Tracking plastic pollution hot spots

A new platform out Monday could allow for a global crackdown on plastic waste sites, thereby preventing plastic pollution from entering the oceans.Global Plastic Watch uses satellite imagery and artificial intelligence techniques to identify likely plastic waste sites in a similar way as space-based imagery is used to locate deforestation hot spots.Why it matters: By pinpointing sites where land-based waste enters waterways, Global Plastic Watch can allow governments and nonprofits to work to mitigate such pollution. The old adage in environmental protection, that you can’t mitigate what you can’t measure, applies here.Threat level: The ubiquitous nature of plastic waste threatens the viability of what many oil companies see as a source of future revenue. From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to microplastics showing up on the highest mountain peaks and deepest oceans, reducing the amount of plastic waste could have significant benefits.Zoom in: Global Plastic Watch is a project funded by the Australia-based Minderoo Foundation. It has already revealed numerous, previously undocumented large-scale waste sites across 24 countries mapped so far, according to Fabien Laurier, who leads technology and innovation for the foundation.The tool, whose interface resembles maps tracking other environmental problems, from wildfires to carbon dioxide emissions, provides for the possibility of partnerships with governments that are contributing a significant amount of land-based plastic waste.One such country, Indonesia, is already using the technology to find undocumented or illegal waste sites, according to a Minderoo Foundation statement.What they’re saying: “Plastic pollution on land contributes to more than 90% of plastics getting into the ocean,” Laurier told Axios in an interview.”But up until now, the scientific understanding and waste management, in general, has been relying on estimates and models that are most often than not inconsistent, sometimes even inaccurate.””The goal here was to make sure that we would know where the plastic on land, provide the data to governments so they can better manage it, and stop it from entering rivers and the oceans in the first place,” Laurier said.The big picture: The new tracking tool is similar in concept to other projects launched in the past few years, such as Global Fishing Watch and Flaring Monitor, which keeps tabs on natural gas flaring.It takes advantage of publicly available data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellite constellation and AI-driven data analysis to provide real-time monitoring capabilities.

