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Microplastics have become a defining environmental issue. Found in oceans, soil, air, food, and even the human body, these tiny plastic particles are now recognised as a persistent and growing form of pollution (European Chemicals Agency, 2018). While awareness of the problem has increased, replacing microplastics with materials that perform just as well, without creating long-term harm, remains a challenge. One promising solution is biodegradable microspheres made from cellu

Every year, more than 2 million tonnes of microplastics are added to products used in everyday life, highlighting the scale at which they are intentionally produced and embedded into the economy. In the EU alone, an estimated 145,000 tonnes of microplastics are deliberately added each year to products such as cosmetics, paints, coatings, detergents, fertilisers, and industrial materials. Of these, around 42,000 tonnes are released into the environment annually during normal u

Microplastics are often spoken about as if they are a single, uniform pollutant. In reality, they are anything but simple. The term microplastics  refers to a vast and diverse group of particles that vary in size, shape, composition, origin, and behaviour in the environment (Rochman et al., 2019). This diversity is precisely what makes microplastics so difficult to study, regulate, and ultimately manage. Understanding the complexity of microplastics is essential if we are to

Microplastics are small plastic particles typically defined as being less than  5 millimetres (mm)  in size, with dimensions ranging from approximately  100 nanometres (nm) to 5 mm . Particles smaller than 100 nm are often classified separately as  nanoplastics , which are even more difficult to detect and study due to their extremely small size (Ocean Conservancy, 2023). Rather than representing a single substance, microplastics constitute a  diverse group of contaminants  t