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The man in the hoodie slips out from his hiding spot near the crime scene and makes a run for it. But brooding Detective Héctor Tarancón spots him. Whipping off his sunglasses to tell us that he means business, the supercop of few words and many pensive expressions takes off in pursuit. The two men race down narrow dirt streets lined with low, identical structures, one after another after another.
The suspect smashes through one of the walls—not that impressive, actually, since it’s just a thin sheet of plastic—and disappears before Tarancón turns the corner behind him. He has vanished. Thwarted for now, the detective slips his shades back on as the camera pulls back, revealing that he is surrounded by an expanse of white greenhouses. They gleam under the strong sun in a cloudless Mediterranean sky, and stretch all the way to red-brown mountains on the horizon.
The setting for the Spanish crime melodrama Mar de Plástico (Sea of Plastic) may look computer-generated, but the location is real. The series was filmed in southeastern Spain’s Almería province, which has been transformed over the last half-century from sparsely populated, semi-arid scrubland into a bustling agricultural powerhouse. The key to Almería’s fruit and veg boom has been cloudless skies, accessible groundwater, and plastic. Lots and lots of plastic.
Rows of plastic greenhouses have overtaken semi-arid scrublands in southeastern Spain, particularly in the province of Almería. makasana photo/Alamy
Plastic greenhouses take up nearly 100,000 acres along the coast and creep up into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Despite the region’s miniscule precipitation—less than nine inches of rain fall there annually, and virtually none of it from May to September—drip irrigation drawing from local aquifers allows farmers to grow more than three million tons of tomatoes, berries, and other crops annually.
According to a paper published in 2019 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, while most of the greenhouse farms are small, family-owned operations, they employ about 100,000 foreign laborers. More than 110 nationalities, primarily from Africa and Eastern Europe, work in the greenhouses or adjacent industries, such as packing and transportation. Despite the economic boost the sea of plastic has given the province, multiple media reports have documented poor working and housing conditions for many of the foreign workers, leading to charges of exploitation.
The explosion in the number of greenhouses, and the massive influx of people who grow and process the crops they produce, has also been hard on local nature. Numerous environmental groups have raised concerns about overuse of groundwater resources—once depleted, aquifers may take centuries to recover. The region is also considered a biodiversity hotspot, but many of its native plants, which evolved to occupy a narrow ecological niche, are particularly susceptible to changes in their environment, including habitat degradation. Of the two dozen or so native plants exclusive to Almería, six are critically endangered, including the trailing, yellow-flowered Gadoria falukei, discovered only in 2017.
The critically endangered Gadoria falukei is found only in Almería. Courtesy Juan F. Mota Poveda
Surprisingly, the greenhouses may provide a subtle assist in regulating the region’s climate. A handful of papers published by scientists at the University of Almería have suggested that all that bright white plastic may be reflecting sunlight back into space and effectively cooling the province. A 2008 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, for example, found that while overall temperatures have risen in this region of Spain, Almería has experienced a drop in temperature of about half a degree Fahrenheit. Limited subsequent research has been less conclusive about the reason for this dip, however.
In May 2022, NASA’s Landsat 9 captured this natural color image of greenhouses surrounding El Ejido, in the Spanish province of Almería. NASA Earth Observatory/Public Domain
While the impact of the greenhouses on the local environment and climate remains uncertain, there are signs that change is again coming to the region. Growing international concerns about global “plasticulture,” such as a 2021 United Nations report that highlighted its negative long-term impact on the environment and public health, are creating pressure for more sustainable methods of agriculture. For now, however, the sea of plastic remains as it has been for decades: a dazzling white patchwork visible from space, and a maze on the ground through which TV cops give chase.

