‘Plasticosis’: the first disease named after plastic
Seabirds on Lord Howe Island develop scar tissue in their stomachs in proportion to how much plastic they have eaten.
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Plastic touching coral raises disease risk from 4% to 89%
A survey of 124,000 corals across the Asia-Pacific found plastic debris multiplies the chance of coral disease more than twenty-fold.
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More than 1,000 tonnes of microplastic rain down on US national parks each year
Microplastic falls with rain and dust even in the most remote protected areas of the western United States.
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The ‘450 years to degrade’ claim has no source; here is what is measured
The only systematic review of plastic degradation rates found an HDPE bottle would take about 58 years at sea for half of it to…
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Making virgin plastic emits 5.3% of global greenhouse gases outside farming and land use
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found plastic production emitted 2.24 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2019, measured as the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2)…
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Plastic could use up 10–13% of the world’s remaining carbon budget by 2050
Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)’s Plastic & Climate report estimated lifecycle plastic emissions at 850 million tonnes in 2019, rising to 1.34 billion…
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Global plastics treaty: still no agreement, next formal round March 2027
Four years after the UN mandate, negotiations have collapsed twice over production caps and chemicals, and a new chair is trying to restart them.
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‘More plastic than fish by 2050’: a famous claim built on shaky numbers
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2016 projection rests on an extrapolation its own source author did not endorse and a fish estimate later revised upwards.
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Only 9% of all plastic ever made has been recycled
The first global accounting of every plastic ever produced found that most of it is already waste and almost none was recycled.
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Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): the world used 460 million tonnes of plastic in 2019 and recycled 9%
The OECD’s Global Plastics Outlook is the most authoritative single dataset on the plastics economy, showing waste growing faster than recycling.