From soil to slugs to songbirds – how plastic is moving through ecosystems

By Emily Thrift, PhD Candidate and Doctoral Tutor in Ecology, University of Sussex

For many people, “plastic pollution” calls to mind pictures of turtles and other marine life drowning in single-use plastic bottles and discarded fishing nets. My own research looks at how the same story is playing out on land.

Plastics are increasingly found in small mammals, insects and the soil. But how it moves through these ecosystems – and the damage it might be doing – is still poorly understood.

My own research into this started during my masters degree. I wanted to find out if plastic pollution was affecting UK mammals – and the results were startling.…

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