Christopher Joyce

U.S. Recycling Industry Is Struggling To Figure Out A Future Without China

Christopher Joyce

China is no longer taking the world's waste. The U.S. recycling industry is overwhelmed — it can't keep up with the plastic being churned out. This doesn't bode well for our plastic waste problem.

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Plastics Or People? At Least 1 Of Them Has To Change To Clean Up Our Mess

Christopher Joyce

As consumers rebel against plastic waste, there's a growing question: Do we invent something people can toss without harming the environment or do we change people by giving them a chance to reuse?

By one estimate, emissions from producing and incinerating plastics could amount to 56 gigatons of carbon — almost 50 times the annual emissions of all of the coal power plants in the U.S. — between now and 2050.

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Plastic Has A Big Carbon Footprint — But That Isn't The Whole Story

Christopher Joyce

Plastic waste litters cities, oceans and even the air. Largely overlooked is how making plastic affects the environment. Plastic is a big contributor to global warming. So are its alternatives.

Anne Schauer-Gimenez (from left) Allison Pieja and Molly Morse of Mango Materials stand next to the biopolymer fermenter at a sewage treatment plant next to San Francisco Bay. The fermenter feeds bacteria the methane they need to produce a biological form of plastic.

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Replacing Plastic: Can Bacteria Help Us Break The Habit?

Christopher Joyce

Entrepreneurs are eager to find substitutes for plastic that naturally degrade. One option is a "natural" plastic made by microbes and then eaten by them. But the process is still in the early days.

The deep ocean is filled with sea creatures like giant larvaceans. They're actually the size of tadpoles, but they're surrounded by a yard-wide bubble of mucus that collects food — and plastic.

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Microplastics Have Invaded The Deep Ocean — And The Food Chain

Christopher Joyce

Giant gyres of plastic in the ocean grab headlines, but it's the tiny bits of plastic that scare scientists. And they've made their way everywhere, a new study finds — including in our seafood.

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The 'Great Dying' Nearly Erased Life On Earth. Scientists See Similarities To Today

Christopher Joyce

It was the biggest extinction in Earth's history. A new Smithsonian exhibit notes that some of the same things that killed over 90% of ocean species 250 million years ago are happening now.

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Remote Island Chain Has Few People — But Hundreds Of Millions Of Pieces Of Plastic

Christopher Joyce

The Cocos Keeling Islands make up barely 6 square miles in the Indian Ocean. It's a good place to measure debris because almost no one lives there. Scientists were flabbergasted by what they found.