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Plastic pollution and climate change have common culprits – and similar solutions.

The penultimate round of negotiations for a global pact on plastic ended yesterday in Ottawa. Nearly 200 countries have agreed that a treaty must tackle plastic pollution at every stage of its existence, from oil rigs and refineries to factories, shops and homes. But when Rwanda and Peru proposed cutting the amount of plastic produced worldwide by 40% over the next 15 years, the UN talks faltered.

This stalemate has been, at least partially, engineered by the same companies stalling climate action: fossil fuel firms and their petrochemical partners.

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage comes from our weekly climate action newsletter. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 30,000+ readers who’ve subscribed.

Most plastics are derived from fossil fuels. Oil and gas companies extract these fuels and petrochemical firms refine and synthesise plastic from them. Reports suggest that the number of lobbyists representing both industries at the negotiations is increasing.

Recycled lobbying tactics

Reducing plastic production is the most effective way to cut pollution according to a recent study. Since a proposal for phasing down production failed to gain enough support in Ottawa however, it’s unclear what the agreement – expected later this year – will eventually look like.

“Will it be ambitious, with strict binding measures focusing on all stages of the plastics life cycle (including the ‘upstream’ stages associated with resource extraction, manufacturing and processing)?” ask Antaya March, Cressida Bowyer and Steve Fletcher, researchers who study the plastic waste epidemic at the University of Portsmouth.

“Or will it be a weaker treaty, with voluntary and country-led measures that focus mainly on waste management and pollution prevention (the ‘downstream’ stages)?”

Read more:
A global plastics treaty is being negotiated in Ottawa this week – here’s the latest

Profit-minded petrochemical companies have long insisted that downstream strategies, like ramping up recycling, are the best way to manage plastic waste. An investigation showed this was disingenuous: plastic producers knew more than three decades ago that recycling was complicated, expensive and ineffective – despite what their marketing departments said.

Today, the global recycling system is a mess, says Kutoma Wakunuma, an associate professor of information systems at De Montfort University:

“Although plastic waste can be seen as a trade between developed and developing countries, which allows the latter to be paid in exchange for dealing with that waste, this trade isn’t an equal one.”

Read more:
Plastic waste is hurting women in developing countries – but there are ways to stop it

Wakunuma describes how waste pickers in several African countries sift the imported refuse of richer nations for plastic bottles and other recyclable items. These workers, predominantly women, may be paid four pence a kilogram for what they manage to salvage, she says.

Waste pickers toil for a pittance in horrendous conditions.
Tinnakorn jorruang/Shutterstock

“And that waste sometimes ends up burned, rather than being recycled. In 2020, 40% of the UK’s plastic waste was sent to Turkey, where instead of being recycled some of it was illegally dumped and burned.”

Two billion people worldwide lack dedicated rubbish collection services. Many of them breathe toxic fumes from the open burning of plastic according to waste management experts Costas Velis and Ed Cook at the University of Leeds. This is a serious and overlooked health crisis, they say.

Read more:
Health crisis: up to a billion tonnes of waste potentially burned in the open every year

The recycling facilities of developing countries are overwhelmed. Yet oil firms see these places – where environmental regulations are typically weaker – as promising markets for more single-use plastic that is cheap and difficult to recycle says Deirdre McKay, a reader in geography and environmental politics at Keele University.

Read more:
Fossil fuel industry sees the future in hard-to-recycle plastic

Turn off the taps

Fossil fuels and petrochemicals have a long history: the first synthetic chemicals were derived from coal. In the future, global demand for oil and gas will fall as more buildings and vehicles run on renewable electricity – but emissions will remain high if fossil fuel firms are allowed to continuing ploughing money into making plastics instead say industry sustainability experts Fredric Bauer (Lund University) and Tobias Dan Nielsen (IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute).

Read more:
Oil companies are ploughing money into fossil-fuelled plastics production at a record rate – new research

Some of the solutions to plastic waste and climate change are the same. Like scrapping fossil fuel subsidies, which keep plastic production (and fossil fuel extraction) artificially cheap.

Read more:
Fossil fuel subsidies amount to hundreds of billions of dollars a year – here’s how to get rid of them

More generally, evidence supports the idea of phasing out plastic production to curb mounting pollution – and something similar is true for climate change.

Plastic production generates vast quantities of climate-heating greenhouse gas.
Mountaintreks/Shutterstock

“There is a wealth of scientific evidence demonstrating that a fossil fuel phase-out will be essential for reining in the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change,” says Steve Pye, an associate professor of energy systems at UCL.

“Since no new fields need to be brought into development, global production of oil and gas should be falling.”

Read more:
COP28 president is wrong – science clearly shows fossil fuels must go (and fast)

A legally binding agreement that aims to curtail plastic production could be the best outcome from the final summit in Busan, South Korea in late November. But even this may not deter countries and companies that make a lot of money from plastic. With equivalent climate legislation, “legally binding” in practice has meant campaigners having to drag governments and corporations through the courts for years to make them keep their promises says Rebecca Willis, a governance expert at Lancaster University.

Read more:
The UK’s Climate Change Act, once the envy of the world, faces a stress test

At the very least, campaigners on both plastic waste and climate change can benefit from combining their efforts.

“The environment appears to be drowning in plastic for the same reason that global temperatures continue to rise,” says McKay. “Fossil fuels have remained cheap and abundant.” Läs mer…

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is scheduled to make its first flight into space with astronauts on May 6, 2024. This flight and a few others will take place take under contract with Nasa, as part of a programme to transport astronauts from Earth to the International Space Station (ISS) and back.

