Plastic pollution is a global occurrence from villages to urban, farms to deserts, deep oceans to mountaintops, tropical landfills to arctic snow including in food chain. Over the past 60 years, there has been a steady build-up of plastic garbage on land and ocean's surface, mainly because of the unplanned, unrestricted use of plastic in routine use, non-cycling and use and throw habit of a common man. As usage of this strong and cheap material has increased over the past few decades, the waste problem has gotten worse because of non-biodegradation in nature. Since the turn of the century, the amount of plastic produced worldwide has quadrupled, reaching over 400 million metric tonnes annually in 2021. While plastic items typically have a lifespan of ten years, depending on their composition and method of disposal, plastics can take up to 500 years to degrade. The environment is harmed by the removal of all this plastic. Only 16% of plastics are recycled; the remainder is either disposed of in landfills or burned.
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Plastics are all around us and have gained popularity in scholarly circles. Numerous research have examined the analytical techniques, sources, abundance, travel, destiny, and environmental degradation, hazards to the natural world, animals, and even human health. The properties of plastic pollution, which are essential to comprehending this new issue, are yet unclear (Li et al, 2021).Plastic pollution of the environment has attracted a lot of public attention, but the issue has also been the subject of debate, with arguments suggesting money would be better used on other issues, such global warming (Lavers et al., 2022). Global attention is presently being paid to environmental plastic pollution. The ecosystem gets contaminated when used or abandoned plastic garbage is dumped improperly. A critical problem and a key source of worry for soil contamination is the disposal of municipal wastewater effluent, sewage sludge landfills, and plastic mulch from agricultural operations (Chae et al., 2018).
Global plastic production increased from 1.5 million tonnes in the 1950s to 335 million tonnes in 2016 (Li et al. 2016; Lebreton et al. 2017; Statista 2018). Reports indicate that a staggering 79% of plastic items have not undergone appropriate recycling procedures and, instead, have been disposed of in landfills or released into the environment. The presence of plastic waste in coastal waterways was initially observed by researchers in the 1970s (Carpenter and Smith 1972). However, the problems weren't given much attention until the term “micro plastic” (with an effective size smaller than 5 mm) was proposed in 2004 by Thompson et al. (2004). Researchers have since written an increasing number of pertinent publications on topics including the origin, prevalence, destiny, incidence, and sink of micro plastics in natural settings. The so-called “micro plastic pollution” is most likely this (Karbalaei et al. 2018).
The idea of plastic pollution is when plastics—regardless of their sizes, forms, or types—are introduced into the environment and pose a risk to the environment, species, or even human health. Plastics, when introduced into natural habitats, have the potential to travel from the land to rivers and ultimately the ocean (Jambeck et al. 2015). Plastics can have a negative effect on the environment, animals, and even human health throughout the trip (Galloway and Lewis 2016; Sussarellu et al. 2016). In the meanwhile, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), heavy metals, and microbes in the environment might travel through plastics (Rodrigues et al. 2018; Massos and Turner 2017; Neto et al. 2019). Additionally, it has been shown that compounds such as monomer, oligomer, and additives are released into the environment by plastics, suggesting that these materials may potentially be sources of some harmful substances (Chen et al 2019).