A sampling of the nearly 6,400 peer-reviewed papers reviewed for the Project's Frontiers in Environmental Science paper, and additional reports cited in "Plastics: Exposing Their Climate Impacts." Publications are grouped into the three major categories of plastics' impacts on climate.
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Plastic lifecycle. Photo credit Chris Boutillier
- C-THRU (2022) Carbon clarity in the petrochemical supply chain
- Center for International Environmental Law (2019) The hidden costs of a plastic planet
- Coalition for Materials Emissions Transparency (COMET) (2022) Making plastics emissions transparent
- Ford, Jambeck et al (2022) The fundamental links between climate change and marine plastic pollution
- GRID-Arendal (2024), Climate impacts of plastics: Global actions to stem climate change and end plastic pollution
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2024), Climate Impact of Primary Plastic Production
- Royer et al. (2018) Production of methane and ethylene from plastic in the environment
- Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty (2023) Policy Brief: Climate change impacts of plastics
Ocean albedo. Photo credit Roxanne Desgagnes
- Galgani and Loiselle (2020) Plastic pollution impacts on marine carbon biogeochemistry
- Shen et al. (2023) Recent advances in the research on effects of micro/nanoplastics on carbon conversion and carbon cycle: a review
- Stubbins et al. (2021) Plastics in the Earth system
- Zhao et al. (2023) Effects of plastic contamination on carbon fluxes in a subtropical coastal wetland of East China
- Zhu, X. (2021) The plastic cycle - an unknown branch of the carbon cycle
Ice cover and atmospheric aerosols affect the Earth's radiation budget. Photo credit Chris Boutillier
- Revell et al. (2021) Direct radiative forcing of airborne microplastics
- Leahy (2019) Microplastics are raining down from the sky, National Geographic
- Xu et al (2023) Characterization of Microplastics in Clouds over Eastern China
- Villarrubia-Gomez et al. (2024) Plastics pollution exacerbates the impacts of all planetary boundaries