Following years of delays, a successful flight would provide the United States with a second operational spacecraft to carry astronauts to low-Earth orbit, after SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

Having two different spacecraft available provides a back-up option if something should go wrong with one of them. So it will secure access to space for astronauts from American soil. While Starliner will be flying to the ISS for now, it could eventually make trips to future commercial space stations, like that being built by Houston-based company Axiom Space.

Getting to space has never been easy, however. In the case of Starliner, that is something of an understatement. The project began back in 2010 as part of Nasa’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) when Boeing, along with SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada, was selected to develop spacecraft that could provide access to low-Earth orbit and the ISS.

The CCP design requirements were that the spacecraft had to be capable of ferrying at least four astronauts safely to and back from the ISS, to remain docked there for at least 210 days, and to provide at least 24 hours of life support in the event of an emergency return to Earth from orbit.

However, the project has been beset with delays, including supply chain issues, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The original contract was intended to certify Starliner for orbital operations with astronauts in 2017. However, the first orbital flight test, without astronauts, did not occur until 20 December, 2019.

Starliner will touch down on land, which removes the need for recovery ships.
NASA/Bill Ingalls

It was intended to be an eight-day mission in which the spacecraft would rendezvous with the ISS and dock, before returning to Earth. During the flight, the spacecraft’s onboard clock suffered a technical malfunction, which caused the rocket engines to fire – manoeuvring the craft into the wrong orbit. It failed to reach the ISS and returned to Earth after only two days.

Read more:
Boeing’s Starliner is about to launch − if successful, the test represents an important milestone for commercial spaceflight

After lengthy investigations and technical fixes, Boeing agreed to re-run the un-crewed flight test at its own expense. Orbital Flight Test 2 launched on May 19, 2022 – two years after SpaceX’s Crew Dragon had made its first successful crewed flight to the ISS. This time, Starliner’s flight was successful. The spacecraft reached the ISS and docked on 21 May, 2022, where it stayed for four days, before making a safe return to Earth.

In the meantime, SpaceX has managed to launch nine flights to the ISS carrying astronauts and four commercial flights carrying a mixture of civilians and astronauts from other countries. The flight on May 6 will carry two experienced Nasa astronauts aboard. They are Sunita “Suni” Williams and Butch Wilmore. Both have flown on both the space shuttle and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

New suits

They’ll wear distinctive blue flight suits which, unlike most previous designs, feature a flexible hood rather than a solid one. The lightweight materials permit the astronauts to perform delicate tasks such as using a tablet despite having gloved hands.

Flight suits are designed only to be worn inside the pressurised environment of the spacecraft, not outside, and only during ascent to and return from orbit. However, they provide protection and life support to the astronauts if the capsule depressurises during these most hazardous phases of the flight.

Boeing flight suits feature a zip-up hood rather than a helmet.
NASA / Frank Micheaux

The combination of greater mobility, lighter weight and better dexterity, as well as a very wide field-of-view out of the hood visor, has made these suits quite popular with the astronauts who have tested them.

Starliner itself is comprised of the crew capsule and a service module. The crew capsule is the part that carries people and is made of an aluminium alloy. It can accommodate up to seven astronauts, or four astronauts with up to 100kg of cargo.

The crew capsule is reusable, meaning it can be sent back into space after completing a mission, and is designed to make at least 10 flights into orbit. One innovative design feature of the spacecraft is the absence of welded sections. The crew capsule is comprised of two sections which are bolted together, rather than welded, in order to improve structural strength.

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will launch aboard the spacecraft.
NASA/Kim Shiflett

The service module houses the electrical power systems, and four
Rocketdyne rocket engines. These are designed to rapidly separate the spacecraft from the Atlas V launch rocket in the event of an emergency during the ascent into space. They’re also used for manoeuvring the spacecraft once it reaches orbit.

Once in orbit, Starliner is capable of making a completely automated flight to, and docking with, the ISS, without any intervention from astronauts on board. However, astronauts can still take manual control of the spacecraft if necessary. Once at ISS, Starliner is designed to remain docked at the station for up to seven months.

Starliner is built in an innovative way that avoids welding pieces of metal together.
NASA/ Kim Shiflett

When it is time to return to Earth, the crew will get back in Starliner and detach from the ISS. Just prior to atmospheric entry, the service module is detached and discarded. The crew capsule then uses a combination of heat shields and parachutes to slow its speed, before touching down on land. The landing is softened for the crew by the use of airbags.

This differs from the mode of return used by Nasa’s Orion spacecraft, which will be used to visit the Moon, and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, both of which splash down at sea. By returning to land, Starliner removes the need to deploy specialist ships to sea in order to recover the spacecraft.

Despite the delays, Starliner looks to be a very capable modern spacecraft, which should provide the US with a second means of reaching the ISS and any commercial successors for years to come. There’s a lot riding on a successful performance on May 6. Läs mer…

Just over six months ahead of the US election, the world is starting to consider what a return to a Trump presidency might mean. While Americans might be weighing up the difference between the two candidates domestic policies, the rest of the globe is more interested in what foreign policy decisions he might make.

Donald Trump has already hinted at some areas he is particularly likely to address: China, Nato, Ukraine and Gaza among them. Recent statements during the campaign and leaked memos – as well as his last stint as president signal moves that may be ahead.

“A handful of successes — and many more failures” is how Harvard professor of international affairs Stephen Walt describes Trump’s global decisions in his first term.

Joel Rubin, deputy assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs in the Obama administration, characterised Trump’s “America First” catchphrase as “America first, but really America alone”, emphasising Trump’s isolationist credentials. But could his assertive attitudes to other nations have some positive fallout?

