Curbing plastics pollution

Did you see the jaw-dropping centre spread in last month’s Chemistry World? It showed a sandy beach stretching around an uninhabited smidge of land in the Pacific Ocean called Henderson Island. It should have been beautiful – but the remote shoreline of this World Heritage Site was littered with every conceivable type of plastic waste, from bottles and netting to buoys and crates. This picked up widespread media coverage, sparking cries of despair and calls to action. Largely absent, though, was any discussion of the vital role that science and technology must play in solving the world’s plastic pollution problem.