The chances for a stronger international agreement on limits to plastic production may have increased dramatically as the world nears a U.N. deadline for achieving a plastics treaty. The game…
Mycologists believe the solution to some of our biggest pollution issues is under our feet. Humble fungi are now being used as meat alternatives, eco-friendly leather and to help break…
The newly formed government in Bangladesh is about to implement the existing law regarding plastic usage by strictly banning — initially — single-use plastic and, gradually, all possible plastic uses.…
Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuy, a waste worker from Binh Dinh, Vietnam, has worked in the waste collection industry for four decades. She has spent every day at the landfill –…
Plastic waste is a global problem, and the food sector is one of its main drivers. It only takes a quick visit to a supermarket to realize this: With the…
With a final round of negotiations on a global plastics treaty set to take place later this year in Busan, South Korea, an autopsy is premature, especially with the dynamics…
Plastic trash has become one of the most visible global environmental crises of our time. Single-use plastics make up nearly half of all plastics produced, with 15 million metric tons…
In recent years, there has been a significant trend in young people from around the world joining the fight against environmental threats and climate change. These educated youths have played…
Mongabay’s award-winning investigation that revealed water contamination from palm oil plantations in Indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon inspired an art installation at UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Santiago; the artwork was also exhibited at Chile’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
The Caribbean Basin is drowning in waste, especially plastic trash that’s contaminating rivers and the surrounding sea.
Biological solutions offer hope for tackling human-caused pollution — but only if government and industry significantly support getting those solutions out of the lab and into the real world.
PULAU SERIBU, Indonesia — Mustaghfirin unmoors his boat every day in the Thousand Islands archipelago, two hours’ sailing from the Jakarta coast, and sets off into a sea filled with…
Representatives of 170 nations met in Ottawa, Canada, last week pushing a final U.N. plastic pollution treaty agreement closer to completion. But much remains to be done, with debate over plastic production limits and other barriers still unsettled.
Global plastic pollution talks in Ottawa came to a close April 30, and with them a group of Indigenous leaders from the Arctic are on their way home. But the…
As negotiators meet this week for the fourth round of global plastics treaty talks, scientists warn that both plant-based and petroleum-based plastics are toxic, with both needing tough regulation to protect public health.
Nitrogen pollution from agriculture and human waste, along with other pollutants including plastics, could make clean water scarce in many watersheds worldwide, potentially contributing to declines in public health.
A new report strongly links endocrine disruptors to diseases, from the devastating, like infertility, to the deadly, like cancer and heart disease. The report calls for global treaties to restrict and ban their production and use.
The 2024 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement has gone to Johan Rockström who led the team of international researchers who originated the planetary boundary framework in 2009.
KARACHI — His sandaled feet drenched in black mud, Rashid Rasheed points to one of the mangrove nurseries he’s been looking after for the past few years. With wooden walls…
BOGOR, Indonesia — At the age of 60, Siti Salamah started making changes at her family home in the city of Bogor, just south of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital. “We always…
How do you identify microplastics in wastewater? When Wayne Parker started out researching the issue, the existing techniques were time-consuming and cumbersome. For a long time, optical or infrared microscopes…
Scientists have found many plastics are toxic, but activists say two ubiquitous polymers are the worst of all: polystyrene and PVC. Some are calling for not only a national ban on these two, but for a global ban enshrined in a plastics treaty.
As 2023 draws to a close, so, too, does the first full year of Mongabay’s Conservation Reporting Fellowships. Launched at a time of unprecedented planetary upheaval, the program aims to…
In today’s industrialized world, avoiding plastic is virtually impossible. Every trip to the grocery store likely means coming home with food and household items packaged in plastic bottles, tubs and…
The early optimism that launched plastic treaty negotiations in 2022 was stymied at talks this month in Nairobi at which large petrostates stonewalled against creating a binding international treaty that would regulate cradle-to-grave plastics production.
KINGSTON — “All of this was mangroves,” says marine scientist Mona Webber, pointing toward a line of ghostly gray boulders separating the road from the sea. We’re standing on the…
As oil and gas production surge, shifting the global economy to a circular model is essential to charting a path away from fossil fuels, petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizers and petrochemicals such as plastics. Part 3 of a three-part miniseries.
This story is the second in a three-part mini-series surveying the range of impacts by the fossil fuel industry on the global environment. Part one and part two review harm…
Fossil fuels have done great good for humanity, but they are now not only threatening our planet’s climate, but also taking a terrible toll on the global environment, putting at risk Earth systems vital to life as we know it. Part 1 of a three-part miniseries.
With plastic pollution littering the planet, certification organizations are popping up to sell “plastic credits” to companies, allowing them to offset the plastic they make and use with equivalent plastic waste collected and reused. Critics are skeptical.
Research finds impacts by tiny plastic particles on marine plankton and microbes could disrupt carbon and nitrogen cycling in the world’s oceans, possibly putting Earth’s operating system and the planet’s habitability at risk.
The more we learn about plastic, the more we find it everywhere. Research has shown that tiny microplastic particles litter the world’s oceans and rivers, from the Arctic and Antarctic.…