Plastic pollution harms marine life and ecosystems. Discover easy ways to cut plastic waste and join the call for a global treaty on plastics.

In the 2008 Disney film Wall-E, a tiny robot finds himself alone on planet Earth, working to clean up a world decimated by trash and abandoned by humans who left it that way. Heartwarming as the film ...

Our world is increasingly plastic. Back in the 1950s, humanity produced just 5 million metric tons of plastic per year; today it’s 400 million metric tons. Since plastic can take hundreds or thousands ...

Plastic is ubiquitous. It’s in the clothes we wear, wrapped around the food we eat and in the toothpaste we use. It floats in the oceans and litters the snow on Mount Everest. Every year, the world ...

Eating plastic, it’s fantastic! Scientists might have found an unlikely solution to the trash problem choking our planet — a plastic-eating insect, which was described in the journal Nature. The ...

When we throw away plastic, it often ends up in the ocean or landfills, where it negatively impacts ecosystems and the ...

Editor’s note: The podcast Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the medical science behind some of life’s mysteries big and small. You can listen to episodes here. (CNN) — We are very much ...

While a common family of bacteria, Comamonadaceae, grow on plastics in urban rivers and wastewater systems, it was unclear how these bacteria interact with and break down plastic. Professor Ludmilla ...

Findings show that shellfish, beer, salt, and even produce carry some of the highest concentrations of microplastics in the human diet. But there are ways to mitigate exposure. Microplastics — plastic ...

Microplastics can contaminate soil, water, and air. As a result, they become part of the environment. “Microplastics can get ...

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

Cognitively normal human brain samples collected at autopsy in early 2024 contained more tiny shards of plastic than samples collected eight years prior, according to a new study. Overall, cadaver ...