A Chemical Breakthrough That Could Fix the Plastic Crisis

Hyper-industrial-scale plastic production has become an industrial-scale health, environmental, and remediation problem. It is challenging to put a dollar figure on burying ourselves alive. The damage appears to have no endpoint.

The UNDP estimates that up to $600 billion in environmental damage and ecosystem losses so far, but that figure fails to capture a bare minimum of $250-billion in annual health-care costs linked to plastics. Microplastics are now in our blood and our organs. They are the air that we breathe.