Experience gained from decades of UN environmental treaties shows that trusted and effective measurement and compliance mechanisms are as important as the agreements themselves. This is an ambitious goal that will require a radical rethink of plastics production, recycling, remediation and disposal.
Even the deeper reefs, lying at depths of 30–150 metres, were found to be polluted until now, the impact of plastics on these reefs has been little studied 3.īoth studies will be important to talks, now under way at the United Nations, on a treaty to eliminate plastic pollution.
Meanwhile, Hudson Pinheiro and his colleagues show that larger pieces of plastic litter, known as macroplastics, represent the largest share of anthropogenic debris found in shallow and deep coral reefs at 25 locations across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian ocean basins. Veronica Nava and her colleagues systematically assess the extent of plastic contamination in diverse freshwater lakes and reservoirs across 23 countries, and find them to be widely contaminated with plastic 2. Plastics have infiltrated some of the planet’s most remote and pristine areas, as two papers published in Nature show to dramatic effect 2, 3. Globally, some 400 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced each year 1. Credit: Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Plastic waste is damaging ecosystems around the world.