Nato

Trump had a mixed relationship with Nato in his first term. After declaring the organisation “obsolete” in January 2017, he later backtracked on this position. However, much of the damage with America’s Nato allies had already been done, and relations remained frosty.

Trump has been hinting that if reelected he would cut US funding to Nato or indeed not stand by article 5 of its founding treaty, which says that if one Nato member was attacked militarily, others would come to their aid. This has already caused concern across Europe.

Some European allies have taken heed of Trump’s early warnings, and are now starting to increase their defence spending and, in some cases, increase military recruitment and reservist numbers to help deter Russia.

Some might argue that Trump’s intention when he made these comments was to increase the military capacity and spending of America’s European allies – and might suggest this is already a Trump success.

Trump is not the first US president to call on Nato allies to spend more on defence, in fact most US presidents have had the same message for Nato. Where Trump differed was in the severity of his comments and the threatening manner of his delivery.

A former Trump administration secretary of defense, James Mattis, reported that in his initial meetings with Trump he had fought to persuade Trump that “if we didn’t have Nato Trump would want to create it”.

Yet, in a second administration, Trump is likely to appoint far fewer establishment figures who want to stand up for international alliances. There are reports that a special unit has been set up to select new appointees that are completely onside with Trump’s perspective, ahead of November.

China

In his previous term Trump was heavily focused on US-China competition and how the relationship between the two countries needed to change. As a candidate and as president, Trump made the battle between the US and China a big part of his foreign policy rhetoric.

In January 2020 Trump announced almost $360 billion (£268 billion) of tariffs on products from China, seeking to encourage US shoppers to buy American goods instead. Despite this, the consensus on these measures is that they actually caused damage to both the US and Chinese economies.

A return of Trump to the Oval Office is likely to signal a return to this tough approach towards China. In his interview with Time magazine, he suggested tariffs of more than 60% on Chinese goods were part of his plan. While his previous tariffs may not have been deemed a success, there is every reason to suppose that Trump will once again pursue a similar tough-on-China policy if elected.

Donald Trump on a visit to Israel in 2017.
Xinhua/Alamy Stock Photo

Russia

Another theme from Trump’s first time in office that is likely to crop up again is his relationships with particular leaders and autocrats, whose rhetorical style was somewhat similar to his. From Vladimir Putin to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Kim Jong-Un to Jair Bolsonaro, Trump’s interactions with other world leaders were noted for how friendly and complimentary he was to these “strongman” characters.

Trump’s relationships with these leaders tend to leave him believing this gives him more influence with them. This inflated idea of his power may have provoked his statement that he can “solve the Ukraine war in a day”. But examination of his previous record shows that his “friends” do not always fall in line.

When, in 2019, Trump wrote to Erdoğan urging him not to launch military action against Syrian Kurdish forces, the Turkish president clearly ignored his advice.

Trump has indicated that he would not fund the Ukrainian government in its fight against the Russia invasion if he became president, calling for Europe to shoulder the financial burden. This statement may leave Putin feeling that he dosn’t need to hold back military advances in Ukraine, or worry about a US response.

The Middle East

Trump has described himself as the “most pro-Israel” president in history, and his Peace to Prosperity plan has been described as a monumental shift from previous attempts.

The plan proposed legitimising Israeli settlements in the West Bank, establishing East Jerusalem as the Palestinian territory’s capital and, according to the PLO, giving the Palestinians control of just “15% of historic Palestine”.

Trump also controversially moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which provoked criticism from Muslim leaders. Jerusalem is claimed by both Palestinians and Israel as their capital. But recently he has been hinting that he was not happy with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and was critical of his leadership.

Given this legacy from his first term, it is doubtful that a second Trump administration would be able to bring parties together for negotiations in the current conflict in Gaza.

Iran and the threat it posed was once a key focus for Trump. His response to the recent Iranian drone attack on Israel demonstrates that this is likely to be the same in 2025 if he is elected. Trump reposted a tweet aimed at the Iranian leadership from 2018, where he warned the Iranian president to be cautious about threatening the US. Trump is likely to continue this aggressive rhetoric towards Iran.

Based on campaign remarks and his previous policies, another Trump presidency threatens to deepen US isolationism and backslide on US commitments to international bodies. Given this Trump 2.0 foreign policy, it is hard to see any positives in foreign policy for the rest of the west from a Trump victory this November. Läs mer…

The last time Labour won Blackpool South, the party won 270 other constituencies. It was 1997 and Labour took 179 more than all other parties combined. Tony Blair walked down a flag-festooned Downing Street later that sunny May day.

The debate about whether Britain is approaching a 1992 knife-edge election, where a surprisingly resilient Conservative government retains office, or a 1997-style landslide in which it is humiliated, increasingly seems like being resolved.

Like Blackpool Tower, the constituency of Blackpool South stayed red for a long time after 1997. That was until, in 2019, it shifted on the sands of Brexit.

That general election felt more significant at the time than it seems likely to be in the long run. One of the least enduring consequences of that tumultuous event was the short and less-than-illustrious parliamentary career of now-former MP Scott Benton, who resigned following allegations he had breached lobbying rules (which he denied).

The swing from the Conservatives to Labour in the byelection to replace Benton was 26.3%. It is one of the biggest to Labour since the war: only Dudley in 1994 and Wellingborough in 2024 exceeded it.

Blackpool South is the fifth byelection swing to Labour of over 20% in this parliament alone. And six of Labour’s ten biggest post-war byelection gains have taken place in the past two years. For Labour leader Keir Starmer, in a statement that could easily have been written last month, the “seismic win in Blackpool South is the most important result today”.