The ocean's biggest garbage pile is full of floating life

Researchers found that small sea creatures exist in equal number with pieces of plastic in parts of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which could have implications for cleaning up ocean pollution.In 2019, the French swimmer Benoit Lecomte swam over 300 nautical miles through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to raise awareness about marine plastic pollution.As he swam, he was often surprised to find that he wasn’t alone.“Every time I saw plastic debris floating, there was life all around it,” Mr. Lecomte said.The patch was less a garbage island than a garbage soup of plastic bottles, fishing nets, tires and toothbrushes. And floating at its surface were blue dragon nudibranchs, Portuguese man-o-wars, and other small surface-dwelling animals, which are collectively known as neuston.Scientists aboard the ship supporting Mr. Lecomte’s swim systematically sampled the patch’s surface waters. The team found that there were much higher concentrations of neuston within the patch than outside it. In some parts of the patch, there were nearly as many neuston as pieces of plastic.“I had this hypothesis that gyres concentrate life and plastic in similar ways, but it was still really surprising to see just how much we found out there,” said Rebecca Helm, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and co-author of the study. “The density was really staggering. To see them in that concentration was like, wow.”The findings were posted last month on bioRxiv and have not yet been subjected to peer review. But if they hold up, Dr. Helm and other scientists say, it may complicate efforts by conservationists to remove the immense and ever-growing amount of plastic in the patch.The world’s oceans contain five gyres, large systems of circular currents powered by global wind patterns and forces created by Earth’s rotation. They act like enormous whirlpools, so anything floating within one will eventually be pulled into its center. For nearly a century, floating plastic waste has been pouring into the gyres, creating an assortment of garbage patches. The largest, the Great Pacific Patch, is halfway between Hawaii and California and contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic, according to the Ocean Cleanup Foundation. All that trash turns out to be a great foothold for living things.The snail Recluzia species, viewed from the side oral end.Denis RieckViolet snail Janthina species, viewed from the side, with a large bubble raft made from snail mucus emerging from the water.Denis RieckBlue button Porpita species, viewed from above.Denis RieckThe floating anemone Actinecta species, viewed from the side, with the aboral float at the surface.Denis RieckDr. Helm and her colleagues pulled many individual creatures out of the sea with their nets: by-the-wind sailors, free-floating hydrozoans that travel on ocean breezes; blue buttons, quarter-sized cousins of the jellyfish; and violet sea-snails, which build “rafts” to stay afloat by trapping air bubbles in a soap-like mucus they secrete from a gland in their foot. They also found potential evidence that these creatures may be reproducing within the patch.“I wasn’t surprised,” said Andre Boustany, a researcher with the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. “We know this place is an aggregation area for drifting plastics, so why would it not be an aggregation area for these drifting animals as well?”Little is known about neuston, especially those found far from land in the heart of ocean gyres.“They are very difficult to study because they occur in the open ocean and you cannot collect them unless you go on marine expeditions, which cost a lot of money,” said Lanna Cheng, a research scientist at the University of California, San Diego.Because so little is known about the life history and ecology of these creatures, this study, though severely limited in size and scope, offers valuable insights to scientists.Blue sea dragons, Glaucus species, viewed from above with dark blue ventral surfaces.Denis RieckBy-the-wind sailor Velella species, viewed from above.Denis RieckA Portuguese man-of-war, Physalia species, viewed from the side, with the float above the surface.Denis RieckA buoy barnacle, Dosima fascicularis, viewed from the side, with aboral white float at the water’s surface.Denis RieckBut Dr. Helm said there is another implication of the study: Organizations working to remove plastic waste from the patch may also need to consider what the study means for their efforts.There are several nonprofit organizations working to remove floating plastic from the Great Pacific Patch. The largest, the Ocean Cleanup Foundation in the Netherlands, developed a net specifically to collect and concentrate marine debris as it is pulled across the sea’s surface by winds and currents. Once the net is full, a ship takes its contents to land for proper disposal.Dr. Helm and other scientists warn that such nets threaten sea life, including neuston. Although adjustments to the net’s design have been made to reduce bycatch, Dr. Helm believes any large-scale removal of plastic from the patch could pose a threat to its neuston inhabitants.“When it comes to figuring out what to do about the plastic that’s already in the ocean, I think we need to be really careful,” she said. The results of her study “really emphasize the need to study the open ocean before we try to manipulate it, modify it, clean it up or extract minerals from it.”Laurent Lebreton, an oceanographer with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, disagreed with Dr. Helm.“It’s too early to reach any conclusions on how we should react to that study,” he said. “You have to take into account the effects of plastic pollution on other species. We are collecting several tons of plastic every week with our system — plastic that is affecting the environment.”Plastic in the ocean poses a threat to marine life, killing more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals, according to UNESCO. Everything from fish to whales can become entangled, and animals often mistake it for food and end up starving to death with stomachs full of plastic.Ocean plastics that don’t end up asphyxiating an albatross or entangling an elephant seal eventually break down into microplastics, which penetrate every branch of the food web and are nearly impossible to remove from the environment.One thing everyone agrees on is that we need to stop the flow of plastic into the ocean.“We need to turn off the tap,” Mr. Lecomte said.

