plastic

AbstractPlastic pollution accumulating in an area of the environment is considered “poorly reversible” if natural mineralization processes occurring there are slow and engineered remediation solutions are improbable. Should negative…

AbstractHuman activities are changing our environment. Along with climate change and a widespread loss of biodiversity, plastic pollution now plays a predominant role in altering ecosystems globally. Here, we review the occurrence of…

SummaryAs the world struggles with how to dispose of plastic, some scientists hope microorganisms might hold part of the answer. Researchers are scouring hot springs, trash dumps, beaches, and forests for microbes whose enzymes can break…

No missing sinkEstimates of the flux of microplastics from rivers, in the context of the mass of plastic that has been observed in the ocean, have made it appear that a large, unidentified sink of plastics must exist there. Weiss et al.…

SummaryPlastic winds up everywhere—from the top of Mount Everest to remote Antarctica. And every year, millions of tons of discarded plastic also wash into the ocean. Research about ocean plastic is swelling, too, from 46 papers in 2011 to…