Even for a byelection, however, a 32% turnout is poor. It perhaps reflects the extent of the enthusiasm for Labour, and for its leader. But this will be a general election of least worsts. Labour had higher fitness-to-govern ratings in 2014 than it does today, but the Conservative party’s are far worse. Starmer has a low net satisfaction rating, but a better one than Sunak.

Reform stood selectively in these elections, performing better than the Conservatives, if not well. Their candidate took 17% in the Blackpool South byelection – the party’s highest vote share yet, in a seat where it ought to have been. David Jones, the Tory, managed only a narrow win of 117 votes over Reform’s Mark Butcher to finish second.

But in the Sunderland council elections, Reform beat the Tories in 16 out of 25 wards, and came second in the mayoral vote. A senior Conservative there told me a “very clear trend is that Reform is eating into Conservative vote”.

Their performance is short of UKIP in the 2010s but takes more votes from the Tories than UKIP did. Reform will not be the challenge to Labour that its precursor was.

A night of pain

The wider council results are terrible for the Conservatives, inevitable though losses were.

Sunak seems to be linking his fate to the mayoralties rather than councils or constituencies. Ben Houchen has won re-election in Tees Valley and enjoyed Sunak’s company after his result was announced. But this should not be taken as a sign that the Tories are on the road to mere defeat instead of annihilation.

Houchen won despite Sunak, rather than because of him. By definition a mayoral model is a personal model – the candidate over the party. Deep textual analysis would be required for a voter to have discerned from their campaign literature that Houchen was even a Conservative.

Rishi mate, please could you just go now?
Alamy

There were, nevertheless, council seat losses for Labour in the north west – in Bolton and in Oldham. Gaza is already a fault line in the Labour coalition, and the Greens have so far benefited. Labour did not take Harlow, despite the party’s leader visiting, twice.

The parliamentary Conservative party will this weekend decide whether to risk changing its leader for the fourth time in this parliament. Inviting a challenge to his leadership worked in the short term for John Major in 1995 – he wasn’t challenged again. But this isn’t 1995.

One parallel endures. As we saw in 1997, every Conservative is selling the line that all the party needs to do to get back on track is “get our message across”, keeping time with the rhythm of journalists’, incredulous, counterpoint questioning. It is a danse macabre befitting the Tower Ballroom itself. Läs mer…

Plato of Athens (429-347BC) may be one of the most famous philosophers of all times. He was the thinker who came up with the “theory of forms” and founded the first academic institution. Yet we know little about his life, such as how he died, or where he might be buried, even.

But spectacular new recent research on papyri from Herculaneum by The Greek Philosophical Schools-project in Italy has provided new answers to those questions.

Carbonised papyrus scrolls, discovered in the 18th century in a Roman villa located near Herculaneum (between Naples and Pompeii) and known as the Villa dei Papyri, contain so much knowledge we have yet to uncover.

The library’s owner appears to have had a great interest in Greek philosophy, especially that of Epicurus, and had collected a substantial library of papyrus scrolls. But reading the 1,800 scrolls has proved quite challenging. While their carbonisation after the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79 preserved the scrolls, they are very brittle and very problematic to unroll.

Among these scrolls is a book by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara (1st century BC) about the history of Greek philosophy, with the title Arrangement of the Philosophers.

Over the last two centuries, various editions of Arrangement of the Philosophers have been published, though great portions of the texts remained illegible. But thanks to hyperspectral imagining it has become possible to distinguish between the black ink and the dark surface of the carbonised papyrus. We can now read approximately 30% more than we previously could.

This newly accessible portion on the history of Plato’s school, the Academy, includes information on the location of Plato’s tomb and his death around 348BC.

From other sources, we had already gathered that Plato was buried somewhere on the grounds of the Academy, a semi-public park-like area outside the city walls of ancient Athens that Plato had bought and where he had his school. From the new edition of the papyrus, it seems that Plato “was buried in the garden near the mouseion”. This garden was a more private part of the Academy, while the mouseion refers to a shrine of the Muses, the goddesses of music and harmony, that Plato himself had erected.

Before people rush out to dig for Plato’s grave, however, a word of caution is in order. As the editor of the text, Italian classicist Kilian Fleischer, admits with academic candour, his reading of the crucial Greek word etaphê (“was buried”) is by no means certain.

A carbonised papyrus scroll from the Villa dei Papyri.
Sipa US/Alamy

Be this as it may, a location near the mouseion would be quite fitting, as music plays an important role in Plato’s philosophy. In his great work The Republic, Plato insists on the place of music in the education of the young.

Listening to the right sort of music and especially to the right rhythms would have a beneficial influence on the soul, he posited. In his final work, The Laws, Plato uses the expression “mousikos anêr”, literally “a man of the Muses”, to refer to a man in possession of an elite education, such of the sort that was promoted by the Academy.

Plato’s fondness for the Muses throws light on Philodemus’s story about the death of Plato, another bit of the papyrus that we can now read much better.

According to Philodemus, at the end of Plato’s life he developed a fever and fell into a delirious state. When a Thracian girl, who was playing the flute – perhaps to comfort him – got the rhythm wrong, Plato appeared to regain consciousness and complained that the girl, because of her barbaric (by which he probably meant non-Greek) background, was unable to get it right.

This exchange was much to the delight of Plato’s companion, who from this brief revival concluded that Plato’s condition was not that critical after all. Even so, he died shortly after.