U.S. plastic recycling rates have fallen below 6 percent

Americans are recycling far less plastic, according to an analysis published Wednesday, with rates falling below 6 percent in 2021. The new findings come as this waste has rebounded from the pandemic, despite global efforts to curb pollution.The research from Beyond Plastics and the Last Beach Cleanup aims to shed light on the state of recycling in the United States given a delay in federal reporting. The Environmental Protection Agency last published recycling rates in 2020 based off data through 2018 and did not update it last year.Drawing on the most recent EPA data available and last year’s plastic-waste exports, the new report estimates that Americans recycled 5 to 6 percent of their plastics, down from the 8.7 percent in 2018. But the real figure could be even lower, it added, given factors such as the plastic waste collected for recycling that is “sent to cement kilns and burned.”“The plastics industry must stop lying to the public about plastics recycling. It does not work, it never will work, and no amount of false advertising will change that,” said Judith Enck, who heads Beyond Plastics and served as a regional EPA administrator during the Obama administration. “Instead, we need consumer brand companies and governments to adopt policies that reduce the production, usage and disposal of plastics.”Though plastics use fell in the early days of the pandemic, consumption has surged along with economic activity. Meanwhile, plastic waste exports — which the authors said are counted toward recycling numbers without proof — have plummeted in the wake of import bans by countries such as China and Turkey.Plastics production in on track to unleash more emissions than coal-fired power plants by the end of the decade, research has found, with the industry emitting at least 232 million tons of greenhouse gases each year.Millions of tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year, ensnaring turtles and other wildlife. Even Mount Everest has not escaped microplastics pollution. The United States contributes most to this deluge, according to a National Academy of Sciences study, generating about 287 pounds of plastics per person.Postcards from the town in Japan that’s aims to produce zero waste — and is nearly thereAt the current rate of emissions, the world will burn through its remaining “carbon budget” by 2030 — putting the ambitious goal of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) irrevocably out of reach, according to the latest report from the U.N. Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change.In an emailed statement, the EPA told The Washington Post it is “aware of the report and will review the data.” The agency said it expects to update its “Facts and Figures about Materials, Waste and Recycling” webpage later this year.According to the United States’ first national recycling strategy, the EPA is aiming to achieve a 50 percent recycling rate by 2030. Some critics faulted that strategy for not taking aim at current levels of plastics production.The nation’s plastic recycling rate peaked at 9.5 percent in 2014, according to EPA data, “although that number also counted U.S. exported material as recycled when it was largely burned or dumped,” the report states.High recycling rates for other materials such as post-consumer paper, cardboard and metal “prove that recycling can be an effective way to reclaim valuable natural material resources,” the report said. “The problem lies not with the concept or process of recycling but with the material itself — it is plastic recycling that has always failed.”Plastics, the vast majority of which are made from fossil fuels, can take hundreds of years to decompose. Rather than fully degrade, plastic breaks down into smaller pieces called “microplastics.” Over the course of a lifetime, individuals on average unknowingly consume more than 44 pounds of microplastics.Globally, only 9 percent of plastic is recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) first Global Plastics Outlook, which was published in February. Fifty percent ends up in landfills, 19 percent is incinerated, and 22 percent is “mismanaged” and ends up in uncontrolled dump sites, is burned in open pits or ends up as litter.“Despite the stark failure of plastics recycling, the plastics, packaging, and products industries have waged a decades-long misinformation campaign to perpetuate the myth that plastic is recyclable,” the report states.In late April, California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened an investigation into fossil fuel and petrochemical industries’ role in “causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis.” Bonta’s office issued a subpoena to ExxonMobil, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, seeking information into its efforts to mislead consumers about the efficacy of plastics recycling.Not a single plastic service item “has even been recyclable” by the legal definition outlined by the Federal Trade Commission “green guides,” the report found, including the polypropylene cups and lids touted by Starbucks.In March, the United Nations adopted a first-of-its-kind, legally binding treaty to “end plastic pollution.” The details of the treaty will be hashed out by 2024.

Group urges swift passage of ocean law

‘SEABED FULL OF GARBAGE’:
Greenpeace members filled a tank with garbage that volunteers collected from a beach during a single day of beach cleanup in Keelung

By Jason Pan / Staff reporter

Greenpeace members yesterday brought a truckload of marine trash to a rally outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei as they urged government officials and lawmakers to approve a draft ocean conservation law without further delay.
The environmentalists set up a large display tank and filled it with garbage to illustrate the level of pollution at most of the nation’s beaches and nearshore waters.
“This is one truckload of marine trash picked up during a single day of beach cleanup activity last year at a ‘protected marine area’ near Keelung,” Greenpeace Taiwan “Project Ocean” director Tommy Chung (鍾孟勳) said.

Photo: CNA
“We did not see any fish or signs of marine life” during offshore dives to collect debris, Chung said. “Only the seabed full of garbage.”
“Taiwan has clearly reached a crisis point in coastal pollution and the death of the marine environment,” Chung said.

Sea turtles severely compromised by human-made pollution in the ocean

Cape Town – There has been an outpouring of support for the Two Oceans Aquarium (TOA) Education Foundation’s sea turtle rehabilitation programme. This after the foundation called for Capetonians to assist with the rescue of sea turtle hatchlings that were washing up on Western Cape beaches during the current sea turtle hatchling stranding season. Story …

