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Prioritizing capture and utilization for microplastic management in water systems

Urgent action is needed to tackle microplastic pollution in aquatic environments. Prioritizing physical capture over degradation can mitigate environmental and health risks, and valorizing captured microplastics into valuable materials could contribute to a circular carbon economy.

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Fig. 1: Capture versus degradation in microplastic management.

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Acknowledgements

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project (DP220101139) and Linkage Project (LP240100542) are acknowledged for support.

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Correspondence to Bing-Jie Ni.

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Nature Reviews Clean Technology thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Chen, Z., Wei, W. & Ni, BJ. Prioritizing capture and utilization for microplastic management in water systems. Nat. Rev. Clean Technol. 1, 525–527 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44359-025-00064-y

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