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What harmful microbes are lurking in the world’s 7 billion tonnes of plastic waste?

Pathogenic viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria thrive on plastic. The biohazard risks of this ‘plastisphere’ shouldn’t be overlooked in efforts to tackle the pollution crisis.
By
  1. Changchao Li

    1. Changchao Li is an environmental microbiologist in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.

  2. Jian Liu

    1. Jian Liu is a professor of ecosystem ecology at the Environment Research Institute, Shandong University, Qingdao, China.

  3. Matthias C. Rillig

    1. Matthias C. Rillig is a professor of ecology at the Institute of Biology, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, and director of the Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research, Berlin, Germany.

  4. Michael S. Bank

    1. Michael S. Bank is an environmental biogeochemist at the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway, and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.

  5. Peter Fantke

    1. Peter Fantke is director of and a sustainability assessment scientist at the USEtox Team hosting the global scientific consensus model developed under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Life Cycle Initiative, and chief executive of substitute ApS, Copenhagen, Denmark.

  6. Dong Zhu

    1. Dong Zhu is a professor of environmental microbiology at the Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, China.

  7. Yong-Guan Zhu

    1. Yong-Guan Zhu is director-general of and an environmental scientist at the Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and a professor at the Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, China.

  8. Ling N. Jin

    1. Ling N. Jin is an ecotoxicologist in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Health Technology and Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and a member of the State Key Laboratory of Marine Pollution, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.

A fisher in Indonesia brings his boat to a shoreline covered in discarded plastic rubbish

A fisher in Bangkalan, Indonesia, docks at a beach strewn with plastic waste. Credit: Suryanto Suryanto/Anadolu/Getty

In June, more than 2,000 volunteers participated in the 2024 Global Ocean Cleanup campaign and netted nearly 40 tonnes of plastic debris from just some 80 kilometres of ocean and coasts across the world, including sites from Vietnam to California. Although representing one week’s hard work for the volunteers, such initiatives are a drop in the ocean of plastic waste that is generated each year — about 400 million tonnes, equivalent to the weight of all adult humans currently on Earth.

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Nature 634, 30-32 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03150-6

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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