Disease-causing parasites could be hitching a ride to the beach on microplastics

Typically when people hear about plastic pollution, they might envision seabirds with bellies full of trash or sea turtles with plastic straws in their noses. However, plastic pollution poses another threat that’s invisible to the eye and has important consequences for both human and animal health.Microplastics, tiny plastic particles present in many cosmetics, can form when larger materials, such as clothing or fishing nets, break down in the water. Microplastics are now widespread in the ocean and have been found in fish and shellfish, including those that people eat.As researchers studying how waterborne pathogens spread, we wanted to better understand what happens when microplastics and disease-causing pathogens end up in the same body of water. In our recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports, we found that pathogens from land can hitch a ride to the beach on microscopic pieces of plastic, providing a new way for germs to concentrate along coastlines and travel to the deep sea.Investigating how plastics and pathogens interactWe focused on three parasites that are common contaminants in marine water and seafood: the single-celled protozoans Toxoplasma gondii (Toxo), Cryptosporidium (Crypto), and Giardia. These parasites end up in waterways when feces from infected animals, and sometimes people, contaminate the environment.Crypto and Giardia cause gastrointestinal diseases that can be deadly in young children and immunocompromised individuals. Toxo can cause lifelong infections in people and can prove fatal for those with weak immune systems. Infection in pregnant women can also cause miscarriage or blindness and neurological disease in the baby. Toxo also infects a wide range of marine wildlife and kills endangered species, including southern sea otters, Hector’s dolphins, and Hawaiian monk seals.To test whether these parasites can stick to plastic surfaces, we first placed microplastic beads and fibers in beakers of seawater in our lab for two weeks. This step was important to induce the formation of a biofilm — a sticky layer of bacteria and gel-like substances that coats plastics when they enter fresh or marine waters. Researchers also call this sticky layer an eco-corona. We then added the parasites to the test bottles and counted how many became stuck on the microplastics or remained freely floating in the seawater over a seven-day period.[embedded content]Biofilms are vast communities of microbes that can form on almost any surface, including your teeth.We found that significant numbers of parasites were clinging to the microplastic, and these numbers were increasing over time. So many parasites were binding to the sticky biofilms that, gram for gram, plastic had two to three times more parasites than did seawater.Surprisingly, we found that microfibers (commonly from clothes and fishing nets) harbored a greater number of parasites than microbeads (commonly found in cosmetics). This result is important because microfibers are the most common type of microplastic found in marine waters, on coastal beaches, and even in seafood.Plastics could change ocean disease transmissionUnlike other pathogens that are commonly found in seawater, the pathogens we focused on are derived from terrestrial animal and human hosts. Their presence in marine environments is entirely due to fecal waste contamination that ends up in the sea. Our study shows that microplastics could also serve as transport systems for these parasites.These pathogens cannot replicate in the sea. Hitching a ride on plastics into marine environments, however, could fundamentally alter how these pathogens move around in marine waters. We believe that microplastics that float along the surface could potentially travel long distances, spreading pathogens far from their original sources on land and bringing them to regions they would not otherwise be able to reach.On the other hand, plastics that sink will concentrate pathogens on the sea bottom, where filter-feeding animals like clams, mussels, oysters, abalone, and other shellfish live. A sticky biofilm layer can camouflage synthetic plastics in seawater, and animals that typically eat dead organic material may unintentionally ingest them. Future experiments will test whether live oysters placed in tanks with and without plastics end up ingesting more pathogens.The biofilms that form on microplastics can help pathogens spread through the sea.Emma ZhangA-One Health problemOne Health is an approach to research, policy, and veterinary and human medicine that emphasizes the close connection between animal, human and environmental health. While it may seem that plastic pollution affects only animals in the ocean, it can ultimately have consequences on human health.Our project was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of experts, ranging from microplastics researchers and parasitologists to shellfish biologists and epidemiologists. This study highlights the importance of collaboration across human, animal, and environmental disciplines to address a challenging problem affecting our shared marine environment.Our hope is that a better understanding of how microplastics can move disease-causing pathogens in new ways will encourage others to think twice before reaching for that plastic straw or polyester T-shirt.This article was originally published on The Conversation by Emma Zhang and Karen Shapiro at University of California, Davis. Read the original article here.

