The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit organization, aims to rid the world's oceans of plastic. It recently debuted a device it said collected 20,000 pounds from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But some ...

Countries could slash plastic pollution by 80% in less than two decades, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme. It’s even changing ecosystems. Scientists recently ...

In early 2018, residents of Boise, Idaho were told by city officials that a breakthrough technology could transform their hard-to-recycle plastic waste into low-polluting fuel. The program, backed by ...

Of the 10 billion metric tons of plastic that humans have produced so far, only a small fraction has been recycled. Most of it sits in landfills or in the environment, where it could take centuries to ...

Plastic is cheap to make and shockingly profitable. It’s everywhere. And we’re all paying the price. On a Saturday last summer, I kayaked up a Connecticut river from the coast, buoyed by the rising ...

Artist Aurora Robson has spent the last two decades turning trash into treasure, quite literally: Her multidisciplinary practice intercepts waste streams, transforming plastic debris into abstract ...

Previous research found that insects can ingest and absorb pure, unrefined microplastics -- but only under unrealistic, food-scarce situations. Zoologists have now tested mealworms in a more realistic ...

Picture a plastic shopping bag that some busy customer picks up in the checkout line of a store—say, the British supermarket Tesco. That shopper piles her groceries into the bag, takes it home to a ...

When the British supermarket chain Tesco Plc first started ­collecting plastic bags and wrappers from customers to be recycled in March 2021, Caroline Ragueneau was thrilled. She was working as a ...

Russell has a PhD in the history of medicine, violence, and colonialism. His research has explored topics including ethics, science governance, and medical involvement in violent contexts. Russell has ...

Plastic bags are bad. Ban them from supermarkets, and the problem is solved, right? Right? Right? Turns out, as is often the case, there may be a little bit more to that story. Researchers at the ...