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The plastics had only been submerged in the ocean off Falmouth, England, for a week, but in that time a thin layer of biofilm, a slimy mix of mucus and microbes, had already developed on their surfaces. Michiel Vos, a microbiologist at the University of Exeter in England, had sunk five different types of plastic as a test. He and his colleagues wanted to know which of the myriad microbes living in the ocean would glom on to these introduced materials.
Vos and his colleagues’ chief concern was pathogenic bacteria. To understand the extent to which plastic can be colonized by potentially deadly bacteria, the scientists injected wax moth larvae with the biofilm. After a week, four percent of the larvae died. But four weeks later, after Vos and his team had let the plastics stew in the ocean for a bit longer, they repeated the test. This time, 65 percent of the wax moths died.
The scientists analyzed the biofilm: the plastics were covered in bacteria, including some known to make us sick. They found pathogenic bacteria responsible for causing urinary tract, skin, and stomach infections, pneumonia, and other illnesses. To make matters worse, these bacteria were also carrying a wide range of genes for antimicrobial resistance. “Plastics that you find in the water are rapidly colonized by bacteria, including pathogens,” says Vos. “And it doesn’t really matter what plastic it is.”
It’s not just bacteria that are hitching a ride on plastics. Biofilms on marine plastics can also harbor parasites, viruses, and toxic algae. With marine plastic pollution so ubiquitous—it’s been found everywhere from the bottom of the Mariana Trench to Arctic beaches—scientists are concerned that plastics are transporting these human pathogens around the oceans.
But whether plastics are bearing pathogen populations dense enough to actually be dangerous and whether they are carrying them to new areas are difficult questions to answer.
There are good reasons to believe that plastics are accumulating and spreading pathogens around the world. Linda Amaral-Zettler, a microbiologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, who coined the term plastisphere for the novel ecosystem plastics create, says plastic is different from other hard surfaces one often finds in the ocean—such as logs, shells, and rocks—because plastic is durable, long-lived, and a lot of it floats. “That gives it mobility,” she says.
Plastics can travel long distances. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, for example, many identifiably Japanese objects washed up on the west coast of North America. This litter, says Amaral Zettler, has “the potential to transport anything attached to it.”
Recent laboratory work also shows that some typically terrestrial disease-causing parasites can survive in seawater and infect marine mammals. Karen Shapiro, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, Davis, showed that these protozoan parasites—specifically, Toxoplasma gondii, Cryptosporidium parvum, and Giardia enterica—can attach to microplastics in seawater. This could be altering where, when, and how these parasites accumulate in the ocean.
“If they are hitching a ride on plastics that happen to be in the same sewer outlet, or river, or overland runoff from a storm drain, then they will end up where the plastic ends up,” Shapiro explains. That could be in shellfish on the seafloor, or floating on currents in the middle of the ocean.
The next step, Shapiro explains, is to look for a similar association between parasites and plastics outside the lab.
That microplastic pollution appears to be a breeding ground for pathogens raises, for Vos, a long-term concern as well—that plastics might be promoting the spread of antibiotic resistance. Bacteria can exchange genes, and since the bacteria are in close contact on the surface of tiny microplastics, the level of horizontal gene transfer between them is high, he says. Plastics can also put bacteria in close contact with pesticides and other pollutants, which also stick to biofilms. This encourages the development of antimicrobial resistance.
“We don’t know that much about it,” Vos says, “but there’s potentially interesting ways in which bacteria can experience stronger selection [for antimicrobial resistance] on plastics, but also have more opportunity to exchange genes that could confer resistance.”
As well as posing potential risks to human health, plastic-borne pathogens could threaten marine ecosystems and food supply chains, Amaral-Zettler says. Millions of people rely on seafood as a source of protein, and there are many pathogens that infect the fish and shellfish we eat. It might be possible, Amaral-Zettler says, for microplastics to spread diseases between different aquaculture and fishing areas.
Even though we don’t fully understand the risks, these studies are yet another good argument for limiting plastic pollution, Vos says. “There can’t be anything positive about plastics with pathogens floating around.”

ROCKY RIVER, Ohio  — Plastic Free July is a global movement that helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution.The initiative provides free resources and ideas to help people around the world reduce single-use plastic waste every day at home, work, or school.Lake Erie is a popular recreation spot and has undergone a dramatic transformation over the years when it comes to pollution, but the lake still faces a threat from things like un-recycled plastics.“Unfortunately, if it does end out into the water, whether it’s ponds, lakes, streams or the or Lake Erie itself, it makes it even more difficult to try to recover those materials and then get them properly recycled,” said Dan Sowery, assistant environmental administrator for the Ohio EPA.The mission is actually simple: recognize and take inventory of single-use plastics in your life and try to cut out one or two.“It could be as simple as you say no to plastic bags at the grocery store and you have reusable ones that you use or saying no to a plastic straw at a restaurant,” said Rachel Regula, owner of Little Spark Refill Shop.Regula’s shop offers zero-waste products and provides a spot for locals to bring in their own containers to refill bath and cleaning products, instead of purchasing new plastics that will later be thrown away. She opened the venture during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been blown away by the reception she’s received.“All of the products that we have in the store are going to be free of synthetic fragrances that also could contain parabens,” Regula said. “They’re synthetic free, they’re silicone free. So everything is safe for you and also safe for the environment.”The EPA estimates nearly 27 million tons of plastics ending up in landfills in 2018, with only three million tons of plastics being recycled. Regula is doing her to stay eco-friendly. Her goal is to make sustainability accessible to people who may feel overwhelmed with where to start.One of the best ways to begin is to refill containers at home to help eliminate single-use plastics.“It is very difficult in this day and age to be completely zero waste, but we’re always here to support people that are on that mission,” Regula said. “There is no specific month you need to start your sustainability, zero waste, no plastic journey, and every little step makes a huge difference.”