This is not the only story we have about Plato’s death. According to Diogenes Laertius, author of another history of Greek philosophy entitled Lives of Eminent Philosophers (3rd century AD), Plato died either at a wedding feast, or, alternatively, because of lice.

So, how likely is Philodemus’s particular story, for which we know of no other sources, to be true?

There are reasons to be suspicious. The death of ancient philosophers was meant to reflect their lives and teachings. If not, posterity was quite happy to invent an appropriate deathbed scene.

Thus, this newly discovered story about how Plato, even in his feverish condition, remained a discerning judge of all things musical, a true servant of the Muses, probably tells us more about how the Academy wished to remember its founder than how he actually died. Läs mer…

In April 2024 the Department for Education announced that there were “no plans” to change single-word Ofsted judgments. These give schools inspected by the education standards regulator an overall rating of outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

In doing so, the government has decided to ignore a consensus of heavyweight opinion in favour of abolishing single-word judgments. These include the House of Commons Education Committee, which has said in a recent report that the Department of Education and Ofsted “should work together as a priority to develop an alternative to the current single-word overall judgement”.

The voices against single-word judgments are also made up of teachers, headteachers and a former Ofsted chief inspector, as well as the family of Ruth Perry, a headteacher who tragically died by suicide following the downgrade of her school from outstanding to inadequate.

The government’s decision may seem hard to fathom. I am a former Ofsted inspector and now carry out research on school inspections, and talk to serving and former Ofsted inspectors. My view, too, is that these judgments should be abolished. And I believe that the government’s choice is more about ease of control of the education system than what is best for schools, teachers or parents.

Following Ruth Perry’s death, the government gave the impression it was open to negotiation on moving away from one word judgements. Ofsted embarked on a “Big Listen” consultation exercise to hear views on its practice, reporting, culture and impact.

But a change to these judgments is dismissed in the government’s response to the Education Select Committee’s report. This states that “there are significant benefits from having an Ofsted overall effectiveness grade.”

It’s worth exploring what the government considers these significant benefits to be, given they have won out over professional and expert recommendation.

Easy answers

The government claims that the single-word judgments offer “a succinct and accurate summary for parents”. It says that they allow for trends across the country to be observed, and show when more in-depth inspections are needed.

In other words, the single word judgement is a slick, efficient management tool which provides the Department for Education with a read out to understand a school’s performance and when it needs to step in.

Ofsted rating on a sign for a primary school in Warwickshire.
Colin Underhill / Alamy Stock Photo

The government’s response to the Education Committee’s report also says that without a single-word system, “views and decisions about schools and their performance would continue to be made, and there would continue to be consequences to inspection”. The government’s position is that it is better for these views and consequences to be linked to Ofsted’s findings, rather than “civil servants, politicians and the media looking through the narrative of reports and drawing their own conclusions”.

To my mind, this view exposes the government’s thinking that it has a monopoly of wisdom – and reveals its disinterest in nuanced discussion.

In my view, though, there is another reason why the government is so committed to single-word judgments. They allow closer control of a market-based education system that has been moved from local authority to central government control.

The 2010 Academies Act changed the set up of the English education system. Rather than being run by local authorities, most of the powers and duties for England’s schools have moved to a network of multi-academy trusts. These trusts are overseen by a set of regional directors who report to government ministers.

The academies policy was intended to increase competition and create a market-based system. Schools were to be freed from local authority control, enabling them to operate semi-autonomously within the state system. The best schools could expand and take over weaker neighbours. They were not obliged to follow the National Curriculum and could innovate radically.

But the move to academisation has led to an accumulation of powers by the Department for Education.

To enable a centrally-run, a market-based education system to stand a chance of functioning, the government needs data. This means performance measures and an inspection regime which allows school status and performance to be viewed easily.

A narrow database of school test and exam results and two day inspections make the system manageable. They avoid the complexities which professionals know characterise schools and how to improve them.

Ofsted could contribute to a less performative system of school improvement, one with less weighing and measuring and more school improvement advice, high quality teacher training and a recognition that one size does not fit all.

Instead, the government has chosen simplicity and ease of message over teacher welfare and compassion and a genuine debate over what a good school really looks like. Läs mer…

Thirty years ago, while counting barnacles, limpets and seaweeds along rocky shores, I started noticing a daily tide of litter, mostly plastic. As a marine biology PhD student at Liverpool University, I kept removing it, but the next day, there’d be more.

I’m now a leading international expert on microplastics, a term I coined on May 7 2004 to describe fragments of plastic measuring as small as a millionth of a metre. As I work to help reduce the grip of plastic pollution on our planet, the solutions are clear to me.

Regulators, governments and citizens all urgently need to turn off the tide of plastic pollution at its source by reducing the production of plastics. But having just returned from the UN global plastics treaty negotiations in Ottawa, Canada, it’s frustrating to see the lack of consensus among nations about how to address this global problem.

Disturbed by the scale of the plastic contamination I first noticed on that beach in 1993, I felt compelled to act. I recruited students and the local community to help with the annual Marine Conservation Society’s beach clean. We recorded what we found on printed templates.

Back then, a new tool was just becoming available for data compilation: the Excel spreadsheet. The budding scientist within drove me to tabulate what we removed, based on the categories on the printed templates that included bottles, bags, rope and netting. Suddenly, it struck me that the most numerous items had no category. Fragments of larger plastic items, which appeared by far the most numerous were not being recorded. I got curious and wondered what the smallest plastic pieces on the shore were.

Richard Thompson realised that mechanical degradation of large, visible fragments of plastic resulted in the accumulation of tiny microplastics in the environment.
University of Plymouth, CC BY-ND

When I began teaching a few years later, I challenged my students to find the smallest pieces of plastic on the beach. Looking amongst the sand grains, there they were – tiny blue and red fibres and fragments.

