There are lots of issues with recycling – but it’s still an important part of society’s efforts to live more sustainably.
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Plastic
Displaying 161 - 180 of 330 articles
Snorkeling off the California coast, a high school student found heaps of golf balls on the ocean floor. With a marine scientist, she showed that golf courses were producing tons of plastic pollution.
Zero-packaging stores provide a systemic solution to a globalised food industry dependent on plastic packaging.
With all those blue recycling bins around you might think we are experts at recycling plastics. The truth is, that though many plastic items can be recycled, very few are. So what’s the solution?
Some of our favourite music formats might not be as environmentally friendly as we think.
A plastic bag has an average usage time of 20 minutes, while it can take up to 1000 years to break down in the environment.
A floating park made from discarded plastic in Rotterdam could spark new thinking on how we manage waste.
Whether plastic or natural, Christmas trees are generally bad for the environment. However, a new chemical process could recycle dead trees into all kinds of useful products.
Researchers unpack the vast impact of plastic on our society – from emerging health worries and pollution to recycling and plastic’s contributions to modern convenience.
The world is waking up to the plastic pollution crisis. Here’s how you can wake up on Christmas morning to a more sustainable holiday.
Less than 10 percent of plastic waste has been recycled – a factoid recently crowned statistic of the year.
Christmas is hectic, and it can be easy just to go with the flow and vow to cut your plastic use in the new year. But here are some easy steps you can take now to make your Christmas plastic-free.
While the world gathers to negotiate on climate change, governments must recognise the public desire for action on plastic pollution and work together to solve it.
One big problem with plastics is that they’re largely made of petroleum. Sourcing bio-polymers from plants and bacteria has some big benefits – and the technology is starting to take off.
Academics from different disciplines come Head to Head in this series to tackle topical debates.
Cleaning up plastic pollution in the ocean is good – and long overdue. But where will the waste go? Recycling isn’t always an option. Bacteria and enzymes could process it, raising new questions.
Much of the trash on Canadian shorelines can be traced to five food companies. We could soon see more compostable and edible packaging.
Research finds removing plastic from the ocean has huge economic benefits, even if there is little money to be made doing so.
In the EU, 31% of plastic products go to landfill: but a process called “cold plasma pyrolysis” could turn them into clean fuels.
Mosquitoes are transferring microplastics eaten in water into birds and other non-marine animals.
Top contributors
-
Senior Principal Research Scientist, Oceans and Atmosphere, CSIRO
-
Professor of Sustainable Development, Keele University
-
Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
-
Research Chair, Indigenous Approaches to Environmental Management, Keele University
-
Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO
-
Lecturer in Ornithology, Charles Sturt University
-
Postdoctoral researcher, Stanford University
-
Professor, School for Resource and Environmental Studies, Dalhousie University
-
Professor of Coastal Oceanography, The University of Western Australia
-
Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto
-
Research Scientist, Oceans and Atmospheres, CSIRO
-
Research associate, Loughborough University
-
Professor of Global Environmental Politics, University of California, Berkeley
-
Oceanographer, The University of Western Australia
-
Professor in Oceanography and Public Engagement, Utrecht University