How the plastic industry turned the pandemic to its advantage With its products proving indispensable to combatting Covid-19, the plastics business is reinvigorated. What will it take to bring this major polluter to heel?There are only two reasons that the plastics industry will change, a polymer scientist once told me: war or legislation. Corporations along the plastics value chain have faced a number of environmental and health crises, from toxic scandals to marine plastic waste and the climate emergency. Each of these crises has led to new laws and regulations, despite corporate efforts to undermine them.In the two years leading up to the pandemic, the public backlash against plastic was a major concern for industry leaders. As a corporate executive remarked during an industry event early in 2019: “We need to get the image of plastic in oceans out of the public’s mind. Otherwise, we could lose our social licence to operate.” Of course, the pandemic did not take the image of plastic in oceans out of the public’s mind. However, it did highlight in a very real and urgent way the importance of many plastic products for healthcare and hygiene. At the virtual World Petrochemical Conference in April 2020, an industry analyst commented on this unexpected shift: “Ironically, sustainability, the issue that was dominating the conversation until just a few weeks ago, seems to be fading into the background, at least for the moment. And polyethylene may even be gaining some public favour as it plays a high-profile role in combating the greatest health risk to our planet in modern history.”This temporary respite from public anti-plastic sentiment opened the door for industry to push back against single-use plastics bans. In July last year, the European Commission rejected the industry’s request to delay the EU Directive on Single-Use Plastics. However, multiple single-use plastics bans and deposit return schemes were reversed or delayed in countries around the world, across North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.During the pandemic, plastic was restored to its original paradoxical status as both a miracle and a menace for society. As far as industry was concerned, this was enough: it had regained its social licence to operate. By the end of 2020, industry leaders had fully embraced the new pandemic narrative about the essential role of plastics in society and many expressed optimism about their future growth. At the virtual World Petrochemical Conference in March 2021, industry analysts identified four key “Covid demand drivers”: food packaging, bag ban delays, online shopping, and hygiene and medical.As one petrochemical industry executive enthused: “The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted how essential all our products are to everyone in society around the globe. We saw record sales and record volumes for our products throughout the pandemic… over the long term we can continue to see that kind of growth, and we’re going to see that accelerate as economies reopen around the world. All of this is really driven by the world’s growing global middle class, and that’s going to drive demand for the products we produce. Covid-19 didn’t change our long-term view on the fundamentals.”Hearing these glowing industry reports about single-use plastics growth, I couldn’t help feeling guilty about the plastics that have entered my home in the UK during the pandemic. Many environmental activists and researchers have pointed out that one of the key tactics of industry is to blame the consumer for plastic waste, which diverts attention from corporate responsibility. The plastics crisis is a systemic problem, however, and most people are locked into supply chains and infrastructures, unable to simply opt out of plastics consumption.According to a recent study published in the journal Science Advances, the United Kingdom is second only to the United States in terms of the amount of plastic waste generated per person, at 99kg and 105kg per person per year respectively. Supermarkets with over-packaged food are one of the main problems. By contrast, the global average of plastic consumption is 45kg per person per year, and as little as 4kg per person per year in India. Looking at the consequences of one’s own actions, from a privileged standpoint, multiplied and intensified across the planet, invites a kind of vertigo.While voluntary corporate commitments to end plastic waste have flooded in, the plastics crisis has kept getting worse. Some of the most scathing reports have emerged during the pandemic, such as the Changing Markets Foundation’s report Talking Trash, which concluded that “the Covid-19 health crisis has, once again, shown that Big Plastic is always primed and ready to co-opt a crisis to its advantage, pushing to undermine environmental legislation or any restrictions on its products… [T]he plastics industry does not have people’s best interests at heart; instead, it is making cold calculations to carry on with business as usual.” The Talking Trash report focused on the inadequate voluntary commitments of the top plastics polluters in the consumer goods and beverage industries, and the corporate “playbook” for undermining plastics legislation, particularly deposit-return schemes and single-use plastic bans.One important lever for changing the plastics industry has gained traction during the pandemic: the dawning realisation by many investors and policymakers that green recovery paths to net zero will need to phase out fossil fuels altogether, including virgin (brand new) plastic. In September 2020, the thinktank Carbon Tracker warned investors in plastics about the risk of holding stranded assets in the transition away from fossil fuels. Plastic is the last pillar of oil demand growth, its researchers argued, but this pillar would be removed very soon by increasing regulatory and recycling pressures, accelerated by green recovery packages.The need to reduce the reliance of plastics on fossil fuels has also featured in a number of policy proposals, dovetailing with the momentum to respond to the climate emergency through green recoveries after the pandemic. The US Break Free from Plastic bill re-emerged early in 2021 under the Biden presidency, incorporating calls from environmental activists and frontline communities to halt petrochemical projects and to hold corporations accountable for waste and emissions throughout the plastic life cycle. Plastics sustainability, incorporating net zero emissions targets, is also a prominent part of the European Green Deal. Furthermore, reducing virgin plastic production is a core (if contested) topic for debates about the scope of a new UN treaty on plastics, amid growing recognition from many governments, organisations and researchers that the problem of plastic pollution extends through the plastics life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials through to manufacturing, consumption, waste and pollution.If there is any insight that can be gained from looking at the ways corporations have responded to the plastics crisis, which has magnified during the pandemic, it is the power of legislation. Binding laws and regulations offer less room for manoeuvre than voluntary commitments, especially when it comes to bans. The plastics industry is more concerned about the threat of the European Single-Use Plastics Directive, which is binding legislation, than the Ellen MacArthur New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, which is based on voluntary circular economy commitments. Outright bans of specific plastic products, on the grounds of protecting the environment or public health, effectively take these products off the market.The pandemic has made clear that we need legislation and binding regulations to address the plastics crisis, but we also need another lever of change. We need to keep questioning the dominant assumption that there can be continual plastics growth on a finite planet. If this assumption could be overturned, aligning with the growing consensus that the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels, that would be a starting point for meaningful change.
This is an edited extract from Plastic Unlimited: How Corporations are Fuelling the Ecological Crisis and What We Can Do About It by Alice Mah, published by Polity Press (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
TopicsPlasticsThe ObserverWastePollutionClimate crisisfeaturesReuse this content

