The more we look for plastic, the more we find. And we keep finding it in places that we really really didn’t expect to find it, in forms we weren’t expecting.
For example, when you think of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, do you think of a bunch of plastic bags, maybe some gallon jugs mixed in there? Or do you think of a slightly thicker soupy area of the ocean? Because it’s closer to the latter.
And a lot of plastic pollution is like that soupy stuff, mostly micro and nano plastics rather than big visible chunky bits. To clarify, microplastics are generally bits of plastic smaller than 5mm, but nanoplastics are usually less than 1 micrometer. And, in context, 1 micrometer, or 1 micron, is 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. And since nanoplastics are the result of larger plastics breaking down, the stuff is basically everywhere we look.
Recently, a bunch of mountain climbers took samples from high-altitude glaciers and they found nanoplastics in 5 of the 14 sites they sampled. The most common kinds of nanoplastics were tire wear particles (41%), polystyrene (28%), and polyethylene (12%).
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-mountaineers-scientists-nanoplastics-remote-glaciers.html
Another study found that when critters in the ocean eat plastics, and then poop them out, the plastic gets hidden inside the poop. Which means we are seriously undercounting how much plastic is on the ocean floor or in the bellies of creatures who eat the plastic filled poop.
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-marine-animals-consume-microplastic-particles.html
Sticking to the poop theme, another study showed that there was microplastics in the organic wastes used as fertilizer. To quote one of the researchers, "Even biodegradable plastics are not breaking down as expected, leading to their accumulation in soils. This raises concerns about the long-term impact of microplastics on soil health and productivity,"
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-microplastics-contaminate-environmental.html
So, it’s in the glaciers, in the oceans, and in the soil. Which, if it was completely harmless and didn’t interact with anything, wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But it definitely isn’t either of those things so…yikes.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope or a solution on the horizon.
The Oak Ridge National Lab, under the Department of Energy, found a way to use the same technology as CRISPR on plastics. To quote Jeffrey Foster, "This is CRISPR for editing polymers…However, instead of editing strands of genes, we are editing polymer chains. This isn't the typical plastic recycling 'melt and hope for the best' scenario."
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-polymer-upcycle-higher-plastics.html
So while we keep finding the stuff, pretty much everywhere we look, there’s a possibility that someday we’ll have plastics that don’t generate nanoplastics, and that we’ll be using the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to make more plastics rather than letting it get bigger every year.