GUH Organizes 8th STEM Challenge for UK Schools, Focusing on Marine Protection
to compete in the national final.With an environmental message of marine stewardship and protecting the world’s oceans and seas from plastic pollution at its core, the technology project is built around the premise of creating a new ROV capable of navigating the marine ecosystem to retrieve plastics. The teams of pupils are tasked with designing, building, coding, operating and marketing a model wheeled ROV constructed using Lego Spike sets, with the concepts pitched to a judging panel of industry experts who then decide the winner of each heat. Alongside applying the skills pupils are
Argentina’s Deep Sea Is More Biodiverse Than Scientists Thought
; ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean InstituteScientific understanding of how cold seeps and deep-sea coral reefs interact is still in its adolescence, said Bravo.The team observed trash in some areas, including fishing nets, garbage bags, and a VHS tape in near-pristine condition, owing to the durability of plastics. The sticker on the side of the tape is in Korean, but the team is not sure how it arrived off the Argentinian coast or how old it is
Global Efforts Underway to Document Plastic Pollution
of specific types of litter, such as discarded nets, longlines, buoys, and tires used as boat fenders.Nuclear tracingThe task of identifying and tracking plastic waste in the ocean is being tackled by nuclear scientists globally as part of the NUclear TEChnology for Controlling Plastic Pollution (NUTEC Plastics), an IAEA initiative launched in 2020. Using nuclear-derived imaging techniques, scientists can identify even the tiniest plastic particles in seawater, beach sand, sediment and in marine organisms.NUTEC Plastics equips laboratories worldwide with the technology and technical knowledge required
India and EU Launch Ideathon on Marine Plastic Litter
of India in partnership with the Delegation of the European Union to India, with the support of the India-EU Trade and Technology Council Working Group 2 on Green and Clean Energy Technologies.Mentors from India and the European Union have outlined three challenges:• identifying and tracking marine plastics to develop innovative approaches for detecting and monitoring their movement across coastal and ocean ecosystems,• developing technologies and scalable solutions to reduce plastic litter in marine and coastal environments, and• raising awareness and mobilizing communities for the prevention
Plastic Pollution Talks Run Overtime
by the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in 2022 with the mandate to develop a legally binding global treaty to address plastic pollution.Late Thursday night, countries had been awaiting a new text that could be the basis for further negotiations after delegations who want an ambitious plastics treaty threw out the one proposed on Wednesday.States pushing for a comprehensive treaty, including Panama, Kenya, Britain and the European Union, shared frustration that key articles on the full life cycle of plastic pollution - from the production of polymers to the disposal of waste - as well
New Report Emphasizes Dangers of Plastic Pollution, Announces Global Monitoring System
As ministers and diplomats arrive in Geneva, Switzerland, for a final round of talks to conclude a UN-backed global plastics treaty, a new report published in the British medical journal The Lancet issues a stark warning: Plastic pollution is a grave and growing danger to human and planetary health. The report, which includes co-authors from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s (WHOI) Microplastics team, provides the most up-to-date assessment of the links between human health and plastic pollution across the full life cycle of plastic. A new monitoring system announced at the same
Plastic Free July and a Treaty in the Making
Around 170 million people participate in Plastic Free July each year. It’s a month-long challenge to avoid as much single-use plastics as possible.“We ingest about the equivalent of a credit card of microplastics every week*, and these tiny particles of plastic have found their way to our blood and brains,” said Greenpeace during the month. “Scientists are only beginning to understand the long-term effects of plastics on our health, but many of the chemicals present in plastic are linked to serious health issues such as endocrine disruption, insulin resistance, decreased
Call for Australia to Push for Robust Global Plastics Treaty
will also address financial, technical, and capacity-building aspects.In the leadup, 31 First Nations and environmental groups have called on the Australian Government to continue pushing for a robust and ambitious treaty.Plastic pollution affects many parts of Australia’s coastline:● nationally, plastics make up 81% of all litter collected by Clean Up Australia volunteers;● in Northern Australia, the prevalence of ghost fishing gear is increasing, the ghost nets strangling, entangling and capturing thousands of turtles;● in New South Wales, AUSMAP measured over 12,000 microplastics per square meter
Nanoplastics Abound in the North Atlantic
RV Pelagia. On a trip from the Azores to the continental shelf of Europe, she took water samples at 12 locations where she filtered out anything larger than one micrometer. “By drying and heating the remaining material, we were able to measure the characteristic molecules of different types of plastics in the Utrecht laboratory, using mass spectrometry,” Ten Hietbrink says.The research by NIOZ and Utrecht University provides the first estimate of the amount of nanoplastics in the oceans.Extrapolating the results from different locations to the whole of the North Atlantic Ocean, the researchers
February 2026
