Pacific's Midway Atoll bird refuge struggles as ocean garbage patch grows
Flying into the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Midway Atoll appears out of the vast blue Pacific as a tiny oasis of coral-fringed land with pristine white sand beaches that are teeming with life. But on the ground, there's a different scene: plastic, pollution and death. With ...
Plastic from ocean garbage patch plagues island sanctuary
Flying into the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Midway Atoll appears out of the vast blue Pacific as a tiny oasis of coral-fringed land with pristine white sand beaches that are teeming with life. But on the ground, there's a different scene: plastic, pollution and death. With ...
In a first for Japan, dish liquid's bottles to use recycled marine plastic
Procter & Gamble Japan K.K. will release a dishwashing liquid in a bottle made from marine plastic waste collected from the coast of Nagasaki Prefecture. Joy Ocean Plastic will be the nation's first daily-use product to use the waste, the Kobe-based unit of U.S. consumer ...
Dutch inventor unveils device to scoop plastic out of rivers
Dutch inventor Boyan Slat is widening his effort to clean up floating plastic from the Pacific Ocean by moving into rivers, too, using a new floating device to catch garbage before it reaches the seas. The 25-year-old university dropout founded The Ocean Cleanup to develop ...
Reusable straws catching on in Japan but yet to see popular groundswell
For some, an ocean full of plastic is the last straw. That's why a growing number of environmentally concerned restaurants in Japan are doing away with single-use plastic straws in favor of reusable silicone and stainless steel ones as a way to combat the global ...
Malaysia working to clear hundreds of plastic waste shipments at ports, officials say
Malaysia is negotiating with countries sending their plastic waste to the Southeast Asian nation to take back the trash and is waiving storage fees to clear hundreds of containers of scrap stranded at ports across the country for months, officials say. Malaysia last year became ...
Plastic reuse the most efficient way to solve marine waste issue, experts say
Although marine plastic has become a prominent environmental issue in recent years, plastic is too valuable a resource to ever truly go away, so effectively managing such waste and placing it in a circular economy system would be the most efficient way to solve ...
Gifu women turn plastic waste found on beaches into accessories
Four women in Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture, are creating accessories made from plastic fragments collected at beaches in Aichi Prefecture, selling them amid growing global concerns over the microplastic waste in the ocean. The women, all in their 20s, say they hope people will have an ...
New app MyMizu aims to reduce plastic waste in Japan, one drink at a time
In a country drowning itself in plastic, the creators of a new app called MyMizu are attempting to change seemingly entrenched views and cultural norms regarding sustainability. It's a challenge the creators acknowledge, but they believe they are making inroads. Two weeks after the release ...
Japan, U.S. and EU to jointly measure plastic waste inflows into the oceans
Japan plans to lead a new initiative to gauge the amount of marine plastic waste released from individual countries in cooperation with the United States and the European Union, according to informed sources. Talks on the matter will start at a four-day working-level meeting of ...
Fast Retailing Co., the operator of the Uniqlo casual apparel chain, says it will produce clothes made from used plastic bottles in cooperation with Toray Industries Inc. The fashion retailer will put the items on sale in next year's spring-summer season, mainly targeting eco-conscious consumers, ...
Lilly, Thailand's Greta Thunberg, wages war on plastic waste blighting her homeland
Skipping school to glide through a dirty Bangkok canal on a paddleboard, Lilly fishes out garbage in her mission to clean up Thailand, where the average person uses eight plastic bags every single day. "I am a kid at war," the bubbly 12-year-old says after ...
