Indonesia is one of the most recent Southeast Asian countries to ban plastic waste imports. Despite the ban, the consequences of plastic waste imports inundating Indonesian communities remain, and they serve as a warning for neighbouring countries yet to impose their own bans. The Indonesian government initially attempted to create livelihoods with the waste imports. Paper mills were to use these imports to source scrap paper to reuse in their production, and local communitie

Plastic is often seen as a miracle material. It certainly has useful properties: it’s durable, versatile and cheap. But what exactly is plastic? Plastics are moldable materials made up of polymers – long chains made from repeating molecules. Almost all plastics are derived from fossil fuels such as crude oil and natural gas. These contain a mixture of hydrocarbons which are processed in various stages to make plastic: Refining - Fossil fuels are extracted and refined into pro

Perhaps you’re thinking oh - plastics aren’t my problem. Turtles getting trapped is sad, but I’m safe. You’d be wrong. The idea that plastic pollution only affects wildlife is a dangerous misconception. In reality, humans are part of the marine food web, and we’re already consuming the consequences of plastic waste. Microplastics - particles smaller than 5mm - are now found in 99% of seafood. Shrimp, mussels, fish and even sea salt have tested positive for plastic contamina

Ready meals have been around since the 1950s. Yet the plastic packaging used in them is harmful to the planet and to people. Greenpeace’s recent analysis of 24 research papers in leading scientific journals found that plastic packaging used for ready meals and takeaways poses a potentially serious risk for human health. The packaging, especially when heated, can release large amounts of microplastics and chemicals into the food that will be eaten. One study detected 326,000

The consequences of ocean plastic for marine life are devastating - and often invisible. While viral images of whales dying with bellies full of bags grab public attention, the broader damage runs much deeper. Over 100,000 marine mammals die each year due to plastic entanglement or ingestion (WWF 2021). At least 340 species have been recorded entangled in debris, especially fishing gear like nets and ropes. Once trapped, animals can suffocate, drown or suffer debilitating in

Between 24 and 29 April, 57 countries participated in a historic conference on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, hosted in Santa Marta (Colombia), Participants discussed how to speed up the phaseout of fossil fuels, focusing on coordinated action rather than passive debate. This stands in opposition to the yearly UN climate conferences (COPs), which have discussed the transition but have not yet produced an action plan. While conferences and reports organised by the UN a

Plastic doesn’t get into the sea on its own. It travels there usually via leakage from poorly managed waste systems. Understanding this journey is key to shoring up these systems. Around 19 million tonnes of plastics leak into the environment on a yearly basis. Of this, around 14 million tonnes enters rivers, coasts and other water systems. An estimated 11 million tonnes then reach the ocean, which equates to around 0.5% of all global plastic waste. How does this happen? In m

Here in the UK, 9.25 million tonnes of plastic waste leaves our dockyards and heads to developing countries. Why do we ship it off? Because the UK government wants to offload the responsibility of processing our plastic waste. However, this comes at the significant detriment of importing countries’ economies, environments, and health. For three decades, China imported over 70% of the world’s plastic waste, but that all changed in 2018. In the eight years since China banned th

The global trade in plastic waste reveals stark inequalities. For decades, high-income countries like the UK, US, Germany and Japan exported much of their plastic waste to lower-income nationals, often with weak waste infrastructures (OECD 2022, Plastics Treaty Briefing 2023). This practice, often referred to as “waste colonialism,” offloads the environmental burden of consumption onto those least able to manage it. As recently as 2018, Asia imported 70-80% of the world’s tr

Danone is a French food and drink giant and a major plastic polluter. In September 2022, a coalition of anti-plastic NGOs, including ClientEarth, Surfrider Foundation Europe, and Zero Waste France, issued a legal warning to Danone, in an effort to get the mega corporation to publish statistics about its global plastic pollution. However, this warning was ignored. In January of 2023, the coalition filed a lawsuit against Danone over its failure to comply with French due dilige

