Carbon dioxide levels keep climbing, even after years of promises to cut emissions. At the same time, plastic waste pours ...

Plastic pollution has become a major global environmental concern as modern societies rely increasingly on plastic products. Much of this plastic waste eventually reaches the ocean, with rivers acting ...

Community-led research from UCSB’s Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory spans three years, four continents and eight countries to reveal the scale of river plastic waste and offer solutions to stop it at ...

Plastic debris drifting across the open ocean is no longer just pollution — it is creating entirely new habitat where none ...

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 ...

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 ...

Most people know plastic pollution is bad news. But a small group of scientists says that we should pause all ocean plastic cleanup efforts.

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 ...

A new study shows that most plastic pollution from rivers is transported to the ocean during short, intense flood events.

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 ...