Microplastic has been reported in every major open ocean and many freshwater lakes and rivers. Its small size makes it bioavailable to thousands of species across nearly all trophic levels. Because of the difficulty of large-scale cleanup, environmental managers, scientists, and environmentalists have stressed that the best solution to microplastic pollution is source reduction. Recently, one source of microplastic has received much attention in the media and from policy makers: plastic microbeads.
To raise awareness of this issue this issue the Smith Fellow Classes of 2013 and 2014 wrote a policy brief that has just been published in Environmental Science and Technology. Get it here!