Plastics & Pollution

Deep Dives
Thought-provoking research providing extensive learning opportunities

A Global Ocean Free From the Harmful Impacts of Pollution: Roadmap for Action

Plastics & Pollution

Back to Blue’s Roadmap to end ocean pollution is a synthesis of insights from hundreds of global leaders across science, industry, policy, business and finance on understanding ocean pollution and how to tackle it.

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Why Oceans and Marine Biodiversity Matter as Investment Issues

Energy Solutions Fisheries & Aquaculture Plastics & Pollution

A sustainable and growing blue economy can provide investment opportunities and a significant environmental return.

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Ocean heating breaks record, again, with disastrous outcomes for the planet

Plastics & Pollution

New research shows that ocean temperatures are hotter than ever in the modern era due to human-driven global warming.

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New Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled, Including Plant-Based Meat Alternatives

Plastics & Pollution

Researchers at Ocean Conservancy and University of Toronto estimate that American adults could be consuming up to 3.8 million microplastics per year from protein alone.

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Plastics treaty negotiators must have access to the latest science: Global Plastics Summit

Plastics & Pollution

Economist Impact convened the Global Plastics Summit and provided an opportunity for stakeholders to debate the details of the draft treaty.

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Amsterdam could ban cruise ships to tackle overtourism. What are other holiday destinations doing?

Plastics & Pollution Shipping & Ports Tourism

Amsterdam is the latest tourist destination to consider banning cruise ships in a fight against overtourism and pollution.

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Plastic Is Everywhere—Except The One Place It Should Be

Plastics & Pollution

How Investor and Company Climate Commitments Ignore Plastics and What to Do About It.

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Corporate Climate Commitments Miss on Plastics, Ocean Group Says

Plastics & Pollution

More companies and investors need to consider plastics in their climate commitments, according to a report released last week by environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy.

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Building sustainable waste-management systems to combat plastic pollution

Plastics & Pollution

Plastic waste pollutes our environment at an annual rate of over 8m tonnes. However, amid the global conversations surrounding plastic reduction and reuse, one critical aspect often goes overlooked: the lack of formal waste collection for more than 2bn people in the global south.

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Celebrating Plastic Free July: 5 Tips from the IO Team

Plastics & Pollution

Plastic Free July is an annual challenge organized by the Plastic Free Foundation that has been attracting millions of participants worldwide since 2011. Here are 5 tips to help kick-start your journey! 

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Can we ethically reduce the amount of plastic in our ocean by keeping it in our economy?

Plastics & Pollution

A guest blog on creating ethical and socially responsible supply chains by Emy Kane, managing director of Lonely Whale, and Michael Sadowski, executive director of The Circulate Initiative.

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News Spotlight: Just How Big Is The Ocean Plastic Problem?

Plastics & Pollution

Plastic is choking the world’s oceans — threatening vital ecosystems, coastal economies and the health of billions of people who eat contaminated seafood.

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To Save The Oceans We Need To Map Their True Value, Then Share The Wealth

Plastics & Pollution

The latest expedition in National Geographic's Pristine Seas initiative has set sail in quest to map and protect the world's oceans.

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World must ‘work as one’ to end plastic pollution: Guterres

Plastics & Pollution

“Every year, over 400 million tons of plastic is produced worldwide – one third of which is used just once”, said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

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Opinion: Reducing Plastic Pollution in Our Oceans Is Simpler Than You Think

Plastics & Pollution

The world is finally getting serious about plastic pollution. Next week, delegates from U.N. member states will gather in Paris to debate the shape of what some hope will become the plastic-pollution equivalent of the Paris climate agreement.

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Turning off the Tap: How the world can end plastic pollution and create a circular economy

Plastics & Pollution

This report examines the economic and business models needed to address the impacts of the plastics economy.

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New Innovation Alliance Calls For Pragmatic Global Plastics Treaty

Plastics & Pollution

More than 60 leading plastic waste innovators have joined forces to form a new alliance, as preparations begin for the next round of negotiations for a UN-led treaty to tackle the issue.

