In this blog we presented the most exciting, innovative, current and urgent findings from the research focus "Plastics in the Environment". Plastic waste in the environment is a global problem with unforeseeable ecological consequences. Yet we still know far too little about how plastic enters the environment, how it spreads in rivers, oceans and in the soil and how it affects humans and animals.

In order to close these knowledge gaps, Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research had launched the research priority "Plastics in the Environment - Sources - Sinks - Solutions" in 2017. 20 innovative joint research projects involving more than 100 institutions from science, industry, public authorities and civil society researched the topic of plastics in the environment. The aim was to obtain an overall picture of the environmental impacts of plastics along their entire life cycle, from production to use to disposal, and also to find proposed solutions for politics and society. The Ecologic Institute led the scientific accompanying research (PlastikNet) of the funding programme "Plastics in the Environment".

PlastikNet scientifically accompanied the 20 joint projects and supported networking through conferences and topic-specific workshops, as well as through synthesis and transfer activities across the projects. The Ecologic Institute was also responsible for public relations. As part of this, it provided the blog to make the scientific results accessible to a broad interested audience. New contributions were published about every two weeks.