Microplastics News

Global shipping group CMA CGM said on Friday it will stop transporting plastic waste on its vessels from June 1 to help curb pollution.One of the world's largest container lines, the French-based firm said it currently carries the equivalent of about 50,000 standard containers of plastic waste per year.Plastic has become a focus of international negotiations on pollution as the oil derivative has filled refuse sites and littered oceans. Some countries have moved to ban imports of such waste.In its announcement made during the One Ocean Summit hosted by France…

A group of European development banks plan to double its funding for global efforts to stop plastic waste from polluting the world's oceans to 4 billion euros ($4.6 billion).The Clean Oceans Initiative, led by the French and German development banks and the European Investment Bank is the largest such grouping targeting plastic pollution of the sea.Around 8 million tonnes of plastic waste enters the oceans every year, most of it discarded on land or washed into rivers, the group said on Friday…

A confession. I'm part of a very big problem that's easy to ignore. Last year, I contributed the U.S. average-per-person 300 pounds of plastic garbage to wherever it went after convenient curbside pickup. So out of sight, out of mind, right? Not really, but does it matter? Yes, it does.In a fascinating recent report, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine politely told us that we're choking ourselves to death on manufactured plastic waste and that 80% of the harmful plastic in the ocean comes from land-based sources.It's the micro-plastics…