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Terrestrial fugitive plastic packaging: the blind spot in resolving plastic pollution
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This commentary identifies terrestrial fugitive plastic packaging — plastic that escapes into the environment from land-based sources — as a neglected category in plastic pollution accounting. The authors argue that focusing only on ocean plastics ignores the vast amounts of plastic dispersing through soils, roadsides, and inland waterways.
An opinion piece highlighting the role plastic packaging, particularly single-use commodity packaging, contributes to global plastic pollution. The article specially unpacks the quantities found on land in comparison to those found in the marine environment. While land-based plastic pollution is approximately three times bigger in terms of scale, the article notes that current research and development and policy strategies are solely focused upon marine-based pollution. The article seeks to address this by proposing strategies to readdress the balance in attention and to engage academia, government and the public in a polyvalent effort towards resolving the ecological damage being caused to our environment.
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Delineating and preventing plastic waste leakage in the marine and terrestrial environment
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Researchers outline the global challenge of plastic waste leaking into marine and land environments, tracing the problem to poor waste management, limited recycling technology, and low public awareness. The commentary calls for upstream design changes and downstream cleanup strategies to reduce plastic litter worldwide.
The “plastic cycle”: a watershed‐scale model of plastic pools and fluxes
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This paper presented a watershed-scale conceptual model of plastic sources, fluxes, and fates — including landfill containment, environmental persistence, atmospheric interactions, and ocean export — arguing that terrestrial and freshwater plastic stocks are severely underappreciated in global accounting.
Plastic particles in soil: state of the knowledge on sources, occurrence and distribution, analytical methods and ecological impacts
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This comprehensive review of plastic particles in soil covered sources, occurrence, analytical detection methods, and ecological impacts, identifying gaps in knowledge about terrestrial plastic fate and effects compared to the more extensively studied marine environment.
Microplastics in terrestrial ecosystems: sources, transport, fate, mitigation, and remediation strategies
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This review examines how microplastics from urban, agricultural, and industrial sources are building up in soils worldwide. Wind, water, and soil organisms transport these particles across landscapes, where they persist and can affect soil structure and the health of living things. The authors highlight that land-based microplastic pollution has received far less attention than ocean pollution, despite its potential risks to ecosystems and human health through the food chain.
It is time to develop characterization factors for terrestrial plastic pollution impacts on ecosystems in life cycle impact assessment – a systematic review identifying knowledge gaps
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Researchers reviewed how plastic pollution is — and is not — accounted for in life cycle assessments (LCAs), which are tools used to measure a product's full environmental footprint. They found that while ocean plastic impacts have been partially modeled, freshwater and terrestrial plastic pollution, including microplastics, are still missing from standard environmental impact calculations, leaving a major blind spot in sustainability analysis.
Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.