The race to design a bacteria that can eat plastic

Though its effects are not always visible to the naked eye, plastic is choking life on Earth. Birds are dying from plastic accumulating their intestines. Animals are full of microplastics, and humans are unintentionally eating a credit card’s worth of plastic every week, which is seeping into our bloodstream. And the ocean is becoming an open plastic dump to the extent that microplastic particles may outnumber zooplankton. 
These harrowing scenes could come to define our planet’s future. The process for manufacturing plastic exacerbates climate change, and the prevalence of plastic in the environment has led to heartbreaking sights like sea turtles with straws stuck up their noses. Yet because plastic is designed to be durable and lasting, scientists who dream of permanently removing it from our environment have often despaired of solutions. 
One oft-floated pipe dream as to how to alleviate plastic pollution: can we breed something that will consume it?
RELATED: How plastic pollution threatens our health, food systems, and civilization itself
A new study suggests that an enzyme which targets polyethylene terephthalate (PET) — a widely-used polymer found in a majority of consumer packaging products that comprises 12 percent of all global waste — could make that scientific dream, which is also planetary necessity, into a reality.
The key ingredient was a natural enzyme known as PETase, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature. Using a machine learning model, scientists at the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering and College of Natural Sciences figured out what mutations would cause the enzyme to be able to quickly break down the targeted types of plastic waste.
“Collectively, our results demonstrate a viable route for enzymatic plastic recycling at the industrial scale,” the researchers conclude in their paper.

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“Enzyme scale-up has been a well-explored problem in many industries,” Hal Alper, professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at UT Austin, told Salon by email when asked how long it would take for this enzyme to be available on a wide scale. “Therefore, we feel that this part of the problem is easily achievable in a short period of time. The more challenging aspect will be implementing enzyme degradation on a large scale with mixed stream plastics.” (Mixed stream plastics are all non-bottle plastics collected from the waste stream, or the entire life cycle of the garbage produced in a community.)

This was not the first effort to find biological means of solving the plastic pollution problem. In March 2016, Japanese researchers found a bacteria known as Ideonella sakaiensis that, they marveled, would “eat” the plastic outside of an Osaka bottle factory until it turned into sludge.

Alper added, when asked about how the new team’s research built on previous efforts to address plastic pollution, “We utilized the enzymes that have been found in bacteria evolved to use PET. By starting with this enzyme as a scaffold, we applied machine learning techniques to substantially improve upon function.”
As Alper’s reply indicates, this was not the first effort to find biological means of solving the plastic pollution problem. It all began, as much of scientific history does, with a random crucial discovery. In March 2016, Japanese researchers found a bacteria known as Ideonella sakaiensis that, they marveled, would “eat” the plastic outside of an Osaka bottle factory until it turned into sludge. “The new species, Ideonella sakaiensis, breaks down the plastic by using two enzymes to hydrolyze PET and a primary reaction intermediate, eventually yielding basic building blocks for growth,” the scientists wrote.
Plastic-eating bacteria was later discovered in Oregon and Germany by subsequent researchers, demonstrating to scientists that there could be a biological solution to the plastic problem. By 2020, scientists at the University of Portsmouth had managed to alter the PETase enzyme to create a supposed “cocktail” that could digest plastic up to six times faster than normal. In the abstract of their paper, the researchers singled out the discovery of the Ideonella sakaiensis as vital to their research, as well as addressing an international catastrophe.
“Plastics pollution represents a global environmental crisis,” the authors wrote. “In response, microbes are evolving the capacity to utilize synthetic polymers as carbon and energy sources.”
Last year, scientists at the University of Edinburgh announced that E. coli, a common bacteria, could be used to convert PET into vanillin, the primary component of extracted vanilla beans. They even suggested that the vanillin might be able to be safely consumed by humans, although they emphasized that further experiments would be required.
Joanna Sadler, a biotechnology professor at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the most recent study but was involved in the E. coli study, seemed hopeful about the developments in the latest paper. Sadler characterized the new enzyme as the “fastest enzyme reported to date” in terms of the speed at which it can “depolymerise” different plastic substrates. 
“This makes it a very promising technological development in the field, and demonstrates the ‘evolvability’ of this enzyme,” Sadler said.
Alper, not surprisingly, echoed Sadler’s hopeful tone.
“Our enzyme is up to 30x more efficient than reported enzymes and operates at lower temperatures and thus saves on energy input and improves the ease of downstream processing,” Alper wrote to Salon.
For more Salon articles on plastic pollution:

Plastic pollution accelerating the consequences of climate change in Canada’s Arctic, according to new research

