Plastic Waste – A Novel Entity that is Exceeding Planetary Boundaries and “that threaten the integrity of Earth system processes”

The abstract of a January 18, 2022 ACS Environmental Science and Technology paper https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c04158 by researchers with Sweden Stockholm Environment Institute, Sweden Univ. of Gothenburg, UK Univ. of Reading, Sweden Stockholm Univ., Technical Univ. of Denmark, Canada Univ. of Toronto and Switzerland ETH Zürich reports that “… the safe operating space of the planetary boundary of novel entities is exceeded since annual production and releases are increasing at a pace that outstrips the global capacity for assessment and monitoring … could have large-scale impacts that threaten the integrity of Earth system processes … We conclude that humanity is currently operating outside the planetary boundary based on the weight-of-evidence for several of these control variables. The increasing rate of production and releases of larger volumes and higher numbers of novel entities with diverse risk potentials exceed societies’ ability to conduct safety related assessments and monitoring. We recommend taking urgent action to reduce the harm associated with exceeding the boundary …” #PlasticWaste #SingleUsePlastic #MicroPlastic @SEIresearch @goteborgsuni @UniofReading @Stockholms_univ