An almost forensic journey ensued to confirm their identity. In collaboration with a polymer chemist, we confirmed the tiny fragments were common plastic polymers – polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) – that presumably formed via mechanical degradation and were accumulating as fragments smaller than the grains of sand themselves.

I was hooked on discovering more about this new form of contamination. Working initially with postgraduate students at the University of Plymouth where I was lecturing, we found that these pieces were common on the shore and in seabed mud and we showed they were eaten by marine life. Most alarmingly, we used archived samples of plankton that had been collected decades previously to demonstrate that the abundance of microplastics had increased significantly since the 1960s and 1970s.

I pulled together nearly a decade of this research into a one-page summary entitled “Lost at sea: where is all the plastic?” That paper, published in the journal Science 20 years ago, was the first to use the term microplastics in this context. Within a couple of weeks, this became a worldwide news story.

Everyone wanted to know whether microplastics were harmful. I set out to establish the wider distribution and determine whether they might be harmful to humans and wildlife.

Despite huge media and policy interest, funding was a challenge. One anonymous reviewer commented that there will never be enough plastic in the oceans to cause the sort of harm Thompson wants to investigate.

Over the years that followed, my team and I showed that microplastics were common on shorelines worldwide, they were abundant in the deep sea, in Arctic sea ice and in multiple species of fish. They weren’t just polluting marine environments. They were present in rivers and snow from near the summit of Mount Everest. Everywhere we looked, we found evidence of microplastics.

Richard Thompson first noticed microplastics washed up on the beach in 1993 and his research has focused on them ever since.
University of Plymouth, CC BY-ND

By 2008, the term microplastic was highlighted by the EU’s flagship marine strategy framework directive, a policy introduced to maintain clean, healthy, productive and resilient marine ecosystems. It stipulated that “the quantities of plastic and microplastic should not cause harm in the marine environment”.

We demonstrated that, if ingested, microplastics could transfer from the gut to the circulatory system of mussels and that nanoparticles could pass through the bodies of scallops within a matter of hours. We demonstrated the potential for chemical transfer to wildlife and confirmed that the presence of microplastics could have negative consequences, reducing the ability of organisms to put on weight.

A UK parliamentary environmental audit committee requested a special report on microplastics in 2016. I was called to give evidence, and perhaps prompted by comments from my colleagues, MP Mary Creagh referred to me as the “godfather of microplastics” and so it entered the public record.

There are now thousands of studies on microplastics published by researchers worldwide. Policy interventions resulting from this work include the UK ban on plastic microbeads in rinse-off cosmetics, and EU legislation to prohibit intentional addition of microplastics to products which could prevent hundreds of thousands of tonnes of microplastics entering the environment.

A ban resulted in the phasing out of plastic microbeads used in cosmetic products like these. The top row shows microbeads found in products during 2015, below features products from 2018 after new regulation.
University of Plymouth, CC BY-ND

However, the largest source of microplastics is the fragmentation of larger items in the environment. So ultimately, we need to take action to reduce the production of a wider range of plastic products than just those containing microplastics.

Without action, plastic production could triple by 2060. Yet, some nations seem set on a path to increase production rather than reduce it.

Treaty negotiations

Last week, I was in Ottawa where 180 nations debated the content of the global plastic pollution treaty, a text that contains more than 60 references to microplastics.

What can be done to halt this accumulation? Microplastics are almost impossible to remove. Even for larger items, clean up won’t solve the problem. Novel materials such as biodegradable plastics may offer benefits in specific circumstances but won’t solve plastic pollution.

Read more:
A global plastic treaty will only work if it caps production, modelling shows

I left the negotiations with mixed emotions. Pleased that the scientific community had delivered sufficient hard evidence – including some of my own research – on plastic pollution to initiate the need for this global treaty. Saddened that 180 nations found it so hard to reach a consensus on the way forward. Negotiations failed to stipulate that independent scientists should even be included in formal expert working groups.

Like many scientists who helped deliver the evidence of harm, it’s immensely frustrating to potentially be sidelined from an international process that hopes to deliver solutions. It may be hard for some to swallow – I saw one delegate holding a single-use plastic water bottle behind his back during negotiations. Contrary to the outcome of those midnight discussions in Ottawa, the focus must be on prevention by reducing global production of plastic polymers and ensuring any plastic items we do produce are essential, safe and sustainable. Läs mer…

Changes in personality following a heart transplant have been noted pretty much ever since transplants began. In one case, a person who hated classical music developed a passion for the genre after receiving a musician’s heart. The recipient later died holding a violin case.

In another case, a 45-year-old man remarked how, since receiving the heart of a 17-year-old boy, he loves to put on headphones and listen to loud music – something he had never done before the transplant.

A recent study suggests that heart transplant recipients may not be unique in experiencing personality changes. These changes can occur following the transplantation of any organ.

What might explain this? One suggestion could be that this is a placebo effect where the overwhelming joy of receiving a new lease on life gives the person a sunnier disposition. Other transplant recipients suffer from guilt and bouts of depression and other psychological issues that might also be seen as personality changes.

However, there is some evidence to suggest that these personality changes aren’t all psychological. Biology may play a role, too.

The cells of the transplanted organ will perform their expected function – heart cells will beat, kidney cells will filter and liver cells will metabolise – but they also play a role elsewhere in the body. Many organs and their cells release hormones or signalling molecules that have an effect locally and elsewhere in the body.

