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Papers
61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Unsustainable Horizons
ClearA Critical Analysis of the Rising Global Demand of Plastics and its Adverse Impact on Environmental Sustainability
This critical review examined global trends in plastic demand and mismanaged plastic waste, identifying the top contributing countries and evaluating plastic replacement alternatives, arguing that reducing consumption and improving waste management infrastructure are more impactful than material substitution alone.
Role of Plastics in Modern Life: Benefits, Risks and Environmental Consequences
This review examines the dual role of plastics in modern society — their economic benefits alongside environmental and public health risks — and surveys strategies for more sustainable plastic production and disposal.
Environmental Impact of Plastic Waste: Strategies for Sustainable Management
This systematic review summarizes the environmental and health impacts of plastic waste and evaluates strategies for sustainable management. It highlights that plastic pollution threatens ecosystems and human health through microplastic contamination, and examines approaches like recycling, biodegradable alternatives, and policy interventions to reduce exposure.
Global Plastic Production, Environmental Impacts, and Sustainable Remediation Strategies: A Comprehensive Review
This comprehensive review traces global plastic production from 1950 to 2025, documenting the exponential growth in output and associated waste, and evaluating remediation strategies including mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, biodegradation, and emerging alternatives.
Micro Plastic Pollution in South Asia: The Impact of Plastic Pollution over the Unsustainable Development Goals
This review examines microplastic pollution across South Asian countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, finding that rapid urbanization and poor plastic waste management are driving widespread contamination of freshwater, marine, and terrestrial ecosystems, with significant implications for sustainable development goals.
Plastic waste: impact on the planet’s ecosystem
This review covers the trajectory of global plastic production from 1.5 million tonnes in 1950 to over 335 million tonnes in 2016 and examines the ecological consequences of plastic waste entering the environment. The paper highlights microplastics as an escalating threat to marine and terrestrial ecosystems, with toxicological effects documented across species.
Technology cannot fix this: To stay within planetary boundaries, plastic growth must be tackled
Researchers argue in response to Bachmann et al. that technological solutions alone cannot address plastics pollution within planetary boundaries, contending that the full lifecycle of plastics — from resource extraction to earth system process impacts — must be considered and that plastic growth itself must be curtailed.
Plastics Pollution and the Planetary Boundaries framework
This paper examines how plastics pollution affects Earth-system processes along the full impact pathway from production to environmental fate, arguing that plastics have exceeded the planetary safe operating space and that their interactions with climate change and biodiversity loss exacerbate the consequences of breaching multiple planetary boundaries simultaneously.
Global plastic pollution, sustainable development, and plastic justice
This review examines how plastic pollution, including microplastics, undermines sustainable development goals and disproportionately affects lower-income nations that lack waste management infrastructure. The authors propose a "plastic justice" framework to address the human rights dimensions of plastic pollution, which poses health risks to communities through contaminated water, food, and air.
Impact of microplastics on economic condition in underdeveloped nations
This review examines how microplastic pollution generated primarily by high-income countries disproportionately affects underdeveloped nations in Africa and Southeast Asia due to inadequate waste management infrastructure and limited recycling capacity. Using global socio-economic models projecting mismanaged plastic waste to 2050, the authors show that corruption and lack of education exacerbate plastic pollution, threatening food security, ecological stability, and economic development in vulnerable regions.
Plastic Waste Recycling is Insufficient to Mitigate Plastic Pollution: the Need for a Paradigm Shift
This review argues that plastic waste recycling is fundamentally insufficient to address global plastic pollution and calls for a paradigm shift away from end-of-pipe solutions toward upstream production reduction. The authors examine the structural limitations of current recycling strategies and the economic and policy barriers that prevent meaningful plastic pollution mitigation.
Urgen nuevas maneras de diseñar, producir y consumir objetos de plástico en México
This article argued that Mexico urgently needs new approaches to designing, producing, and consuming single-use plastic objects, as widespread unconscious use of long-lasting materials for short-lived purposes is generating serious environmental and health consequences.
Ensuring sustainability in plastics use in Africa: consumption, waste generation, and projections
This review examines plastic consumption, waste generation, and future projections for African nations, finding rapidly increasing plastic use alongside limited waste management infrastructure. The study calls for African-specific sustainability policies to prevent a major escalation in plastic pollution as economic development accelerates across the continent.
The Plastic Ponzi Scheme: Unsustainable growth in plastic production is distanced from its socioecological damage
This perspective essay argues that plastic production growth is economically distanced from its socioecological costs, comparing the industry's structure to a Ponzi scheme where environmental harms are externalized. The authors call for systemic regulation of plastic production volumes, not just waste management, as the only way to reverse escalating microplastic pollution.
Chemicals management approach to sustainable development of materials
This review examines how chemicals management approaches must evolve for sustainable materials development, arguing that planetary boundaries and path-dependent industrial trajectories require rethinking how chemicals including plastics are produced and regulated.
Plastic Pollution and its Impact on Environment
This overview of plastic pollution from 1950 to 2021 estimates that approximately 6.3 billion tons of plastics have been produced globally, with only 9% recycled, while continued population growth and consumption drive mounting environmental accumulation. The study links plastic pollution trajectories to public health, ecosystem, and regulatory challenges.
Study on China’s Plastic Consumption Trend and Sustainable Development Countermeasures
Despite its title referencing plastic consumption, this paper focuses on forecasting China's future plastic demand and proposing policy frameworks for the plastics industry — not on microplastic pollution or health effects. It examines production trends, packaging, construction, and automotive sectors, and is a policy and economics paper rather than a microplastics science paper.
The Impact of Plastic Waste on Ecosystems and Human Health and Strategies for Managing It for A Sustainable Environment
This review summarizes the broad impact of plastic waste on ecosystems and human health, covering how plastics break down into micro- and nanoplastics that contaminate soil, water, and air. The authors discuss health risks from plastic exposure including respiratory problems, liver damage, and hormonal disruption. The review calls for better waste management, recycling, and policies to reduce plastic pollution as a public health priority.
Delineating and preventing plastic waste leakage in the marine and terrestrial environment
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.
Bakelite to microplastics contamination: A comprehensive review on microplastics sources, distribution and their characteristic existence in environment
This comprehensive review traced the history of plastic pollution from Bakelite in the early 20th century to today's microplastic contamination crisis, examining how plastic production growth has driven accumulation across global environments. It synthesized evidence on sources, transport pathways, and ecological impacts.
Waste Journeys
This multidisciplinary study examined plastic waste as a material of the Anthropocene by tracing the journeys of plastic objects across cultural, natural, marine, and terrestrial landscapes, exploring how plastic's resilience makes it a defining and problematic artifact of modern civilization.
Microplastics Pollution
This review addresses the exponential surge in global plastic production since the 1950s and the resulting widespread environmental contamination, projecting that annual production will reach record levels by 2050 without intervention. The authors assess the threats to ecosystems, wildlife, and human health and evaluate the urgency of transitioning away from current plastic production and waste management systems.
Plastics: the big environmental problem of our time
This article examines plastics as one of the most significant contemporary environmental pollutants, discussing the difficulty of environmental absorption and the scale of plastic accumulation across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
Current scenario and challenges of plastic pollution in Bangladesh: a focus on farmlands and terrestrial ecosystems
Researchers reviewed the sources, dispersion routes, and environmental consequences of plastic waste across global and Bangladesh-specific contexts, finding that inadequate infrastructure and limited resources make plastic pollution — including microplastics entering agricultural soils, marine environments, and food chains — an especially acute threat in developing countries.