Conveyance, Bounty, and Dangers of Microplastics in Nature

Plastic debris is ubiquitous in the environment resulting in potential threats to ecosystems, biota, or even human health. With global production and rapid expansion, the amount of anthropogenic plastic litter in all environmental matrices has increased dramatically over the last few years. Plastics started to reach the market at a large scale in the 1950s; then, the global production of plastic dramatically increased from 0.5 million tons (Mt) per year in 1960 to 359 million tons (Plastic Europe [1]). Because of its versatile properties, the demand for plastics rapidly grows for various applications: transport, textiles, building, construction, medical and packaging materials. Hence, thousands of plastic goods are demanded in the customer market in our everyday lives, and over 6300 Mt of plastic waste has been produced worldwide. Only 9% of plastic is recycled, 12% is burned, and 79% is accumulated in the environment