At the moment, most swimwear that doesn’t end up in landfill is downcycled to create products for other industries, such as insulation or carpet underlay. The goal, though, is to create a fully circular system that would allow swimwear to be recycled over and over again – which is why Stay Wild has created a new fully circular prototype in a bid to achieve this. “We’ve created a mono-composition garment [using recycled nylon] with no elastane, using a knitting programme to build stretch into the garment,” the brand’s co-founder Natalie Glaze explains. “It can then be recycled infinitely.”The problem? The cost of the technology needed to create the fully circular swimsuit, which means that Stay Wild hasn’t been able to launch it commercially yet. It’s an issue when it comes to new innovations in the industry more generally, too, particularly when it comes to recycling. “We need solutions to scale,” Riley says. “The focus in this area needs to be on supporting innovators to scale up their processes for accepting textile waste.”There also needs to be further innovation to help brands move away from non-biodegradable synthetics. Kintra, a new fully biodegradable polyester that’s derived from corn, is a material that we’re likely to see a lot more of in the future. “Fibres that are made from renewable sources rather than fossil fuels and that biodegrade, thus not contributing to microplastic pollution, are the way forward,” Rissanen comments.In the meantime, opting for a swimsuit that’s made using recycled or natural materials, and biodegradable elastane where possible, is the best solution out there. “It’s about trying to think, ‘How can I have the least impact possible?’” Glaze concludes. “If you buy a better quality piece, it’s going to last you longer – so buy fewer pieces and buy better.”The Sustainable Swimwear For A Feel-Good SummerGallery48 PhotosBy Alice Cary, Emily Chan and Laura HawkinsView Gallery

By Samantha Wohlfeil / InvestigateWest

On an overcast Saturday in Seattle, a group of volunteers combs a small section of the beach at Golden Gardens Park for trash. With 5-gallon buckets in hand, they slowly fan out and search a roughly rectangular zone marked by cones, passing over the same spots several times from the grass to the waterline as they look for even the tiniest things that don’t belong there.

Unlike several other Earth Day weekend cleanups going on farther down the beach, this group has been given special instructions that will help them categorize and log everything they find, from food scraps and toys to tiny pieces of foil and, of course, many types of plastic. 

A reporting project by InvestigateWest examining one of the most problematic pollutants of the 21st century: plastic. This series was funded in part by the Sustainable Path Foundation.

From large pieces, such as bottles, cups and even a Smurf action figure, to tiny microplastics — fragments, films, fibers or foams less than 5 mm long — plastic is one of the most common pollutants this group will find, mirroring what cleanup crews regularly see across the country. 

Recently, international attention has homed in on the problem, which is only growing worse as plastic doesn’t decompose but degrades into smaller pieces that will remain in the environment for thousands of years. Single-use plastics will be phased out of national parks by 2032 after an announcement in June from the Biden administration, and by the end of 2024, the United Nations plans to have a legally binding plan to end plastic pollution globally. 

But groups like this cleanup crew are helping answer a more basic question: Where is this stuff coming from? 

These volunteers are following the “Escaped Trash Assessment Protocol,” which was developed in Washington state from 2018 to 2021 and is now being used by volunteer groups around the country with guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency. The idea is to provide standardized data to state and local regulators so they can better attack sources of pollution.

“We’re doing the same thing at different sites all around the state to see: what does litter look like here versus near a highway versus an alley versus another beach?” explains Heather Trim, executive director of Zero Waste Washington, an organization that helped develop the protocol. Using geographic pins on her phone, she marks the location of the cones around the perimeter of the cleanup area, which will enable her to map it later. “The data they’re going to collect is going to be apples to apples” between the sites.

Gillian Flippo, Stewardship Coordinator at Puget Soundkeeper, provides instructions for volunteers before the Escaped Trash Assessment Protocol (ETAP) at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle on April 23, 2022. (Dan DeLong/InvestigateWest)

Even though the City of Seattle already cleaned this beach of large debris hours before people started arriving at the popular park, the 20 or so volunteers working with Puget Soundkeeper end up filling buckets with trash.

Volunteers Valerie Chu and David Corrado sit on the grass to sort the material into trays after helping gather litter from the beach. Other volunteers take the trays to tables set up under a canopy to be divided even more specifically into plastic containers with detailed labels.

Is the trash from camping? Is it from fishing gear? Is it a household item? Is it dog waste? There’s a quart-sized container for basically any item you could find, with dozens of possible categories. Some of the youngest volunteers then help count the number of items in each container, weigh the trash from that category, and dictate their findings to the recordkeeper.

As expected, plastic is one of the most common substances across the categories.

Chu, who works in toxicology in the Seattle area and regularly volunteers with Puget Soundkeeper, says she’s keenly aware of the issues plastic can pose in the environment. 

“When it comes to microplastics, a lot of times contaminants [attach] onto these microfibers from clothing,” Chu explains. “When it comes to all those contaminants, there’s very little research to show what makes things more toxic.”

Essentially, chemicals that already pollute the environment, such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and flame retardants, can glom onto the plastic and convert into other more toxic substances, she says. But little is known about the impacts those combinations may have on people, wildlife and the environment. 

