Resources

In the wake of UNEA 5.2, as global leaders work towards an international legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution, the issue of plastic waste trade is largely ignored. This briefing paper tackles the elephant in the room, with a focus on issues in Asia Pacific, to make a case for issuing stringent controls to protect weaker economies from plastic waste trade from developing countries.

This first-ever analysis of the role that European supermarkets play in addressing the plastic pollution crisis, shows disappointing results. It reveals that some of the biggest retail chains in Europe are only paying lip service to the problem, while behind the scenes they are trying to delay action and distract consumers and policymakers.

Citizens, municipalities and businesses across Europe are calling for reusable packaging to be scaled up and for robust reuse systems to be put in place. Even though the concept of reuse is high on the public agenda, it is sometimes used interchangeably with other concepts such as recycling. So what is reuse? Find out more in #WeChoooseReuse's guide to the reuse revolution!

The mission with our brand annual audit is to identify the world’s top polluting corporations. By gathering data on plastic waste collected at community cleanups around the world, brand audits allow us to challenge the plastic industry and demand real solutions. Our reports have revealed that the true driving forces of the plastic pollution crisis are the corporations producing all this plastic in the first place.

Here you can find all the central facts about the climate compatibility of disposable and reusable items at events in our compact climate check.

The German reusable system for beverage packaging is a climate-friendly classic. You can see which individual factors have a decisive influence on the climate footprint of the different beverage packaging in our climate check.

The study demonstrates the highest level of contamination control and reports unadjusted values alongside different contamination adjustment techniques. These results support inhalation as a route of exposure for environmental MPs, and this characterisation of types and levels can now inform realistic conditions for laboratory exposure experiments, with the aim of determining health impacts.

75% of marine litter collected in 2021 during citizen-led waste collections - the Ocean Initiatives - was food packaging and other single-use plastic products.

In this pilot single-centre observational prospective study, human breastmilk samples collected from N. 34 women were analysed by Raman Microspectroscopy, and, for the first time, MP contamination was found in 26 out of 34 samples

The contamination of ecosystem compartments by microplastics (MPs) is an ubiquitous problem. MPs have been observed in mice tissues, and recently in human blood, stool and placenta. However, two aspects remain unclear: whether MPs accumulate in peripheral organs, specifically in the liver, and if liver cirrhosis favours this process. We aimed to examine human liver tissue samples to determine whether MPs accumulate in the liver.