The heart seems to be most commonly associated with personality changes. The chambers release peptide hormones, including “atrial natriuretic peptide” and “brain natriuretic peptide”, which help regulate the balance of fluid in the body by affecting the kidneys.

Around two hundred heart transplants are performed in the UK each year.
VesnaArt/Shutterstock

They also play a role in electrolyte balance and inhibiting the activity of the part of our nervous system responsible for the fight-or-flight response. The cells in charge of this are in the hypothalamus – a part of the brain that plays a role in everything from homeostasis (balancing biological systems) to mood.

So the donor organ, which may have a different base level of hormones and peptide production from the original organ, could change the recipient’s mood and personality through the substances it releases.

It has been shown that natriuretic peptide levels are higher following transplantation – and never return to normal. Although some of the elevation is probably a response to the trauma of surgery, it may not account for everything.

Memories stored outside the brain

The body stores memories in the brain. We access them when thinking or they can be triggered by sight or smell. But memories are basically neurochemical processes where nerves convey impulses to each other and exchange specialised chemicals (neurotransmitters) at the interface between them.

While in transplant surgery, many of the nerves that govern the function of the organ are cut and are not able to be reattached, this doesn’t mean that the nerves within the organ do not still function. In fact, there is evidence that they may be partially restored a year after surgery.

These neurochemical actions and interactions could feed into the nervous system of the recipient, enacting a physiological response that then affects the recipient’s personality according to memories from the donor.

We know that cells from the donor are found circulating in the recipient’s body and donor DNA is seen in the recipient’s body two years after the transplant. This again poses the question of where the DNA goes and what actions it may have.

One thing it does is stimulate immune responses. These immune responses may be enough to trigger personality changes as long-term, low-level inflammation is known to be able to change personality traits, such as extroversion and conscientiousness.

Whichever mechanism, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible, this area of research warrants further investigation so that recipients can understand the physical and psychological changes that could occur following surgery. Läs mer…

An international agreement to end plastic pollution is due to be sealed this year in Busan, South Korea. At the penultimate round of negotiations, held in Ottawa, Canada, Rwanda and Peru proposed a target to cut the weight of primary plastics produced worldwide by 40% by 2040, compared with 2025.

This is the first time that a limit on the production of plastic has been considered at the UN talks aiming to develop an international legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution. Of the potential mechanisms for tackling plastic pollution, a cap on plastic production was the most hotly debated, but one has not made it into the draft text of the treaty – not yet, at least.

However, all efforts to scientifically model the extent of plastic pollution in the future assume that restricting how much plastic the world makes each year will be necessary (among other measures) to curb its harmful presence in the environment. In a 2020 study I co-authored, my colleagues and I found that primary plastic production – the creation of new synthetic polymers, largely from fossil fuel – will need to be 47% lower in 2040 compared with the rate measured in 2016.

This scenario would involve plastic production falling by as much as our research team considered practicable. It would predominantly mean everyone using significantly less plastic and substituting it with paper and materials that are compostable.

Cutting production almost in half and using all other strategies, such as ramping up recycling and disposing of plastic waste in landfills or via incineration plants, would still leave residual pollution in 2040. In fact, just under 50 million tonnes of plastic would still be flowing into the ocean and rivers each year or accumulating on land where it may be burned in the open and create even more pollution.

In a 2022 report, the OECD estimated that cutting demand for plastic by 33% relative to 2019 (and enhancing recycling alongside preventing plastic escaping the waste management process) would almost eliminate mismanaged plastic waste by 2060 – that is, plastic that end up as pollution in the environment.

For production to fall, the world must make do with less plastic.
Hedgehog94/Shutterstock

A combination of measures such as these is considered the most effective scenario in cutting pollution. Again though, the OECD model projects slightly over 50 million tonnes of plastic waste being mismanaged annually in 2040. For the accumulation and burning of plastic in the environment to stop, we would have to wait another two decades.

A simulation conducted in 2023 set an even more ambitious target for eliminating plastic pollution by 2040. In it, a cap on production was an essential element alongside 15 other global policy measures which could cut annual mismanaged plastic waste by 90% and virgin plastic use by 30% yearly by 2040, compared with 2019. This would represent a 60% reduction relative to 2040 levels without restrictions on production.

The 40% reduction target floated in Ottawa is generally consistent with what these models suggest is necessary to substantially reduce plastic pollution in coming decades. Whether such a production cap is plausible however is still poorly understood. With plastic production still increasing, it is unclear what policies would reduce it so steeply in just 15 years – and what their side effects might be.

What will it take?

Reducing plastic production would require marked shifts in our lives for which there is little precedent. It could involve massive changes in how we behave as consumers, how products are designed and delivered to us – and so on.

A 40% production cut would probably entail slashing the amount of packaging and single-use plastic made worldwide. These shortlived products account for around half of all plastic production and become waste quickly. Essentially, this would reverse the trend in material use since the mid-20th century.

Every year without production caps makes the necessary cut to plastic production in future steeper – and our need to use other measures to address the problem greater.

Modelling the mess

The combination of policy and technical innovation necessary to eliminate plastic pollution is highly debated. But swingeing production cuts feature in all modelled scenarios.

A less dynamic pace of change is assumed to be necessary for “downstream” measures – those associated with when plastic becomes waste, such as during disposal and recycling. Some of the emphasis on production caps in models originates from the failure of existing waste management services to stop plastic from entering the environment or being burned outdoors.

Since between 1.7 and 2.5 billion people still lack waste collection, some form of reduction in the amount of new plastic made each year might seem attractive – and consistent with the idea of a circular economy and the waste hierarchy, which prioritises waste prevention.

