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61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Role of Plastics in Modern Life: Benefits, Risks and Environmental Consequences
ClearRole 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.
Plastics, the Environment and Society: Current Consensus and Future Directions
This concluding chapter to a book on plastics, the environment, and society summarizes current understanding of the benefits and harms of plastic use and looks toward future research priorities. It acknowledges that while plastics bring societal benefits, their persistence as microplastics in the environment requires urgent attention.
Pros and Cons of Plastic during the COVID-19 Pandemic
This review examined the dual role of plastics during COVID-19, acknowledging their critical function in medical devices and PPE while documenting the surge in plastic pollution from improper disposal of single-use items — and debating the net societal and environmental cost-benefit trade-off.
Evaluating the Environmental and Health Impacts of Disposable Plastics: Toward Sustainable Material Alternatives
This review examined the environmental and health impacts of disposable plastics and explored sustainable alternatives, drawing on secondary literature across environmental science and health disciplines. The paper assessed plastic waste contributions to ocean pollution and proposed strategies to mitigate these challenges.
Polymers and Microplastics: Implications on Our Environment and Sustainability
This review discusses the environmental implications of polymers and microplastics, covering their properties, production trends, degradation pathways, and ecological impacts. It highlights the tension between the industrial utility of plastics and their growing threat to environmental and human health.
Plastic: A Boon but Also a Curse to the Environment
This broad overview examines plastic production volumes, environmental pathways, and impacts on soil, water, air, and living organisms, including early evidence of microplastic harm. While largely a general summary rather than original research, it underscores how the scale of plastic use has created a global pollution legacy with growing implications for ecosystem and human health.
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.
Plastic Debris in the Marine Environment: History and Future Challenges
This review traces the history of plastic as a revolutionary material and examines how its success has led to severe and growing pollution problems in the marine environment. Researchers discuss the wide-ranging impacts of plastic debris on marine life, maritime industries, tourism, and human health. The study also critically evaluates current mitigation solutions and cautions that any alternatives to plastic must be carefully assessed to ensure they do not create new environmental problems.
A Review: Investigation of Plastics Effect on the Environment, Bioplastic Global Market Share and Its Future Perspectives
This review covers the environmental and human health impacts of plastics, with a focus on microplastics and nanoplastics, and reviews global trends in bioplastic production as an alternative. It finds that while bioplastics show promise, current production scale is far too small to address the existing plastic pollution crisis.
Pervasive Pollution Problems Caused by Plastics and its Degradation
This review discusses the pervasive environmental pollution caused by plastics and their degradation products, arguing that plastic contamination now affects air, water, food, and all living organisms and requires urgent global action to reduce production and improve waste management.
The Devastation of Waste Plastic on the Environment and Remediation Processes: A Critical Review
This review covers the full scope of plastic waste pollution, from sources and environmental damage to recycling and remediation strategies. It ranks common plastic polymers by the toxicity of their chemical building blocks and traces how plastic waste enters the environment. The review highlights that as plastics break down into microplastics, they become harder to clean up and more likely to enter the food chain, making prevention and recycling critical for reducing human exposure.
Plastic and its consequences during the COVID-19 pandemic
Researchers examined the dual role of plastic during the COVID-19 pandemic — as life-saving material in medical and personal protective equipment and as an environmental pollutant when improperly discarded — highlighting how pandemic-driven plastic use worsened water body contamination and public health risks.
Plastic Waste: Current Environmental Pollution, Health Hazard and Biodegradation Strategies and Its Management
This review paper surveys the scope of global plastic pollution, covering environmental contamination, health hazards, and biodegradation strategies. The study highlights that with plastic production exceeding 390 million tons by 2021, effective waste management and biodegradation approaches are urgently needed to address microplastic accumulation.
A 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.
Plastics
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the plastic life cycle, covering the origins, ubiquity, and impacts of plastics on human health and ecosystems, and discussing actions individuals and societies can take to reduce plastic pollution.
The Current State of Waste Plastic and Waste Rubber Tasks for the Sustainable Society
This review discusses the state of plastic and rubber waste management challenges in modern society, covering the environmental and health harms caused by leaked plastic and rubber particles. The paper examines recycling limitations and calls for systemic changes to prevent plastic and microplastic pollution from continuing to grow.
The future of plastic
Researchers examine whether biodegradable polymers can solve plastic's environmental crisis, noting that while plastic is enormously useful, society's heavy reliance on it has created a global pollution problem that biodegradable alternatives alone are unlikely to fully resolve.
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.
Living in the Plastic Age
This interdisciplinary work examines plastic pollution from societal and environmental perspectives, arguing that ubiquitous plastic waste and its conversion to microplastics has become so pervasive in shaping human-nature relationships that it defines a distinct 'Plastic Age,' and exploring implications for human health and pathways toward systemic change.
Plastic Pollution: Challenges and Innovative Solutions
This review examines the multifaceted challenges of plastic pollution and surveys innovative solutions spanning material design, waste management, and remediation technologies. The paper synthesises current research on microplastic sources, environmental persistence, and emerging approaches to reducing plastic releases into ecosystems.
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.
The planet in the clutches of plastic garbage: myths, reality, prospects
This review examines the life cycle of polymeric materials to analyze sources and accumulation of plastic waste, discussing the micro- and nanoscale fragmentation problem and arguing that solutions must include ecologically safe technologies for recycling, combustion, and landfill disposal of polymeric waste.
Evaluating the Environmental and Health Impacts of Disposable Plastics: Toward Sustainable Material Alternatives
This review synthesized evidence on the environmental and health impacts of disposable plastics, drawing on environmental science, health studies, and sustainability literature. The paper examined how plastic waste drives ocean pollution and wildlife harm while exploring sustainable alternative materials and policies.
Perspectives on Plastic Waste Management: Challenges and Possible Solutions to Ensure Its Sustainable Use
This review argues that banning all plastics is not realistic and instead calls for better waste management, recycling technology, and circular economy approaches to reduce plastic pollution. The authors outline strategies including biodegradable alternatives, improved recycling infrastructure, and policy changes to minimize plastic entering the environment. Reducing plastic waste at the source is critical for lowering human exposure to microplastics in food, water, and air.