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Trade and Environment Review 2023

Energy Solutions Fisheries & Aquaculture Plastics & Pollution Shipping & Ports Tourism

The Trade and Environment Review 2023 analyses the impacts of human activities and global crises on the ocean economy, which includes traditional sectors such as fishing and shipping, as well as emerging ones like offshore wind energy and marine biotechnology.

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Stem the tide of ocean pollution to save billions of lives, dollars, and our coral reefs

Plastics & Pollution

The health of coral reefs, our most biodiverse ocean ecosystem, is fundamentally interconnected with human health. We need urgent global action to tackle the pollution crisis to protect both, explain Stacy Jupiter, Bodhi Patil and Christopher Corbin.

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Ocean Climate Action Plan

Energy Solutions Fisheries & Aquaculture Plastics & Pollution Shipping & Ports

The OCAP outlines three goals that mobilize the Federal Government and civil society to take effective and innovative ocean climate action.

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BlueInvest: new investor report features an ocean of investment opportunities in the sustainable blue economy

Energy Solutions Fisheries & Aquaculture Plastics & Pollution Shipping & Ports Tourism

Today, the European Commission is unveiling a new investor report, on the occasion of the BlueInvest Day 2023.

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A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required

Plastics & Pollution

As global awareness, science, and policy interventions for plastic escalate, institutions around the world are seeking preventative strategies. Central to this is the need for precise global time series of plastic pollution with which we can assess whether implemented policies are effective, but at present we lack these data.

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Peak Plastics: Bending the Consumption Curve

Plastics & Pollution

Peak plastics is an Economist Impact report for Back to Blue, an initiative of Economist Impact and The Nippon Foundation. This report examines the potential impact of three key policies that cover the entire lifecycle of plastic, from production to disposal. These approaches are being considered by negotiators working on a legally binding UN treaty to reduce plastic pollution.

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Plastic Waste Makers Index

Plastics & Pollution

A compelling new report by the Minderoo Foundation has uncovered that despite rising consumer awareness, corporate attention, and regulation, an additional 6 million metric tons (MMT) of waste was generated in 2021 compared to 2019 — still almost entirely made from fossil fuel-based “virgin” feedstocks.

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Biocredits to Finance Nature and People

Energy Solutions Fisheries & Aquaculture Plastics & Pollution Shipping & Ports Tourism

Biodiversity is degrading at alarming rates, and people living in biodiversity-rich areas often bear the heaviest costs of biodiversity loss and inequitable conservation efforts. Biodiversity credits, or ‘biocredits’, are emerging as a tradeable unit of biodiversity that can incentivise nature conservation and restoration to benefit marginalised groups living with nature.

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The Tide Turns Toward Renewable Aquaculture Gear

Fisheries & Aquaculture Plastics & Pollution

Rather than relying solely on plastic equipment, shellfish and seaweed growers are embracing biodegradable alternatives.

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The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2022: Towards Blue Transformation

Fisheries & Aquaculture Plastics & Pollution

The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2022 presents updated and verified statistics of the sector and analyses its international policy context and selected high-impact actions undertaken to accelerate international efforts in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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Breaking the Plastic Wave - Summary Report

Plastics & Pollution

A comprehensive assessment of pathways towards stopping ocean plastic pollution.

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Association of zoonotic protozoan parasites with microplastics in seawater and implications for human and wildlife health

Plastics & Pollution

Plastics are widely recognized as a pervasive marine pollutant. Microplastics have been garnering increasing attention due to reports documenting their ingestion by animals, including those intended for human consumption.

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Our Ocean Is Choking on Plastic—But It’s a Problem We Can Solve

Plastics & Pollution

A new analytical tool can show the main sources of plastic pollution and help governments determine how to best reduce the amount that is reaching the ocean.

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Behavioral responses to predatory sounds predict sensitivity of cetaceans to anthropogenic noise within a soundscape of fear

Plastics & Pollution Shipping & Ports Tourism

Why are some species more averse to anthropogenic noise disturbances than others?

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Looking back at the One Ocean Summit: What commitments for the ocean?

Fisheries & Aquaculture Plastics & Pollution

After two days of discussions and debates, some 40 Heads of State and Government responded positively to the invitation of the President of the French Republic to commit for the ocean at the One Planet Summit for the Ocean in Brest.