While the fibers the volunteers find on the beach are mostly too large to be categorized as microplastics, some of these materials could ultimately break down to that size. 

Joseph Lopez of Seattle and other volunteers collected marine trash at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle. (Dan DeLong/InvestigateWest)

And although groups like this conduct cleanups around the country every day, they are starting to direct their attention away from the end life of plastic to focus on the beginning. If anything is going to change, they say, plastic production and packaging choices around the world need to shift.

“It would be good for more people to know about the beginning of life of plastic and the role that these large corporations have in it,” says Gillian Flippo, the stewardship coordinator for Puget Soundkeeper, who helps run cleanups and citizen science projects throughout the year. “This data will be going toward larger scale change, the bigger picture, and hopefully that’ll potentially inform some policy.”

People should be focusing on “turning off this plastic tap,” she says.

The reality of how pervasive plastic pollution has become around the world is staggering.

Whether testing guts or muscle tissue in the lab from a fish, a crustacean, a mammal or a person, scientists have found plastic inside essentially all living things. 

Plastic pollution has been found even in the most pristine areas, including the deepest part of the ocean and the most isolated mountaintops.

Marine debris and plastic bags found along rivers are visible reminders that plastic is in the waters we rely on, but it’s also most likely coming out of your water tap at home. Highway litter is an obvious sign the land is contaminated with plastic, and now ice and snow samples at remote locations on the planet, including in the Arctic, have been shown to contain plastic, suggesting it’s traveling through the very air we breathe. 

As researchers and citizen scientists point out, this isn’t just a problem created by plastic straws and beverage bottles. It’s not just single-use plastic bags, or plastic cutlery, or the increasing amount of plastic film being used to keep our fruits, vegetables and other foods fresh.

Anna Bachmann, Healthy Watersheds Program Manager at Puget Soundkeeper, sorts marine trash collected at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle. (Dan DeLong/InvestigateWest)

Microplastics have been found in beer, honey, broccoli, meat, fish — people and living creatures everywhere are unavoidably consuming the stuff.

But panic campaigns on foods to avoid would be ineffective. 

“What we’re trying to understand is, where is the plastic coming from?” says Professor Elise Granek, an expert in coastal marine ecology at Portland State University, who leads the Applied Coastal Ecology lab there. “Without a handle on where it’s coming from, it’s really hard to make recommendations for management and policy.”

Luckily, with a rising interest in microplastics research over the last decade, scientists are starting to understand the sources and what can be done to stop them.

URBAN MOSS, TIRE PARTICLES AND MICROFIBERS

Granek (along with colleagues at other universities and her students) has helped advance our understanding of plastic pollution.

In a project with Oregon Public Broadcasting, one of her students helped the public radio station sample rivers around the Portland area, including tests near their headwaters in fairly remote areas. They tested sites on the Willamette, Rogue and Deschutes rivers.

“We found microplastics everywhere,” Granek says. 

The amount of plastic found was lowest in the most remote areas and higher near urban centers.

“It makes sense that there was a correlation with population density, but nowhere was pristine,” Granek says.

Plenty of research has focused on the microplastics found in the guts of fish and seafood, to better understand how that may be taken up through their digestion process. But in another project, Granek and others looked at fillets from common fish found at markets. Microplastics were found in the tissue that people actually eat, she says.

Professor Elise Granek, an expert in coastal marine ecology at Portland State University, leads the Applied Coastal Ecology lab there. (Samantha Wohlfeil/InvestigateWest)

“What’s happening is, we actually find fairly long fibers even in the muscle tissue of the organisms,” Granek says. “Those long fibers are very, very thin, on the order of 20 microns in width, but they can be a millimeter in length.”

But that doesn’t mean she wants to dissuade people from eating seafood, which is a great source of healthy protein. 

“It’s not like you should avoid this, because you’re getting [microplastics] from other sources,” as well, Granek says.

This summer, her lab will use a grid system to study parts of Portland. By looking for tiny plastics deposited in moss, which is abundant throughout the city, they’ll try to get a sense of some of the hot spots for plastic pollution. 

Plastic particles that wear off tires are one of the most common sources of that pollution. So, the researchers expect highways and freeways to be a big source.

“We think the recycling center in north Portland is probably a source, because some gets dropped or weathered,” Granek says. “We know a number of studies have found dryer vents release microfibers … so we’re wondering if laundry facilities are higher sources.”

The most common type of microplastic found anywhere is the microfiber. They commonly shed off of plastic clothing such as polyester and nylon during the wash cycle, and while wastewater treatment plants may capture about 90 percent of those fibers, about 10 percent still escape into effluent. Even more of those microfibers may end up in the environment if biosolids captured at the treatment plant are used in agricultural fertilizing practices.

Those same microfibers are also released into the air through dryer vents. Using dryers at residential homes in Idaho and Vermont, researchers took bright pink blankets, got them wet and placed them in the dryer on low for an hour. They found the hot pink fibers in surface snow samples up to 30 feet away from the vents, with more than a thousand fibers found in some of the test spots. 

Think about what that means for how many microfibers Portland or Seattle put out into the environment, Granek says. There are likely millions released into the environment every single day.

One solution governments are considering is requiring special filters on dryers to capture most of those microfibers at the source. Though the fibers may end up in landfills when those filters are disposed of and replaced, at least they won’t be released into the air. 