As Canada’s Arctic continues to accumulate plastic, and climate change takes its toll on northern environments and communities, experts have evidence to suggest each threat is exacerbating the other, according to a recent paper published in Nature this month.As climate change affects temperatures and water patterns, says the review, plastic has become a more common sight within Arctic waters, snow, animals, and even ice drilled from some of the north’s most isolated glaciers. In return, these plastics contribute to an environment that absorbs more heat, encouraging changes in Earth’s climate that disproportionately impact the Arctic — which has warmed at a rate two to three times faster than the rest of the world in the past 50 years. However, given the limited amount of data available on the Arctic’s plastic build-up, experts say the intensity of the interplay between the two can’t be determined just yet.Climate change’s role in the movement of plastic affects the Arctic in unique ways, said Dr. Jennifer Provencher, co-author of the paper, and a conservation biologist who studies the impacts of plastic on marine wildlife. As climate change increases surface-water temperatures, winds and water patterns shift, bringing plastics from farther south into even the most remote parts of the Arctic. This has caused microplastics — particularly those that have been evaporated into the atmosphere through the water cycle in other parts of the world — to be deposited into Arctic sea ice.Dr. Provencher pointed to a study conducted in 2019, during which a team of American scientists drilled 18 ice cores from Lancaster Sound in Canada’s Arctic and found an abundance of plastic within them, indicating microplastic infiltration in some of the north’s most isolated areas. As elevated temperatures encourage the rapid melting of this ice, said Dr. Provencher, those with significant deposits will unleash a large amount of plastic into the Arctic.“Currently, we have very little trend data on plastics accumulation, because we had almost no samples 10 years ago and nothing to build those trends from,” she said. “What I can say is that for most of the environmental samples that have been taken since, we find microplastics.”Dr. Provencher and her co-authors reviewed a number of ways in which plastics have contributed to a similar uptick in the climate’s effects on the north, including how they could negatively impact key Arctic carbon sinks. Plastic particles’ impacts on the diets and habitats of phytoplankton communities could affect how much carbon these marine algae are able to absorb from the atmosphere. Microplastics also have the potential to darken sea ice and glacial snow, the paper said, interrupting their ability to reflect sunlight away from the Earth and help keep it cool.This cooling system is integral to a stable Arctic environment, and its disturbance is a big reason why the far north is heating up so much faster than the rest of the planet, said Dr. Chris Derksen, a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada who specializes in the cryosphere (the term for the frozen-water layer of the Earth’s surface). As rising temperatures melt snow and ice and leave behind heat-absorbent open sea water, the melting cycle is sped up, which disproportionately affects the Arctic.“We call it a positive feedback loop, where a change in one direction reinforces and increases the severity of that change,” said Dr. Derksen. “So as we lose snow and sea ice because the planet is warming, that contributes to further warming, which causes us to lose more snow and sea ice … and the cycle continues.”The more plastic there is in the Arctic and around the world, the harsher the consequences are for the north — especially considering the chemical breakdown of plastics itself emits greenhouse gases. A study published in PLOS One in 2018 by Dr. Sarah-Jeanne Royer, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, revealed that many of the plastics that make up the bulk of plastic pollution worldwide release methane and ethylene when degrading under sunlight — the former being 25 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.“The direct consequences of the gases emitted from plastic solely in the Arctic might not be significant,” she said, “but if we are looking at the effect of plastics emissions on worldwide climate change, and consider how climate change affects the Arctic so much more than much of the world, then that is a problem.”However, just how much plastic contributes to climate change — and vice versa — has yet to be measured. Experts are still in the process of quantifying just how much plastic there is in the Arctic, said Dr. Royer, in order to understand the true extent of the effects on Earth’s most vulnerable ecosystems.Researchers include the intergovernmental Arctic Council, with whom Dr. Provencher has worked since 2020 on their Arctic Monitoring & Assessment Programme (AMAP). The international group aims to mitigate plastics and climate change in the Arctic through collaboration, and is the first project of its scale to tackle plastics in 11 “compartments,” or spheres, of the Arctic ecosystem — from air, to soil, to ice and snow, to animals. However, its status as a multi-country initiative leaves it at risk of interruption as the result of geopolitical conflict, including current council chair Russia’s recent aggression in Ukraine, which pushed the council to suspend all meetings until further notice last month.“The good news is that there is a lot we can focus on at the domestic level,” she said. “What’s on pause is the international collaboration aspect of the work, but the international goals that we set are still there, and there’s no reason why we can’t work towards them.”One such program is the Northern Contaminants Program (NCP), a funding program established in 1991 by the federal government to examine the risk that elevated levels of contaminants in wildlife species pose to northern Indigenous peoples’ traditional diets. Since then, NCP has funded a number of plastic-related projects, emphasizing community-based monitoring that uses the concerns of local populations as its baseline for research focus.“It’s important that we co-develop the questions together [with Indigenous peoples],” said Dr. Provencher, “because in the end, it’s northern communities who feel the impacts of Arctic microplastic pollution the most.”What is important for now is that approaches to mitigating plastic and climate change in the Arctic continue to account for one another, said Dr. Derksen, as neither threat exists in a vacuum.“When we start to solve some of these problems, it’s not helpful to try and solve them in very carved-out, isolated areas,” he said. “But if we can understand the interconnected nature between them, then maybe it can spur us to try to solve them in a more comprehensive way, as opposed to just sort of throwing individual darts.”Interested in more stories about climate change? Sign up for the Globe Climate newsletter and read more from our series on climate change innovation and adaption.