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As world drowns in plastic waste, U.N. to hammer out global treaty

Plastics & Pollution

At the end of February, the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) will tackle a challenging task: the creation of a landmark treaty to control plastic pollution worldwide.

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Impacts of Plastic Pollution in the Oceans, on Marine Species, Biodiversity and Ecosystems

Plastics & Pollution

A new report commissioned by WWF provides the most comprehensive account to date of the extent to which plastic pollution is affecting the global ocean, the impacts it’s having on marine species and ecosystems, and how these trends are likely to develop in future.

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Plastic Drawdown: A rapid assessment tool for developing national responses to plastic pollution when data availability is limited, as demonstrated in the Maldives

Plastics & Pollution

Developing a common understanding of a jurisdiction’s plastic waste stream and the solutions available to decision-makers is vital to build consensus across stakeholders and to align on an evidence-based portfolio of priority instruments.

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Connecting the Dots: Plastic Pollution and the Planetary Emergency

Plastics & Pollution

The toxic pollution resulting from rampant overproduction of virgin plastics and their lifecycles is irreversible, directly undermines our health, drives biodiversity loss, exacerbates climate change, and risks generating large-scale harmful environmental changes.

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Growing environmental footprint of plastics driven by coal combustion

Plastics & Pollution

Research on the environmental impacts from the global value chain of plastics has typically focused on the disposal phase, considered most harmful to the environment and human health. However, the production of plastics is also responsible for substantial environmental, health and socioeconomic impacts.

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Emergence of a neopelagic community through the establishment of coastal species on the high seas

Plastics & Pollution

Discoveries of persistent coastal species in the open ocean shift our understanding of biogeographic barriers. Floating plastic debris from pollution now supports a novel sea surface community composed of coastal and oceanic species at sea that might portend significant ecological shifts in the marine environment.

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Reckoning with the U.S. Role in Global Ocean Plastic Waste

Plastics & Pollution

The United States is a major producer of plastics and in 2016, generated more plastic waste by weight and per capita than any other nation. Although the U.S. solid waste management system is advanced, it is not sufficient to deter leakage into the environment.

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Plastic waste release caused by COVID-19 and its fate in the global ocean

Plastics & Pollution

Plastic waste causes harm to marine life and has become a major global environmental concern. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increased demand for single-use plastic, intensifying pressure on this already out-of-control problem.

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Oil companies are ploughing money into fossil-fuelled plastics production at a record rate – new research

Plastics & Pollution

As traditional demands for oil – vehicle fuels – are declining as the transport sector is increasingly electrified, the oil industry is seeing plastics as a key output that can make up for losses in other markets. Investing in plastics has therefore become a key strategy for fossil fuel firms.

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Abandoned, lost and discarded fishing gear ‘ghost nets’ are increasing through time in Northern Australia

Fisheries & Aquaculture Plastics & Pollution

The GoC acts as a sink for ghost nets that originate from regional fishing activities. Despite multijurisdictional management efforts, increasing net numbers shows high regional input of ALDFG.  

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The New Coal: Plastics and Climate Change

Plastics & Pollution

As of 2020, the U.S. plastics industry is responsible for at least 232 million tons of CO2e gas emissions per year. This amount is equivalent to the average emissions from 116 average-sized (500-megawatt) coal-fired power plants.

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From Pollution to Solution: a global assessment of marine litter and plastic pollution

Plastics & Pollution

From Pollution to Solution: A global assessment of marine litter and plastic pollution reveals the impact of marine litter and plastic pollution in the environment and their effects on the health of ecosystems, wildlife and humans.

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Modeling the Pathways and Accumulation Patterns of Micro- and Macro-Plastics in the Mediterranean

Plastics & Pollution

The Mediterranean is considered a hot-spot for plastic pollution, due to its semi-enclosed nature and heavily populated coastal areas.

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Achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emission plastics by a circular carbon economy

Plastics & Pollution

The great majority of plastics in current use are sourced from fossil fuels, with additional fossil fuels combusted to power their manufacture. Substantial research is focused on finding more sustainable building blocks for next-generation polymers.

Read more → (18 minute read)