Papers

61,005 results
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Article Tier 2

Sustainability within a global environmental change context

This book chapter summarizes the key human drivers of environmental change—including plastic and microplastic pollution—and introduces ecosystem services as the framework for understanding how human activities disrupt the natural systems that sustain life. It provides conceptual context for sustainability education rather than original empirical findings.

2025
Article Tier 2

Toxicological aspects of wastewater

This textbook chapter is not about microplastics specifically; it provides a broad review of environmental toxicology topics including climate change, water and air pollution, and industrial contaminants, with microplastics mentioned only as one of many pollutants.

2023 European Journal of Chemistry 1 citations
Article Tier 2

An Examination of Microplastics: Environmental Impact, Sustainability, and Recyclability Innovation

This paper examined the environmental impact of microplastics, sustainability implications of current plastic use, and recycling options to address the plastic pollution crisis. It called for a transition toward circular economy approaches that reduce primary plastic production and increase recycled content.

2024 Journal of Student Research
Article Tier 2

Economy or Environment? Sustainability from a Political Economy Perspective

This review examines environmental sustainability challenges from a political economy perspective, tracing the history of economic pressures on ecosystems from the mid-19th century to the present and evaluating theoretical frameworks and sustainability indicators used to monitor and limit the growing impact of economic systems on the natural environment.

2025 Ekonomista
Article Tier 2

Understanding Environmental and Socio‐economic Risks Associated with Microplastics

This book chapter reviews the environmental, health, and socioeconomic risks associated with microplastics, examining their cytotoxicity, immune disruption, and presence across food chain trophic levels. It also discusses economic costs of microplastic pollution and outlines mitigation strategies at individual and policy levels.

2025
Article Tier 2

Towards Sustainable Cosmetics Packaging

Not directly relevant to microplastics — this review examines the broader sustainability challenges of cosmetics packaging, including environmental, social, and economic trade-offs, without a specific focus on microplastic pollution.

2023 Preprints.org 10 citations
Article Tier 2

Environmental Degradation and Legal Accountability: Strengthening India’s Response to Pollution and Climate Crisis

Not relevant to microplastics — this appears to be a legal and policy paper about environmental degradation and accountability in India, with an abstract that inconsistently describes a study on waste management education among women; it does not present original microplastic research.

2026 International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology
Article Tier 2

High School Sustainable and Green Chemistry: Historical–Epistemological and Pedagogical Considerations

Not relevant to microplastics — this is a chemistry education paper discussing how to better integrate sustainable and green chemistry into high school curricula, tracing the history of the Science, Technology, and Society movement and advocating for systems thinking approaches.

2023 Sustainable Chemistry 11 citations
Article Tier 2

Perspective Chapter: Environmental Ethics and the Microplastic Crisis – A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Responsibility and Aquatic Justice

This chapter examines the microplastic crisis through the lens of environmental ethics, exploring human responsibility and aquatic justice. The study highlights that an estimated 15 to 51 trillion microplastic particles now exist in global oceans, with over 100 marine species ingesting them, and argues for a shift beyond anthropocentric thinking toward more comprehensive ethical frameworks for addressing plastic pollution.

2026 IntechOpen eBooks
Article Tier 2

Ecological resource availability: a method to estimate resource budgets for a sustainable economy

This paper presents a method for translating ecological limits into quantifiable resource budgets that economies can use to guide sustainable resource use. It addresses broad sustainability principles and does not focus on microplastics specifically.

2020 Global Sustainability 25 citations
Review Tier 2

Politics and the plastic crisis: A review throughout the plastic life cycle

This political science review analyzed over 180 studies on the governance of plastics across their full life cycle, finding that marine pollution and microplastics are driving the fastest growth in plastic policy research. The authors identify fragmented governance architectures and the absence of binding international agreements as major obstacles to addressing the global plastic crisis.

2019 Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Energy and Environment 466 citations
Article Tier 2

A multidisciplinary perspective on the role of plastic pollution in the triple planetary crisis.

This perspective paper argues that plastics are a central driver of all three dimensions of the planetary crisis — pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss — and must be addressed with the same urgency as carbon emissions. The authors call for a multidisciplinary approach that recognizes plastics as a systemic environmental threat rather than a siloed waste management issue.

2024 Environment international
Article Tier 2

Environmental Philosophy: Rethinking Climate Change through the Jellyfish Metaphor

Not relevant to microplastics — this is a philosophical essay using the jellyfish as a metaphor to explore humanity's moral responsibility regarding climate change and environmental degradation, with no empirical microplastic content.

