Plastic waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is no longer just pollution; it's a home now. Scientists have found marine animals thriving and reproducing on floating debris, forming stable ...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and world. Our ...

Tiny plastic particles drifting through the oceans may be quietly weakening one of Earth’s most powerful climate defenses.

Some 170 trillion pieces of plastic are floating on the planet’s oceans — and scientists revealed for the first time that it could take more than century for them sink or disappear, even if we stopped ...

Rivers carry plastic across continents, so scientists tracked its movement across continents too. A sweeping new UC Santa Barbara-led study spanning four continents and eight countries has amassed one ...

Plastic debris often travels thousands of kilometers across oceans, carried solely by currents, wind, tides, and time. For example, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a massive swirling zone between ...

New research suggests that more than 8 million tons of COVID-19 pandemic-related plastic waste have been generated globally, including 25,000 tons flowing into the world’s oceans. The pandemic has led ...

The International Energy Agency has a sobering warning about the health of the world's oceans. The total amount of oceanic plastic waste is likely to more than double by 2030, and then keep getting ...

We like to think that tossing a plastic bottle into a recycling bin means we’ve done our part, but the […] ...

Ocean Conservancy on Wednesday released a report that proposes a four-point solution to cutting ocean plastic waste by 45 percent by 2025 with the ultimate goal of eradicating the issue by 2035.