Recent research into the health effects of the plastic-making chemicals phthalates has reignited concerns about low sperm counts. But the evidence is far from conclusive.
California is the latest state to attempt to ban microplastics from consumer care products. Why these commonly used microbeads are causing major health and environmental problems.
Consumers and makers of plastic products want plastic to biodegrade to minimize the environmental impact, but some additives don’t live up to the claims.
Four decades after South Australia’s container deposit scheme began, New South Wales has finally overcome industry resistance and launched its own. Could the rest of the country now follow suit?
You might have heard the oceans are full of plastic, but how full exactly? Around 8 million metric tonnes go into the oceans each year, according to the first rigorous global estimate published in Science…
The New York World’s Fair of 1939-40 was one of the greatest expos the world had ever seen. Visitors to Flushing Meadow Park in Queens were invited to see the “world of tomorrow” giving them a first glimpse…
There are at least 268,000 tonnes of plastic floating around in the oceans, according to new research by a global team of scientists. The world generates 288m tonnes of plastic worldwide each year, just…
Purchase a plastic water bottle, and there’s a good chance that it will feature a “BPA-free” label. You might be seeing it more often because the industrial chemical Bisphenol-A has now been removed from…
Most of us have littered at one time or another, and in the process we probably contributed to the enormous of amounts of plastic that enter the ocean every year, eventually ending up in one of the five…
On Monday June 30 the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a scientific paper, led by Andrés Cozar from the University of Cádiz (Spain) and co-authored by…
After months of deliberation and consultations, the UK government’s long-awaited announcement about a plastic bag charge arrives, only for Defra to shoot it full of holes by opting to exempt retailers…
We know that Australia’s waters contain lots of tiny pieces of plastic, and that these pieces can harm many marine species. But in new research published today we show that these microplastics are also…
Plastics comprise around 10% of solid waste in Australia. And while we can recycle certain types, there is a group of particularly stable plastics called thermosets, common in electronic devices, which…
The European Parliament has voted in a draft law aimed at halving the use of plastic bags across the continent by 2017, and further reducing them by at least 80% by 2019. This positive move is aimed at…
I was in the middle of giving a talk on the marine debris problem at a notable Californian marine research institute, when I drank the last of my water bottle, threw it onto the hall floor from the podium…
Frustratingly, the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has turned up many floating objects, but none of them are from the plane. That’s largely because the latest search area is likely to…