Associate Professor Susanne Brander, left, is helping lead cutting-edge research on microplastics found in marine life and other wildlife at Oregon State University’s brand new microplastics lab in Newport, Oregon. (Karl Maasdam/InvestigateWest)

IN THE LAB

About two-and-a-half hours southwest of Portland, other groundbreaking microplastics research is underway at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, located in Newport on the Oregon Coast. 

In early May, Associate Professor Susanne Brander walks through the university’s brand new microplastics lab completed during the pandemic. Brander teaches in the Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences and Environmental and Molecular Toxicology departments, and helps mentor students whose work touches on plastic research in diverse ways. 

With her for this May tour is a team of graduate students who will spend this summer researching microplastics in tiny shrimp, bioluminescent fish, animal waste and more.

The team collaborates with government agencies and universities around the country, as they have a special piece of equipment to identify the type of plastic each tiny particle is made of.

While many labs have had FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy) machines for years, this lab has a micro-FTIR that can analyze micro- and nanoplastics mere microns in length. (A micron is just 1/25,000 of an inch, or one-millionth of a meter.)

Sara Hutton, a third-year doctoral candidate at Oregon State University, uses a microscope to look at fish embryos that have been exposed to microplastics. (Karl Maasdam/InvestigateWest)

In the lab’s clean room, where special hoods and HEPA filters keep the area clear of as many background contaminants as possible, lab technician Emily Pedersen puts a plastic sample under what looks like a microscope. The micro-FTIR passes infrared radiation through the particles and takes several scans as a computer creates a wavelength showing how much light was absorbed or reflected. 

“It reads the wavelengths that are coming back and compares it to a known library,” Pedersen says, noting that many labs helped create the library by scanning known substances into the system. “So, that’s just PETE (polyethylene terephthalate), which is a regular water bottle or packaging.”

For this demonstration, she already knew the material came from a water bottle, but when the team is running tests on various microplastics found in animal samples, the machine is key to understanding what’s there. It also helps sort out natural fibers and organic material from man-made substances.

“If you’re pulling a bunch of different fibers from a fish gut, it’s really hard to tell if they’re synthetic or not unless you chemically analyze them,” Brander says.

Brander notes that in the freezer they have samples of otter scat from Alaska they’ve been asked to test. Another student at the school has sand dune core samples waiting to be tested. Granek may send samples here as well. 

In another lab on the satellite campus, first-year graduate student Olivia Boisen shows off frozen samples of myctophids that she plans to test. Also known as lanternfish, the small creatures serve as a major food source for other fish, and they are commonly picked up by accident when research teams are out collecting salmon and other sea creatures for testing. 

Lanternfish have been preserved in museums over several decades, offering the unique opportunity to look at plastic contamination in wildlife over time. (Karl Maasdam/InvestigateWest)

As she holds up a jar of the sardine-sized fish, they flash silver as the light catches the organs that enable them to bioluminesce deep underwater. While they spend their days about a kilometer deep, at night they rise close to the surface to eat, Boisen says. 

“This huge number of fish are doing this every night, and then they migrate back down to live out their days down there,” Boisen says. “So they’re probably this microplastic pump from the surface to midwater, which is really important to study.”

Because of their unique abundance, and the fact that many museums have preserved lanternfish in jars of ethanol over several decades, Boisen will get to see if she can track the rise in plastic production and pollution over time. 

The first fully synthetic plastic was bakelite, which was first made in 1907 and soon grew popular for making phones, radios, car parts and jewelry. But it wasn’t until the 1950s and ’60s that plastic production started to take off. In recent years, production has continued to grow on an exponential scale, as the cheap material is used in more products than ever before. 

Boisen theorizes that she may be able to see lower levels of plastics in the myctophids captured and preserved in the 1960s compared to those caught fresh for her this year. Those caught this year were preserved using far stricter quality control measures to avoid contamination, yet they may still have higher levels of plastic in them.

Also working with Brander are Sara Hutton, a third-year doctoral candidate, and Felix Biefel, a visiting doctoral student from Germany.

Felix Biefel, a visiting doctoral student from Germany, works with mysid shrimp raised in Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center to study how their behavior is impacted after microplastic exposure. (Karl Maasdam/InvestigateWest)

Hutton, who works in the Environmental and Molecular Toxicology Department at OSU, is studying gene expression in silverside fish that are being raised and exposed to microplastics in the lab.

Biefel is working with tiny mysid shrimp raised in the lab to study how their behavior is impacted after microplastic exposure. He’ll expose them to light and dark, as well as different temperatures. 

“The nice thing about using behavior is it can be an indicator of neurotoxicity,” Hutton explains. “We’re interested in how it affects their brain. If the organism developed differently, it’s going to affect its behavior.”

Exposure experiments are essential to better understand what it means when researchers find microplastics in various species, Brander says.

“It’s great to go out and find microplastics,” Brander says. “But the only way to know if it’s dangerous is if we have lab experiments.”

