"What surprised me the most is how little it takes to become deadly," said Britta Baechler, a co-author of the study and director of Ocean Plastics Research at the Ocean Conservancy. Less than three sugar cubes' worth of plastic could kill an Atlantic puffin. Two baseballs' worth would do in a sea turtle. The equivalent of a soccer ball is enough to off a seal or dolphin. "For seabirds, ingesting just six tiny pieces of rubber, each smaller than about the size of a pea, can result in a 90 percent chance of death," Baechler said.
In January the island's beaches were inundated with waves of plastic pollution, a phenomenon that has been getting worse by the year. Photographer and film-maker Sean Gallagher travelled to Bali to document the increasing tide of rubbish washing up on beaches and riverbanks, and the people facing the monumental challenge of cleaning up. His portraits are on show now as part of the 2025 Head On photo festival at Bondi Beach promenade until 30 November Putu Agus Indrawan holds up bags of plastic water bottles
Millions of tiny, toxic plastic beads are thought to have escaped into the sea from Eastbourne sewage works in East Sussex about two weeks ago when a screen keeping them in broke. They began to wash up on Camber Sands beach last Thursday, with the situation worsening over the weekend. Environment Agency sources suspect this is one of England's worst ever plastic pollution events, with approximately 10 tonnes of beads spilled:
This is the worst pollution event I have ever seen. It is contaminated plastic. Marine animals will ingest small plastic items once they are in the sea, they will attract algae, they will smell like food, effectively. Once they've eaten it, that's it: they can't get it out. They will float on the surface. It will create a slick which attracts plunging seabirds.
Female Aedes mosquitoes mate only one in their lifetimes, but are pursued by males relentlessly. This led researchers to theorize that the insects have a mechanism of stopping copulation. Using fluorescent sperm and some careful camera work, the team found that when a male Aedes mosquito initiates contact, the female must extend the tip of her genitals by a fraction of a millimetre to initiate the act. Without this subtle movement, the male's efforts fail.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said companies Novolex Holdings, Inteplast Group and Mettler Packaging violated a state law passed in 2014 that banned plastic bags at grocery store checkouts that weren't recyclable. Under the law, shoppers could pay 10 cents for thicker plastic bags that needed to be reusable and recyclable. But the makers of the bags labeled them as recyclable even though they were not - recycling facilities cannot process them and they end up dumped in landfills, incinerated, or in the state's waterways, Bonta said.
Data analysed by the The Last Beach Cleanup, a US group campaigning to halt plastic pollution, showed that the increase in UK exports in the first half of 2025 was mainly to Indonesia (24,006 tonnes in 2025, up from 525 tonnes in 2024) and Malaysia (28,667 tonnes, up from 18,872 tonnes in 2024). Total plastic waste exports remained relatively high in the first half of 2024 and 2025, at 319,407 and 317,647 tonnes respectively.
The chair of stalled UN plastics treaty talks, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, is preparing to step down, after accounts of behind-the-scenes pressure from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The move will be announced at a UN meeting on Tuesday, with an official announcement expected by Thursday. Vayas Valdivieso confirmed in an interview with the Guardian that he was resigning and said: There have been some challenges in the process.
When a virulent material enters an ecosystem, it can wreak havoc on existing life. Bittersweet vines in Upstate New York, for example, were brought to the region in the second half of the 19th century to combat erosion and for their sinuous, woody beauty. Native to eastern Asia, these largely poisonous plants quickly became invasive, smothering other specimens and even uprooting trees.
As fossil-fuel derivatives, plastics are made of refined carbon. By 2015, about 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste had been generated, with around 79% of this accumulating in landfills or the natural environment, where it breaks into ever smaller pieces. Each year, plastic production increases exponentially: the total weight of carbon in plastic has surpassed the mass of all animals combined, and is likely to equal the mass of all bacteria by 2095 (see 'Litter legacy').
The Russian invasion of Ukraine will have long-lasting consequences for all of us. Like the 1939 invasion of Poland introduced the world to 'blitzkrieg'-high-speed tanks and air power quickly jumping enveloping and eliminating enemy lines-this war is the herald of a new military era of relentless unmanned war machines hunting the enemy through air, land, and water. The drones are part of a new, high-speed technological race with a major unintended consequence: endless miles of plastic string pollution.
"At one end of the spectrum are the small island states, which are confronted with immense plastic pollution on their coasts and in their seas without contributing significantly to the pollution themselves," said Jochen Flasbarth, Germany's state secretary for the environment.
Bethanie Carney Almroth described a hostile environment during the UN negotiations on plastic pollution, with personal harassment and intimidation by representatives of chemical companies.
