Oceans

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.

This investigation uncovers shocking evidence of how bad actors exploit regulatory weaknesses and legal loopholes in the global plastic waste trade, fuelling a thriving illegal market. The global plastic waste trade continues to pose significant environmental and health risks, and causes huge amounts of pollution of land, air and even soil.

The report presents numbers and figures of the 2024 Great Global Nurdle Hunt. Nurdles are plastic pellets produced from fossil fuels, recycled or biobased material. Each year, due to mismanagement across the entire supply chain and a lack of regulation, over 445,000 t of nurdles spill into the environment around the world, making them a major source of primary microplastic pollution.

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.

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.

The study shows Amazon’s pandemic-fueled boom in plastic pollution, its futile recycling pledges, and the real solutions the company can implement to stop flooding our oceans with plastic.

How plastics harm human health and the environment and poison the circular economy.

Plastic is a predominant material used in many menstrual products. They contain toxic substances and their disposal is a major problem for the environment.

The podcast series by Anja Krieger journeys into the world of synthetic polymers, their impacts on nature and humans, and looks into the global quest to tackle plastic pollution.

A life-changing, Emmy-winning film depicting one of the world’s most pressing environmental issues. It reveals the ugly truth behind plastic pollution and the false solution of plastic recycling.

The digital edition of the book including all infographics, facts, and stories on a website.