Plastics

Microplastics are the minute quantities of plastic that result from industrial processes, household release and the breakdown of larger plastic items. As these plastics emerge as a potential threat to the environment and to public health, it has never been more critical to understand their distribution and environmental impact. Microplastics in the Ecosphere aims to cultivate that understanding with a comprehensive overview of microplastics in terrestrial ecosystems.

The first part of the book provides an overview of plastics types, how they are released to the environment, and how they interact with organisms. This part also provides a background for several salient aspects of microplastics hazards (e.g., attachment of toxic chemicals, toxicity to organisms). Special attention will be paid to how microplastics decompose in the environment (which is significant in terms of mobility of toxicity).

Knowledge gathered over the past four years in the IUCN Close the Plastic Tap programme is the basis of this publication.

This guidance is co-developed by UNEP, IUCN, and the Life Cycle Initiative. It aims to provide a methodological framework for identifying ‘hotspots’ of plastic pollution, finding the leakages and their impacts along the entire plastic value chain, and then providing recommendations for action once these hotspots are identified.

This report seeks to share understanding of the roots of plastic polymer pathways to the Baltic Sea, then moves to defining the nature and extent of the problem, then passes to the impacts on sea ice habitat and marine species of the region.

Plastic pollution originates from various sources. While many industries are taking steps to reduce their dependence on plastic, there is currently no reliable methodology to forecast specifically the extent of the marine plastic leakage from an industry or a country and map potential leakage hotspots throughout the value chain. This report offers, for the first time, a comprehensive framework to measure the inventory of marine plastic leakage,&nbs

Of the 8,300 million tonnes of plastic produced from 1950 to 2015, only 7% has been recycled while more than half has been discarded in landfill or leaked into the environment. Companies, organisations, and governments are taking measures to tackle plastic pollution. However, there is currently no standard methodology to measure the extent of the plastic problem.

The aim of this study is to provide an overview of national legal instruments in all European Union Member States related to protection of the marine environment from plastic pollution, and to support upcoming European policy efforts such as the EU Strategy on Plastics, but also other future efforts to tackle this global environmental challenge.