Have you seen the photo of the bird caught in plastic bottle rings? Or the dolphin that choked from a bag noose? How about the stomach contents of birds that have ingested a weird composite of plastic gizmos and toys? Water animals from the largest whales to the smallest zooplankton eat microplastics—bits from larger pieces of plastic that are smaller than one-fifth of …

Plastic Pollution in America: Alert to Disaster Read More »

There is a remote, uninhabited island in the South Pacific called Henderson Island. When researchers visited it in 2015, they found so much plastic—53,000 pieces in just one sample area—that they estimated the island’s total debris at 38 million parts! A veritable garbage dump, that when scientists read the labels, more than a third came from China or Japan and a quarter from South America. …

Death of the Plastic Straw Read More »