plastic pollution

GeoTalk: meet Kara Müller, researcher of biodegradable plastic!

Simon Clark July 17, 2024

Kara Müller

Hello Kara. Thank you for joining this edition of GeoTalk! Could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your background? Thank you, Simon. I am excited to join you for the interview. I grew up in the middle of Germany in Bad Homburg, close to Frankfurt. After school, I travelled through Australia with occasional jobs, and after one year, I decided to return to Germany to study chemis ...[Read More]

Turning adversity into opportunity: mapping plastic pollution in rivers

Jakub Stepanovic April 17, 2024

In July 2021, the Benelux area, Germany, and France experienced heavy rainfall followed by mass flooding, causing widespread damage. Along the vast quantities of plastic swept along the riverbanks, Rahel Hauk, a researcher from Wageningen University, conducted fieldwork to assess the impact of the flood event on plastic deposition. Amidst the debris, Hauk and her colleagues noticed a large volume ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: meet Freija Mendrik, researcher of microplastics pollution in coral reefs!

Simon Clark June 16, 2023

Freija Mendrik

Hi Freija. Thank you for joining us today! Could you tell our readers a bit about yourself before we dive in? Hi Simon, thanks for inviting me! I’m a marine scientist based in the UK specialising in microplastic pollution but my work has taken me across many different disciplines from physical geography to ecotoxicology. Recently my research has focused on trying to understand what impacts the tra ...[Read More]

Why single solution strategies cannot solve the plastic pollution problem

Gillian D'Souza June 2, 2023

Credit: David Jones (from imaggeo.egu.eu)

It appears that plastics have well and truly invaded even our most inaccessible environments: the deepest point in the ocean (the Mariana trench) and the highest mountain peak in the world (Mt. Everest) both contain pieces of plastic from human activities miles away. With plastic waste flowing into aquatic ecosystems expected to nearly triple by 2040, it is safe to say that nature is in “emergency ...[Read More]