Sara Hutton, a third-year doctoral candidate at Oregon State University, transfers tiny mysid shrimp into a container to show how their behavior can be studied in the lab. (Karl Maasdam/InvestigateWest)

CONNECTING THE DOTS

Shortly before the pandemic, Brander helped co-found the Pacific Northwest Consortium on Plastics. With about 250 members, including people in research, at government agencies, at nonprofits and other organizations, a strong network now helps share information as more becomes clear about plastic pollution.

With so many people at different types of organizations, it may be easier to connect the dots as people start to talk about policy changes and potential solutions.

“[In] the microplastics field, I think we’re at the point where we know that things like textiles and tire particles are a bigger problem than we thought,” Brander says. “Even as recently as a few years ago, the focus was on straws and cups, and single-use products, which we know are still really problematic and things we find all over our beaches.”

But the plastics being found in sediments and organisms are often microfibers, she says.

“That gives us an idea,” she says, “of what sources we need to go after.”

Already, some states are targeting upstream sources such as packaging by requiring producers to pay for the end-life recycling of their products. Through what’s called extended producer responsibility, companies that choose to sell their product in, say, plastic bottles, would have to pay for the collection and recycling of those bottles in some places that have already passed such a policy. On June 30 of this year, California took a giant step in that direction, passing what’s considered the strongest law in the nation to phase out single-use plastics and packaging waste.

Similarly, the data from the citizen science of the “Escaped Trash Assessment Protocol” may guide decision-making.

The protocol was developed after Margaret McCauley, the Trash-Free Waters coordinator for the EPA’s Pacific Northwest region, and a colleague realized the information so many groups voluntarily submitted to them wasn’t comparable.

“We both were looking at the data that people were collecting and attempting to share with us under the Clean Water Act and [Resource Conservation and Recovery Act],” McCauley says. “It was lots of smart people doing lots of things that didn’t connect with each other.”

Some groups might count individual cigarette butts, while others might simply report the number of trash bags. But how big were the trash bags? And how does a wet pair of jeans compare to a single cigarette butt, McCauley asks.

The protocol (which got its wordier name due to disagreements over the term “litter”) enables standardized measurements that can then be used by those in power to enforce things like stormwater permits, McCauley says.

Permits and other legally binding mechanisms can apply pressure to reduce pollution. The pricier the cleanup, the better the likelihood people will look to upstream solutions.

Granek, the Portland State researcher, says to truly address the issue, the focus cannot remain on consumer habits and a bottom-up approach. Instead, she says a top-down focus is likely needed, with policies directed at those creating plastics in the first place.

“I think one of the things we’re realizing is that we can all do a better job of our household practices, but really the need for upstream changes is really important,” Granek says. 

People may choose to buy fewer fast-fashion clothing items made largely from plastic, for instance, but the real impact will come from the top, she says. 

Less than 10 percent of plastic that goes into recycling bins worldwide is recycled.

“Some industries will take voluntary action and that’s important,” Brander says. “Some individuals will take voluntary action and that’s important. But I think there also has to be regulation.”

Whether it’s requiring special dryer filters or redesigning tires, it’s possible to address some of the sources directly.

And addressing plastic is important, because even though the science may still be out on whether all that plastic negatively impacts human health, we already know it impacts animals, causing cell damage and affecting reproduction and growth, she says.

“It is in our bodies,” Granek says. “There are enough studies that do find effects on animals that it would be a little surprising if animals were affected, but humans weren’t.”

FEATURED IMAGE: Volunteer Deborah Woolley of Seattle collects marine trash in an area designated for the Escaped Trash Assessment Protocol (ETAP) at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle. (Dan DeLong/InvestigateWest)

InvestigateWest (invw.org) is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Visit invw.org/newsletters to sign up for weekly updates. This story was made possible with support from the Sustainable Path Foundation.

Tackling the tide of plastic pollution will require using less of it, and recycling it more. But the material has become an inescapable part of modern life, so another way researchers are dealing with its downsides are to make plastics that are tough enough for use yet degradable in nature.The latest effort comes from a team at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. They have made a plastic from non-edible plant parts that breaks down into harmless sugars in the environment. The plastic has properties very close to conventional plastics that make it promising for food and beverage packaging: it is strong, resists high temperatures, and blocks gases like oxygen that can damage food.Commercial bioplastics today are typically made from sugars derived from corn starch or sugar cane. But their properties don’t compete head-to-head with fossil fuel-based plastics. Besides being expensive, bioplastics cannot withstand high temperatures, be stretched and drawn into different forms, and act as a good barrier to gases. They are also often just as difficult as conventional plastics to break down in nature.In 2016, the EPFL researchers discovered a way to make valuable molecules for plastics and biofuels from the woody, inedible parts of plants. Their work focuses on lignin, a long chain-like molecule found in plant cell walls that gives plants their rigidity. Lignin is the second-most abundant natural material on earth, but is a waste product of agriculture and the paper industry. The EPFL team had found that adding formaldehyde, a common chemical, could turn lignin into useful molecules.The new work published in Nature Chemistry takes that work forward. This time, they used glyoxylic acid instead of formaldehyde to turn lignin into key building blocks of plastics. They were able to convert up to 25 percent of the weight of agricultural waste into plastics.The process is simple and scalable, and uses an inexpensive mineral acid as the catalyst, the researchers write. And glyoxylic acid is an inexpensive industrially available chemical.Tests in the laboratory showed that the plastic can withstand temperatures as high as 100°C like conventional plastic. It also has similar strength and stiffness. Plus, the team could draw it into packaging film, fibers that can be spun into fabric, and filaments for 3D printing.The material could be chemically recycled just like fossil-based plastics. And if it reaches the environment, it eventually degrades back into its constituent sugars in room-temperature water. While the plastic is a promising contender for an inexpensive, sustainable plastic, “in-depth toxicological and biodegradation tests are still required before this polymer’s environmental fate is fully understood,” they write.Source: Manker, L.P., Dick, G.R., Demongeot, A. et al. Sustainable polyesters via direct functionalization of lignocellulosic sugars. Nat. Chem. 2022.Image: A 3D-printed “leaf” made with the new bioplastic by Alain Herzog (EPFL)

