📋 Tender Overview
The United States has made real progress in reducing pollution and cleaning up waterways. But the proliferation of plastics pollution while largely invisible to the human eye is becoming alarmingly worse.Microplastics and nanoplastics - tiny polymer fragments - are turning up everywhere in waterways fish birds wildlife and in people. Plastic is the number one type of trash found at sea and one of the most urgent environmental and health challenges of our time. According to the Associated Press Half the plastic that has ever existed on Earth was made in the last 20 years. Only 9 percent of the plastic sold every year in the United States is recycled according to the U.S. EPA. Up to 13 million metric tons of it ends up in the worlds oceans each year the equivalent of a garbage truck-full being dumped into the sea every minute where it kills fish birds sea turtles whales and dolphins that eat it or become entangled by it.Not all plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from plastic bags or water bottles. Tiny plastic fragments primarily from clothing and textiles get released from washing machines and then into wastewater treatment plants. These fragments and films come from the breakdown of larger harder plastics as well as from things like flexible plastic packaging and other discarded plastic that finds its way into waterways through storm-water systems.Now researchers at the University of Rhode Island URI are getting a 1 million boost to better understand the flow of plastic particles through the environment and develop new solutions to stop plastic waste and pollution.