2023 Preprints.org 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Corporate Social Responsibility Practices Amid Political and Economic Transformation in Europe

Not relevant to microplastics — this paper analyses corporate social responsibility practices and greenwashing among European companies in the context of post-pandemic political and economic change.

2023 Technium Social Sciences Journal 8 citations
Article Tier 2

Fishermen’s Preferences for Ecological Policies and Behavior Analysis: A Case Study of Weihai City, China

This paper is not relevant to microplastics research; it analyzes Chinese fishermen's policy preferences for fishery ecological protection using choice experiments and economic modeling, with no focus on plastic pollution.

2024 Sustainability 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Stability in the heart of chaos; (Un)sustainable refrains in the language of climate crisis

This conceptual paper examines how the word "sustainability" has become overused in environmental education and marketing, potentially creating a false sense of progress while harmful practices continue. While not directly about microplastics, the critique is relevant because many plastic products are marketed as "sustainable" without addressing the microplastic pollution they generate. The paper calls for more radical approaches to environmental education rather than relying on sustainability as a feel-good label.

2024 The Journal of Environmental Education 10 citations
Article Tier 2

State of the Environmental Challenges on Changing Climate in Southern Africa

Despite its title referencing environmental challenges in Southern Africa, this paper is a broad policy review of climate change, land degradation, deforestation, pollution, and governance failures across Southern African Development Community countries — not a study of microplastic pollution. It examines regional sustainability challenges from a policy and development perspective and is not relevant to microplastics or human health.

2025 International Journal of Sustainability in Business and Economics 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Theoretical framework for assessing the economic and environmental impact of water pollution: A detailed study on sustainable development of India

This paper presents a framework for assessing the economic and environmental costs of water pollution, including the impact of emerging contaminants like microplastics. It argues that current pollution cleanup strategies often overlook long-term economic losses from contaminated water, including healthcare costs. The framework could help policymakers make better decisions about investing in water treatment to reduce human exposure to pollutants including microplastics.

2023 Journal of Future Sustainability 132 citations
Article Tier 2

Emerging microplastic contamination in ecosystem: An urge for environmental sustainability

This review summarized the sources, environmental distribution, and ecological effects of microplastics, emphasizing the exponential increase in plastic production and waste mismanagement driving MP accumulation across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The authors called for urgent policy measures to reduce single-use plastic production and improve waste infrastructure globally.

2022 Journal of Applied Biology & Biotechnology 11 citations
Article Tier 2

Plastics in the Circular Economy

This book examines the role of plastics in the circular economy, reviewing how the current linear plastics economy generates environmental problems including microplastic pollution from fossil oil use and unmanaged plastic waste. The authors assess circular economy strategies including recycling, biodegradable alternatives, and design for disassembly as pathways to maintain the benefits of plastics while reducing their environmental footprint.

2024
Article Tier 2

Micro- and Nano-Plastics Contaminants in the Environment: Sources, Fate, Toxicity, Detection, Remediation, and Sustainable Perspectives

This review provides a broad overview of micro- and nanoplastic pollution, covering where these particles come from, how they spread through the environment, and the damage they cause to living things including humans. The authors also compare different methods for removing microplastics from the environment, including physical, chemical, and biological approaches. The paper calls for more research and global cooperation to develop better tools for measuring the health risks of plastic pollution.

2023 Water 31 citations
Article Tier 2

A New Philosophy for Sustainable Consumerism

This article discusses the challenge of reconciling sustainability goals with growth-based economies, using microplastic entry into the food chain as one example of the environmental costs of current consumption patterns. The author proposes a theoretical framework for enabling economic growth while maintaining long-term planetary health.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics
Article Tier 2

Is There Hope to Switch Traditional Plastics into Sustainable?

This review paper examines whether traditional petroleum-based plastics can realistically be replaced by more sustainable alternatives, surveying developments in bioplastics, biodegradable polymers, recycling technologies, and regulatory shifts. It concludes that while promising innovations exist — from renewable-source plastics to circular economy strategies — significant technical and economic hurdles remain before sustainable plastics can fully displace conventional ones. The paper is relevant to microplastic pollution as a systemic solution-oriented overview of how to reduce plastic waste at its source.

2025 Science Insights 1 citations
Article Tier 2

The Global Casino

This environmental studies textbook introduces readers to a broad range of global environmental issues — including climate change, deforestation, and pollution — within their political, economic, and social contexts. Plastic pollution and microplastics are covered as part of the broader challenge of managing human impacts on natural systems.

2018 5 citations