Plastic

Plastic, a durable, malleable, customisable material that is easy to manufacture, is arguably the definitive 20th century “mod-con”. It has proved irresistible to consumers and manufacturers who have been complacent about the collateral damage it causes the environment. But the tide — now awash with an additional 8m tonnes of plastic entering the oceans annually — is slowly turning. The scale of the environmental problem is staggering. More than 6.3bn tonnes of plastic waste has been produced since the 1950s, more

One of the BillerudKorsnäs packaging redesign projects replaced the plastic casing around camping gear with cardboard. At the Swedish-owned BillerudKorsnäs design lab in Portland, Oregon, he’s laid down a massive sheet of it, as big as a king-size bed. He flips the switch on a machine that zips around the cardboard, stabbing and cutting it like a robotic exact-o knife. “Basically anything we create, any design we’re looking to validate, we cut out with this machine,” he says. “This lets us know

Business giants, financial investors, non-profit organisations and national Governments have vowed to eradicate plastic waste and pollution, as part of a new Global Commitment spearheaded by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The UK and Scottish Governments are among the five governments and cities to sign up The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment will be launched in collaboration with the UN Environment at the Our Ocean Conference in Bali later today (29 October). The Commitment aims to create a “new normal”

Supermarket giant Tesco and consumer goods firm Nestlé have joined a coalition of businesses, non-profits and public sector bodies which have pledged to tackle the 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear abandoned in the world’s oceans each year. The GGGI currently funnels $1m into these projects annually, but this will rise to $2m next year The companies are the latest signatories to the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI), which was set up by non-profit World Animal Protection in 2015 in a bid to

Big brands – from Coke to Kellogg – pledged on Monday to cut all plastic waste from their operations in what the United Nations called the most ambitious effort yet to fight plastic pollution. The initiative comes as public pressure mounts on manufacturers and retailers to pare back the deluge of plastic packaging that is clogging landfills and choking the seas. “We know that cleaning up plastics from our beaches and oceans is vital, but this does not stop the tide of

The European Parliament has voted for a complete ban on a range of single-use plastics across the union in a bid to stop pollution of the oceans. MEPs backed a ban on plastic cutlery and plates, cotton buds, straws, drink-stirrers and balloon sticks. The proposal also calls for a reduction in single-use plastic for food and drink containers like plastic cups. One MEP said, if no action was taken, “by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans”. The European Commission

Small plastic pieces known as microplastics were found in stool samples of every participant in a small pilot study presented this week at a prestigious global gastroenterology conference. Researchers from the Environment Agency Austria and the Medical University of Vienna followed eight healthy volunteers from different parts of the world (Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, United Kingdom and Austria). The participants kept a diary of the food and drink they consumed for a week. Then, researchers tested their stool for 10