Plastic is inside us – and could end up killing off humankind

Plastic is forever, and in 2021 Malaysia dumped 73,000 tonnes of it into the sea, making us the world's third largest emitter of plastic waste. That is a deadly record we urgently need to address, now, not in 2025. — 123rf.com

THE Stockholm Resilience Centre’s planetary boundaries are a set of limits within which human activities must operate to keep the planet habitable. These boundaries relate to biodiversity loss, climate change, land use, freshwater use, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, and chemical pollution.

Last year, the centre concluded that the planetary boundary relating to “novel entities” (chemicals and plastics to you and me) was breached – meaning that we are releasing more chemicals and plastics into the environment than the planet can process.