Creepy dolls keep mysteriously washing up on stretch of Texas coastline: ‘A lot of nightmares’

The dolls keep arriving, month after month, year after year.Where they come from is a mystery, but the waves bring them in and lay them on the Texas sand, where Mission-Aransas Reserve researchers find them.AdvertisementWere they lost or were they discarded? How long ago?The ocean takes its toll, covering their beady eyes with barnacles, stealing their plastic limbs, staining their hair green with algae.AdvertisementThese dolls are creepy, Jace Tunnell says, and they won’t stop showing up.Tunnell is the director of the Mission Aransas Reserve at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute. The Reserve, about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, serves as a marine research and education program.Situated on the Gulf Coast, Tunnell and his colleagues regularly survey a roughly 40-mile stretch of beach running from north Padre Island, up to Matagorda Island — an area the dolls seem to be drawn to.“We’re actually doing scientific work, but the dolls are a perk,” Tunnell told McClatchy News in a phone interview.Often, researchers are surveying the coast for sea turtles, marine mammals and endangered bird species. They comb the 40-mile span twice a week, coming across all kinds of debris in the process.“Every day is something new,” Tunnell said. “Just when you think you’ve found everything that could possibly wash up on shore, something else comes up.”Much of it is junk, some of it is interesting. The dolls occupy a category of their own, and Tunnell tries to document each of the eerie castaways on social media when they’re found.“The creepiest are the ones that have lost all their hair,” Tunnell said, though each of the 30 dolls collected since he began keeping count have been disturbing in their own way.Advertisement“The first one we had found was a sex doll, the head of it. I posted a picture of it and I didn’t realize that’s what it was,” he said. “We got a lot of followers on the page after that.”Someone purchased that doll head for $35, and Mission-Aransas gave the money to a sea turtle rescue program.A surprising number of people want the dolls, offering to take them or buy them, Tunnell said.“What are they doing with those things?” he wonders.Those who keep up with Tunnell’s weekly debris updates seem to like the dolls. Most aren’t eager to buy one or take one home, but they follow along, seemingly fascinated and unnerved by the lost and forgotten toys.“Always creeps me out…at least this one has a body,” a commenter said about a recent discovery, posted April 22.Advertisement“She has pretty eyes for a change!” wrote another.The baby doll is missing both arms and something appears to have chewed on its left leg.“This one looks happy to be found! …. not like some of the others!” a comment read.Post after post, people keep wondering the same thing: Why are so many dolls washing up in this specific place? Is this coastline cursed? Probably not, but it is a bit unlucky.Through a two-year study conducted by the UT Marine Science Institute — of which Mission-Aransas is a part — researchers learned that the Texas Coastal Bend region is a junk magnet.“Texas coastal bend beaches get 10 times the amount of trash … than any other beach in the Gulf of Mexico,” Tunnell said, compared to what researchers in Florida and Mississippi found after conducting identical projects.AdvertisementThis is due in large part to a “loop current” reaching from the Yucatan Peninsula to Florida. This current creates eddies that push debris toward the Texas Gulf, and the Coastal Bend in particular.“There’s a lot of nightmares out there” in the debris, Tunnell said, more Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids and so on. Odds are good they’ll keep making their way to Texas.Tunnell doesn’t keep any of the eerie toys, he said, just tosses them in a bucket to be sold at a yearly fundraising auction.“They could definitely be haunted,” he said.