In the 2008 Disney film Wall-E, a tiny robot finds himself alone on planet Earth, working to clean up a world decimated by trash and abandoned by humans who left it that way. Heartwarming as the film ...

BBC’s Anna Holligan chronicles how a university lab is using dead trees and fungus to make an Earth-friendly insulation.

Our world is increasingly plastic. Back in the 1950s, humanity produced just 5 million metric tons of plastic per year; today it’s 400 million metric tons. Since plastic can take hundreds or thousands ...

One of the big problems with plastic waste is the difficulty in understanding the recyclability of materials. The other is the need for a legally binding instrument to eliminate plastic pollution ...

With conventional waste management systems falling short, many scientists are turning to nature for innovative solutions to the issue of plastic waste. One promising avenue is microbial degradation: ...

Researchers are working on manipulating the digestive systems of wax worms to create a scalable way of disposing of plastic. In 2017, European researchers discovered a potential solution. The larvae ...

The surging tide of microplastics is already an environmental and health threat, but as the world heats up — driving increasingly extreme weather — it’s transforming them into “more mobile, persistent ...

Plastic is one of humanity's most useful inventions... and one of its most persistent problems. Plastic has become so ingrained in modern life that it's easy to forget how long it lingers once tossed ...

This article is part of CNN Underscored’s Earth Week, a weeklong focus on our planet and ways to celebrate and preserve it. We’ll be featuring tips on how to live more sustainably, products to help ...

Plasticizers—the most common of which are called phthalates—are used to make plastic more flexible and more durable. They’re so widely used that today, they show up inside almost all of us, right ...

Nick Blackmer is a librarian, fact-checker, and researcher with more than 20 years of experience in consumer-facing health and wellness content. Many plastic dishes and storage containers are marked ...

With conventional waste management systems falling short, many scientists are turning to nature for innovative solutions to the issue of plastic waste. One promising avenue is microbial degradation: ...