Along a small stream in Spain, groups of teenagers are at work. One hovers around a black tarpaulin covered in wet pieces of plastic. Another stands on a small bridge, fishing with a net. Others sort small pieces of plastic, cigarette butts and various other things they’ve recovered from the stream. What looks
Visitors to Utrecht’s Wilhelmina Park in the summer of 2023 may have come across an unusual sight: volunteers on stationary exercise bikes, cycling for science. The bikes were set up in different parts of the park – in its centre, beside a busy road and at a traffic junction where cars constantly stopped
From his bedroom desk in the Belgian town of Dendermonde, Gert Everaert used to watch the river Scheldt flow past. Barges and small boats drifted by. Birds fished. But the river also carried something less picturesque – a steady stream of litter and plastic waste. “Cars would stop and people threw rubbish straight into
ph. Don’t flush any wet wipes – even if they are ‘plastic free’ or ‘biodegradable’. Maridav / shutterstock Randa Lindsey Kachef, King’s College London The UK government recently announced a plan to ban plastics from wet wipes, causing my fellow river activists to release a collective sigh of relief. However, although a general
ph. Single-use plastics. Anton Petrus/Moment Katherine Harry, Colorado State University and Emma Rettner, Colorado State University Hundreds of millions of tons of single-use plastic ends up in landfills every year, and even the small percentage of plastic that gets recycled can’t last forever. But our group of materials scientists has developed a new
Oftentimes they imagine a scientist being a crazy person in a lab suit, but then they themselves have been scientists As part of the German PlasticPiratesEU team, Tim and his colleagues have devised an innovative way to get students and teachers from schools around Germany and beyond to help gather information about the
ph. Northern fulmar. Beth Clark, Author provided Elizabeth Pearmain, University of Cambridge and Bethany Clark, BirdLife International Seabirds are one of the world’s most threatened animal groups. They already contend with multiple issues, including climate change, accidental capture in fishing gear and being eaten by invasive species like cats and some rodents. But
England bans single-use plastic products. From October, plastic tableware, Styrofoam cups and certain food packaging may no longer be sold or used. This excludes packaging for ready meals. The ban applies to retail and food retailers, as well as snack bars and restaurants. Environmental organizations criticize this as insufficient. It is estimated that
On a recent stroll to his local supermarket in the southern German town of Bayreuth, Christian Laforsch decided to count how much plastic trash he passed. ‘It was 52 pieces on only a normal walk,’ said Professor Laforsch, an ecologist at the University of Bayreuth. ‘The problem starts indoors before moving outside. If
Four months on from its introduction in July, the Indian government’s single-use plastics ban is already faltering in the absence of strong government enforcement and cross-sector efforts Every year as the seasons start to change, pandals appear all over Kolkata. Many organising committees for the Durga Puja, the biggest annual festival in West