Plastic is broken down incredibly slowly. Tucked away in the wild, it stays there for hundreds of years. There it harms animals, ecosystems and humans. One of the researchers' most important tasks is to track where this plastic comes from.

Plastic in the sea

Once plastic reaches the seas, it becomes much more difficult and expensive to clean up. For this reason, researchers are working to trace plastic to find out its source.

- If you know that a lot of plastic comes from a specific source, you can try to stop the plastic there, says Elena Ghorokova, professor of environmental science at Stockholm University.

A study from 2017 until about 90 percent of all plastic in our seas comes there via ten rivers. Eight of these rivers are in Asia, the other two in Africa. But Europe is not debt free, among other things we export large quantities of plastic debris to China.

Better recovery

There are around seven types of plastics classification and not all plastics can be recycled together. When plastics reach the recycling center unsorted, it is often too expensive to recycle the plastic.

Researchers are therefore working on creating substances that allow plastic to be recycled together. In addition, they try to increase the life of the plastic so that it can be recycled more times.

- The plastic does not have an endless cycle, says Marie Löf environmental scientist and ecotoxicologist at Stockholm University.

Although plastic is a long-lived material, it can only be recycled a number of times before it loses quality. In addition, a large part of plastic is used only once before it becomes debris.

- We must be much better at recycling plastic, says Marie Löf.

The implications of microplastics

Much research is devoted to estimating the extent of microplastics in our environment. Microplastics are plastics that are under five millimeters in size. Researchers have found microplastics a little everywhere from food to drinks, to the sea and in animals. But exactly how much there is and how the plastic affects us is still unclear.

A study from Lund University investigated nanoplastics, plastic that is so small that it can get into fish's brains. The study showed that the plastic can cause brain damage to the fishermen and interfere with their behavior. However, the study was conducted in a laboratory, not in nature.

How can we remove the microplastics?

- I do not think we will find any solution for microplastics in nature, it is too small sizes to clean up. Instead, we must focus on stopping large plastic before it breaks down into microplastics, says Elena Ghorokova.