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According to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the estimated 11 million metric tons of plastic currently entering the ocean annually will triple by the year 2040. Much of this plastic breaks down into microplastics, less than 5 millimeters in size. These tiny particles are accumulating not only in oceans, but in all the world’s ecosystems, from the highest mountains to the Arctic’s pristine wilderness.

This past November, representatives from at least 170 countries gathered in Busan, South Korea, for the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5). They were tasked with developing an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution. Although this session was initially expected to conclude the negotiations, it ended without a finalized agreement. Consequently, another meeting will be scheduled for 2025 to continue the discussions.

Microplastics have been found in freshwater ecosystems around the world. Yet, because they are still an emerging contaminant, we lack long-term data about their abundance and sources. One way to fill this gap is by analyzing radiometrically dated lake sediment cores to generate a historical record of microplastic pollution in freshwater environments. These cores act like time capsules, preserving microplastics that have settled over the years.

The Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative (CSMI) is a collaborative program between environmental organizations from Canada and the United States that focuses on monitoring and assessing conditions in the five Laurentian Great Lakes. For 2024, the spotlight was on Lake Erie, where a team of scientists embarked on a research cruise in July. This cruise, hosted by the Great Lakes Center at SUNY Buffalo State, aimed to explore changes in the lake's sediment bio-geochemical conditions. The primary focus involved conducting a lake-wide benthos survey as part of the U.S. Great Lakes Biology Monitoring Program, led by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Microplastics (MPs), tiny plastic particles less than 5 mm in diameter, pose a growing threat to both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems due to their toxicity and resistance to degradation. In urban areas, stormwater runoff is a major conduit for MPs, often channeling them into green infrastructure such as stormwater ponds (SWPs). While existing evidence suggests that SWPs can effectively reduce MP loads from urban runoff, the mechanisms behind their retention and accumulation remain underexplored.

The Microplastics Fingerprinting project is working towards better understanding of microplastic pollution in the natural environment, including the quantities, particle sizes, and composition of plastics found in sediments, soils, and water. This work requires recovering microplastic particles from different types of environmental samples (i.e., matrices). However, there is an overall lack of standardization across the methods people use to do this extraction in a way that ensures results can be compared and quantified across projects. 

From April 23to 29, the world came together in Ottawa for the global plastics treaty negotiations at INC-4 (the 4^th session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee). The University of Waterloo, through the Water Institute, participated as an official observer. This involved sending a delegation to witness the negotiations at a pivotal moment in the collective goal of ending plastic pollution. The delegation consisted of members of the Microplastics Fingerprinting project, Stephanie Slowinski, Nancy Goucher, and Cassandra Sherlock, as well as Elizabeth Prince, Assistant Professor from the Department of Chemical Engineering.