THERE are calls for supermarkets in Scotland to stop the sale of artificial grass.

The trustee of a Scottish rewilding charity has called their sale “extremely detrimental” to the country’s biodiversity.

Alan Hepburn, a trustee of Scotland: The Big Picture, posted a picture to Twitter which criticised a Tesco store in Musselburgh for selling artificial grass for only £24. So far, it has garnered over 19,000 likes.

He calls on the supermarket chain to stop selling the artificial turf on environmental grounds, particularly in light of the heatwave hitting the UK.

He said: “Personally, I can think of very few situations where using plastic grass can be justified.

“It is extraordinarily detrimental to our native wildlife, from birds and mammals to invertebrates.

“The soil below, if there is any, is pointlessly damaged and inaccessible to all the many creatures that depend on it.

“This product also doesn’t have the cooling effect of grass or other plant cover.

“If natural grass is not possible, there are many other ways to cover the ground that can be attractive, climate friendly, good for nature, and low maintenance.”

No @Tesco just no pic.twitter.com/PbQzJMPklP
— Rewild Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (@RewildScotland) June 2, 2022

Experts have found that artificial turf can heat up to potentially dangerous levels in hot weather, presenting a hazard for people and their pets.

A children’s playground surfaced with artificial grass in Sydney, Australia reportedly reached 93.7C in 2020.

Megan Kirton, project officer for Scottish environmental charity Fidra, pointed to the use of artificial grass on sports pitches as a cautionary tale for their use domestically.

She said: “Building, using, and maintaining plastic sports pitches are contributing to the plastic pollution and climate crisis.

“Artificial pitches in dense urban environments can increase surrounding temperatures by 4 degrees Celsius.

“In a society where climate change is creating rising temperatures, and plastic pollution threatens wildlife, many communities may now favour natural grass pitches.

“Playing sports should not be adding more problems for our environment and wildlife.”

Artificial grass is made of petroleum-based products, meaning its manufacture contributes towards rising fossil fuel emissions.

According to Fidra, thousands of tonnes of microplastic granules make their way into the environment each year due to the use of artificial turf.

Earlier this year Tesco said that it had removed 1 and a half billion pieces of plastic from its packaging products through methods such as replacing plastic straws with paper ones.

Tesco has been approached for comment.

In the now-viral clip, people can be seen standing on the beach amid plastic being littered around. Amidst all the dirt, many are still seen clicking selfies while others standing and enjoying the breeze

Almroth added ‘impacts of plastic pollution are large enough to enough to affect crucial functions of planet Earth and its systems.’ Image Courtesy: iStock/Tunatura

A video showing a panoramic view of plastic being littered on Mumbai’s Mahim beach has left social media in shock. Despite several warnings, awareness campaigns, advisory posts and regulations, people in the city haven’t got rid of their habit of throwing garbage in the sea. And the video is the proof!
The clip was shared by a Twitter profile named Mumbaimatterz, who pointed out the return gift from the Arabian Sea to its people. “#Beaches in #Mumbai now Open. Citizens throng Mahim beach to have a look at the #ReturnGift from ArabianSea.” The post also features two hashtags – Plastic Pollution and Mumbai Rains.
Watch the video here:
https://twitter.com/mumbaimatterz/status/1548277355939917825
In the now-viral clip, people can be seen standing on the beach amid plastic being littered around. Amidst all the dirt, many are still seen clicking selfies while others standing and enjoying the breeze.
Since being shared on 16 July, the video has amassed over 76,000 views and its increasing. It also has attracted tons of comments, where social media users have expressed anger and irritation over the same.
A user wrote, “Oh God! It seems all will die but plastic will only survive on this planet earth”. While, another commented that “we should do our bit as our citizens to keep the beach clean!”
Check few of the reactions here:
https://twitter.com/JayeshShilpa/status/1548522799249358855
https://twitter.com/shane5114/status/1548281807602589696
https://twitter.com/pillaigkp/status/1548333904461185024
https://twitter.com/mathews_rolland/status/1548335231454679043
There were many users who demanded strict rules to be made against plastic pollution in the city while others asked for a hefty fine to be slapped on those breaking the rules.
A day after the post gained traction, the official account of Ward-GN of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation shared a follow-up on Mumbaimatterz’s post. It showed how concerned authorities conducted a clean-up drive and cleared the dirt that was gathered on the popular beach. They shared before and after images of the Mahim beach.
Check the post here:
https://twitter.com/mybmcWardGN/status/1548537645776584704
What do you think of this video?
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