It’s showing up nearly everywhere these days, from 36,000 feet below the ocean’s surface in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth, to 29,000 feet above sea level on Mt. Everest, the highest peak.

It litters our landscapes, contaminates our soil, overflows our landfills, and is accumulating at alarming rates in our rivers and oceans.

And it’s not just our environment and the animals that live there that are at risk.

Humans face growing risks, too.

Microplastics and nanoplastics—specks of plastic so small they can be invisible to the eye—are in our air, our drinking water, our food. With every breath we take or every bite we eat, we’re taking them into our bodies.

Recent research suggests the average person consumes up to a credit card’s worth of plastic this way each week. Over time, all this plastic can build up in our bodies and pose health threats we’re only beginning to understand, though there’s already a growing body of evidence linking this long-term exposure to neurodevelopmental and reproductive disorders, obesity, cancer and other ills.

Video: Plastic Pollution: A Global Issue

Earth’s climate is also feeling the heat.

That’s because up to 99% of all plastic is made using crude oil, natural gas, or other fossil fuel-derived products. When manufacturers burn these fossil fuels to make the plastic, they emit roughly 400 million tons of climate-warming greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere each year. That’s more than is emitted annually by all sources in the United Kingdom.

And yet, we keep producing and using more plastic every year while only recycling about 9% of it.

We’re on an unsustainable course. But it’s not too late to find a better way forward.

And that, said Zoie Diana, is where Duke University’s Plastic Pollution Working Group (PPWG) comes in.

Blazing a New Path

Diana, who recently earned her PhD in marine science and conservation from Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, co-founded the interdisciplinary working group in 2017 with faculty members Meagan Dunphy-Daly, John Virdin, Dan Rittschof, Michelle Nowlin and Jason Somarelli, who hold appointments at the Nicholas School, the Duke Law School, the Duke School of Medicine and the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability.

“It struck us that the best way to tackle an issue as complex and multi-faceted as plastic pollution was to bring together interdisciplinary teams of scholars who could pool their expertise to shed new light on the problem, identify new avenues for exploration, and work toward new and more equitable solutions,” Diana said. “There was no existing group at Duke doing that, so we started our own.”

Today, the group has more than 50 members from 12 Duke schools and academic units, including doctoral, masters and undergraduate students who work side by side with faculty and postdocs on research, policy analysis and educational outreach projects.

Members come from a broad range of fields, including environmental toxicology, business, medicine, public policy, engineering, law, bioinformatics, marine conservation, environmental justice, history, chemistry, resource and environmental management, and the arts. In many cases, they’ve never worked together before.

Video: Plastic Solutions: A Global Response

Initial funding for the group came from a Pre-Catalyst Grant from the Nicholas Institute. Current funding comes from an Intellectual Community Planning Grant from Duke Interdisciplinary Studies.

In addition to creating a space where scholars from diverse disciplines can come together to brainstorm and collaborate, the PPWG team organizes seminars, panel discussions and other educational outreach events that are open to the broader campus community.

“There’s a high level of concern about finding a sustainable alternative to single-use plastics and about plastic pollution in general. So, it’s important that we get accurate and timely information out so people understand what’s being done about the problem, what still needs to be done, and how they can get involved,” said Dunphy-Daly, associate dean for experiential education and undergraduate research at the Nicholas School.

There’s sometimes a misperception on issues like plastic pollution that you need to be a scientist, an engineer, or a policy expert to help move the needle in the right direction, Dunphy-Daly said. But one current project by a PPWG member leverages the storytelling expertise of Master of Fine Arts student Laura Asherman to help engage the public in the effort to reduce plastic use—in this case by creating a film about microplastics. Called “The Dumpster Dive”, told from the viewpoint of cockroaches who are elated that microplastics may turn out to be the silver bullet that finally eradicates their species’ archnemesis—humans—from Earth. The film, which features PPWG members Anna Lewis and Imari Walker-Franklin, premiered April 7 at Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art.

“That’s the beauty of having an interdisciplinary focus,” Diana said. “You can tap into all kinds of expertise and achieve things you might not have been able to achieve otherwise.”

Video: The Future of Plastic Research

Moving the Needle

Although it’s still far too soon to assess PPWG’s long-term impacts, its members—faculty and students alike—have achieved some impressive accomplishments so far.

Over the last two years, working group sub-teams have published five peer-reviewed papers that are helping shed light on the causes and consequences of plastic pollution and on potential solutions for it. Individual members of the group have contributed to additional papers, as well.

Topics have included emerging technologies to prevent and collect marine plastic debris; the role bioengineering could play in forging a plastic-free future; the impact nanoplastics have on aquatic animals and ecosystems at nearly every level of biological function; and a new framework for estimating the costs of marine plastic pollution interventions.

Other topics covered are the impacts (or lack therein) of voluntary corporate pledges to reduce plastic use; the inequitable distribution of plastic benefits and burdens on global and local economies and public health; and the effectiveness (or lack therein) of different global policies aimed at curbing single-use plastics and pollution.

Ongoing research by PPWG members suggests the flow of innovative studies will not dry up anytime soon. Jason Somarelli, assistant professor of medicine, and his team are working to develop new enzymes and microbial systems to degrade plastic. Marc Deshusses, professor of civil and environmental engineering, is working to create sustainable processes to convert non-recyclable plastic waste into energy. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“I like to think of the Plastic Pollution Working Group as an incubator for new ideas and new approaches,” said Diana, whose doctoral dissertation was on multisector mitigation of single-use plastic pollution. “It’s been extremely rewarding to bring these brilliant minds from different disciplinary backgrounds together around this issue.”