Water

Through a review of the scientific literature on the environmental impacts of plastics, the research team shows that plastic pollution is now altering some major processes at the scale of the entire Earth system. This impact extends to global issues like climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and the use of freshwater and land.

A new report from Alaska Community Action on Toxics and IPEN finds that chemicals, plastics, and climate change are interrelated and threaten Arctic Peoples and lands. These forces have combined to poison lands, waters, and traditional foods of Arctic Indigenous Peoples, with ongoing health effects that threaten their cultures and communities.

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.

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.

This report directly responds to the UNEA resolution 2/11. It aims to clarify the interlinkages between environmental justice and plastic pollution, and also examines impacts of plastic pollution on people’s rights and health.