Oceans

Plastic clean-ups have proliferated in response to the growing plastic crisis. Such clean-ups may involve large-scale unsupervised methods of plastic collection that do not discriminate between aquatic life, plastic and organic matter. As a result, the rise of these plastic cleanup technologies has raised red flags in civil society and academia.

This analysis found that a 10-percentage point increase in reusable packaging by 2030 can eliminate over 1 trillion single-use plastic bottles and cups. This shift has the potential to prevent up to 153 billion of these containers from entering the world’s oceans and waterways.

The study shows the widespread use of and contamination by PFAS in disposable food packaging and tableware in six European countries: the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

The Nurdle Hub proposes solutions to plastic pellet pollution and offers a variety of resources and initiatives in order to tackle nurdle pollution.

The Great Nurdle Hunt is Fidra’s flagship project working to end nurdle pollution. We provide the tools and information so that anyone can contribute to, and build evidence of this, issue.

Plastic never deteriorates, it simply breaks down into smaller and smaller particles that are invisible to the human eye. In this investigation, scientists search for the microplastic in the ocean. Small, mostly invisible, toxic, it has found a new home: the plastisphere.

This report reviews the damage to various types of biogenic habitats, lists international obligations to protect those with the greatest biodiversity or fragility, and outlines actions that can be taken locally to complement policies aimed at stemming the flow of waste at the source.

This part of the Plastic Treaty Essential Elements series explains why a good reporting and monitoring framework is so important for the new international legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution, and what it should look like.

The official document of resolution 5/14 "End plastic pollution: towards an international legally binding instrument", adopted by the United Nations Environment Assembly on 2 March 2022.