Research I worked on recently showed that a country’s waste management performance is strongly linked to its socioeconomic development. The collection, recycling and disposal of plastic will only prevail as a solution to the extent that countries improve socioeconomically. Clearly, without radical change, the pace of progress on this front would not solve plastic pollution by 2040.

What is ironic, and illustrative of how daunting the challenge is, is that deploying sound waste management to the under-serviced is one of the few solutions that we understand relatively well, based as it is on commercially and technically proven technologies and operational systems.

By contrast, the three models offer only generic insight into what would be necessary to scale down plastic production. Replacing plastic with paper and card would not fundamentally improve matters if this packaging still ended up as waste being burned in the open.

Toxic fumes from burning plastic are a health hazard.
Mohamed Abdulraheem/Shutterstock

There are other options, though. It could be possible to massively simplify the types of polymers used in packaging so that just a few are in circulation. This would make recycling more effective, as one of the present complications is the huge variation in materials that leads to cross-contamination. Likewise, countries could massively expand systems for reusing and refilling containers in shops.

No matter the degree, pathway and pace of plastic production cuts, a fundamental change in our relationship with plastic is necessary. As a target, 2040 seems impossibly close for a viable pathway to significantly lower production, but that should not stop us entertaining such a future. It should alert us to the scientific advances and innovation necessary to make it more plausible.

Let us think of it as a worthy investment of our resources and effort – one that we rely upon for a better future.

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The UK government is proposing major changes to the benefits system, in response to the increase in people claiming benefits for disability and ill health. The proposals, which will be consulted on in the coming months, focus mainly on replacing the personal independence payment (Pip).

Pip is a working-age benefit to help disabled people with the additional costs associated with a long-term health condition or disability. Currently, people receiving Pip must undergo an assessment of the impact of a health condition on day to day activities.

The benefit is paid every four weeks and has two elements: a daily living component paid at either £72.65 or £108.55 per week, and a mobility component paid at either £28.70 or £75.75 per week.

The government wants to move away from this regular cash payment model, and instead provide vouchers for services such as counselling and one-off payments for adaptions in the home. This could mean claimants being asked to provide receipts for expenses such as transport or medical costs.

There are a number of problems with this. For many people, Pip is a vital source of income for not only health-related costs, but also for general living expenses such as rent and utilities. Research shows that, on average, disabled households need £975 more per month to maintain the same standard of living as non-disabled households. This can be because of specialist equipment, the energy costs associated with it, or other mobility and accessibility needs.

Read more:
Disabled people are already cutting back on costs more than others – for many, the £150 cost of living payment won’t do much to help

An approach which requires people to claim only for specific expenses will create financial hardship for many disabled people, who often won’t have the extra cash on hand to pay for their needs and wait for government reimbursement.

It also fails to recognise the enduring nature of many disabilities and health problems, removes choice and suggests that disabled people’s expenses need to be “approved”. This approach implies that people with disabilities can’t be trusted to spend money wisely or know the best way to address their needs.

Many Pip claimants will also receive other benefits, and have been hit by an average reduction in overall benefit payments of £1,200 per year since 2008.

The complex system of benefits

Around 2.6 million people claim Pip, though this number is rising, with 33,000 new claims a month, twice the pre-pandemic rate. Nearly a quarter of adults in the UK report that they live with a health condition or disability, and the government projects that over the next five years spending will increase by 63%.

The proposals are driven by a desire to save money and reduce the number of people claiming Pip. But these aims can’t be achieved without increasing financial hardship on people. It could also create unnecessary administrative burdens in a system that is already difficult to navigate.

Much of the noise around these proposals – the focus on numbers, and work and pensions secretary Mel Stride’s claim that people receive “thousands of pounds per month” (later corrected to thousands of pounds per year) – creates the impression of a soft-touch, easily accessible system.

However, my research with Pip claimants found a system which is incredibly hard to navigate, characterised by poor communication with the Department for Work and Pensions and complicated forms which make it hard to capture complex health conditions. Participants told me that negative messaging about benefit claimants can be overwhelming for people with mental health problems.

The proposed reforms could make navigating the complex benefits system even more onerous.
Noah Emad/Shutterstock

The government is right that improvements are needed to the system. However, the focus should be on improving the accuracy and timeliness of decisions made by the government about who is entitled to Pip.

My research shows that the current system, which relies on the use of private companies to administer medical assessments, is expensive and often produces inaccurate reports. A move to rely on medical evidence from professionals who are familiar with a claimant’s condition would be straightforward and enhance accuracy.

Many claimants with long-term conditions are compelled to make repeated fresh claims for Pip and are required to regularly attend medicals and complete claim forms. This is unnecessary where there is evidence of ongoing health issues, and causes stress for claimants and unjustified pressures on public expenditure. There is already a significant backlog in the Pip system – complicating the process through receipts and vouchers would make this worse.

What’s really needed to reduce costs

Single grants and vouchers undermine the principles of a welfare safety net, which should provide a greater level of economic security for the population. Ongoing benefit payments should relate to actual costs in life and protect people from slipping into poverty.

The numbers of people who rely on disability benefits will decline if the causes of illness are proactively addressed and appropriate support provided. This includes adequate funding for health and social care services, working to address housing insecurity and social isolation and reducing waiting times for hospital appointments and therapeutic support.

Both the Royal College of Psychiatrists and British Medical Association have called for a focus on improving population health, particularly for people with mental health problems, rather than reducing social welfare support.

This should be the focus of government attention, rather than misguided cost-saving changes to Pip. Continuing need cannot be met by one-off responses. Läs mer…