Millions of new clothes are produced every year for the $2.5 trillion global fashion industry. Many of these items are inexpensive fast-fashion pieces made of plastic fabrics derived from petrochemicals, such as polyester, acrylic, and nylon. Buying clothing made of plastic fabrics may seem like an affordable and harmless way to keep up with the latest trends. However, these clothes can have a major impact on your health. Every time you wash a polyester shirt or jacket, the p

The idea that plastic will outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050 has become one of the most widely-quoted statistics in environmental discussions. But this disguises the real nature of the problem. Fish make up around 29% of animal biomass on this planet (Ritchie 2024) but calculating their mass in oceans is very difficult. We can estimate algae concentrations from satellite imagery - a proxy for fish food - but actual marine biomass remains uncertain and rather variable. Est

Founded in 1919, the French company Danone includes brands Evian, Activia, Actimel, Volvic, Alpro, and more. In 2020, it sold products in 120 countries with global sales reaching 23.6 billion euros, making it one of the world’s top ten largest plastic packaging producers. Danone claims to be committed to producing products that preserve the planet’s resources whilst also growing its business. This article will examine how committed Danone really is to reducing its plastic foo

Ocean plastic is often misunderstood - and misrepresented. Media images of massive garbage patches floating in the Pacific suggest the ocean is blanketed in rubbish. The reality is more complicated - and arguably more concerning. Of the 460 million tonnes of plastic produced annually around the globe (OECD 2022), 353 million tonnes go to waste and only about 9% is recycled in any meaningful way. Approximately 82 millions tonnes of this waste (of the 9%) is mismanaged - eith

October 2025 saw the 13th annual Great Global Nurdle Hunt, a citizen science project with over 1,500 volunteers in 25 countries searching their shorelines for nurdles. Nurdles are the pre-production building blocks of most plastic products. They’re lentil-shaped microplastic pellets, ~2-3mm in diameter, which are melted down in plastic production. Unfortunately, nurdles have found their way into every corner of the world, with this year's hunt reporting that 92% of participat

When Britain's recycling targets are met on paper, it is worth asking: where does the plastic actually go? The answer is increasingly overseas. Chemical recycling, as we explored in the previous piece in this series, has failed to provide the domestic processing solution the industry promised. That failure has a direct consequence: plastic that cannot be recycled at home gets shipped abroad instead. In 2024 alone, the UK exported 598 million kilos of plastic waste, an increas

You have swapped your plastic bags and ditched the straws. But there is a source of pollution you cannot opt out of, and it’s happening on every road in Britain, every single day. Although we call them rubber, modern vehicle tyres are actually made from a complex blend of synthetic materials, chemicals and polymers. Every time a car pulls away from the lights, it leaves something behind; not just exhaust fumes, but thousands of microscopic plastic particles, shed from the tyr

In the United Kingdom, we purchase an estimated 7.7 billion bottles of water every year. This is partially due to the misconception that bottled water is cleaner and healthier than tap water. New technological developments have allowed scientists to detect and count miniscule plastic particles called nanoplastics in bottled water. These particles are absorbed when we drink water from plastic bottles and may impact our health. What are Nanoplastics? Nanoplastics are tiny plas

If your child has eaten food stored in plastic containers, he or she has almost certainly consumed hundreds of thousands of tiny plastic fragments. Whether you keep them in the fridge or at room temperature, plastic containers release microscopic particles into our food in huge quantities. To measure the quantity of microplastics and nanoplastics present in the food we eat, researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the USA tested different plastic containers,

Microplastic pollution has become a major environmental concern, receiving growing interest from scientists, policymakers, and the general public. While much attention has been given to the persistence and toxicity of plastics themselves, research has more recently suggested that microplastics may pose an additional and less visible risk: they can act as carriers for microorganisms, including potentially harmful pathogens. Once in the natural environment, microplastics are ra