significant socio-economic impacts and threatening wildlife worldwide 6,7,8. Despite ongoing negotiations for a ...

Think of ocean plastic and you may picture bottles and bags bobbing on the waves, slowly drifting out to sea. Yet the reality is more complex and far more persistent. Even if we stopped all plastic ...

A fungus living in the sea can break down the plastic polyethylene, provided it has first been exposed to UV radiation from sunlight. Researchers from, among others, NIOZ published their results in ...

Even if plastic pollution stopped entirely today, floating plastic would remain on the surface of the sea for 100 years, according to a new study. Scientists have long been puzzled by the fact that so ...