Plastic pollution ‘significant driver’ of climate change: Environmental watchdog

By Burak Bir

ANKARA (AA) - Plastic pollution is one of the most prevalent environmental pollutants and a “significant driver” of climate change and biodiversity loss, a new report said on Tuesday.

The report, titled Connecting the Dots: Plastic pollution and the planetary emergency, was published by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a London-based environmental watchdog.

"As well as contributing to biodiversity loss, driving climate change and compromising human health, plastic pollution also poses a direct threat to the very limits of what our planet can manage," the report said.

"Toxic pollution from plastic poses a threat at each stage of its lifecycle, from the point at which plastic becomes a material to the moment it is left to degrade in the environment," it added.

It also underlined that there could be almost 700 million tons of plastic in oceans by 2040, while the weight of plastic will likely far exceed the weight of all fish by 2050.