“Contamination” of the recycling process chain withfood waste, non-recyclable items or packaging components causesa fraction of all plastics intended for recycling to be rejectedat local or regional waste handling facilities. The difficulty and economic costs of separating poorly-sorted and/or contami...
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) states that as global temperatures rise, plastics degrade into methane and ethylene, compounds that accelerate the pace of climate change. New Research Shows Ocean Life is Adapting to Their New Plastic-Ridden Environment In a recent study by the Nature Ecology & ...
Roughly two-thirds of that is designed for short-term use (things like water bottles and snack wrappers), yet the lifespan of plastics is incredibly long (450 to 1,000 years for some products), with the material continually degrading into tinier and tinier particles along the way. What’s...
Plastics often stay in the environment for a long time, especially fossil-fuel-based plastics as they don't degrade. For example, in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch 79,000 tonnes of floating plastic have gathered in a 1.6 million square km (about 618,000 square miles) area. Instead of ...
Photo: Plastics can begin to photodegrade quite quickly, but they take a very long time to break down completely. The old grocery store bag on the left has been exposed to the light for a few months and has already started to turn yellow (compared to the new bag on the right)....
rolf vennenbernd/getty images save save our planet is choking on plastics . some of the worst offenders, which can take decades to degrade in landfills, are polypropylene—which is used for things such as food packaging and bumpers—and polyethylene, found in plastic bags, bottles, toys, and...
Metal straws, glass food storage containers, shampoo bars, reusable grocery bags — there are a lot of great ways to avoid single-use plastics, but sometimes it's unavoidable. So, what can you do to help ensure your laundry detergent jugs and plastic takeout containers don't end up in ...
There are so many types of plastics that the containers are extremely hard to sort, so recycling them is very expensive. As a result, a lot of recycling companies in the United States won't do it. Most recycling of plastic bottles ends up happening overseas, particularly in China. Those ...
Dr Green added: "Even if plastics degrade and seem to 'disappear', they persist as micro-plastics and could cause harm to marine organisms that ingest them. The potential for rapid effects coupled with the persistence of plastic debris, including plastics described as 'biodegradable', emphasises ...
To derive the basic materials used in the production of polyester, it’s necessary to obtain fossil fuels, which are limited resources that are also used for vital energy and plastics production applications. The process of refining crude oil into petroleum introduces various toxins into the environ...