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Plastic pollution is distributed patchily around the world's ocean. Likewise marine organisms that are vulnerable to plastic ingestion are entanglement have even distributions.

Plastic waste increasingly accumulates in the marine environment but data on the distribution and quantification on riverine sources required for development of effective mitigation are limited. Our model approach includes geographically distributed data on plastics waste, land use precipitation and rivers and calculates the probability for plastic waste to reach river and subsequently the ocean.

The subtropical oceanic gyre in the North Pacific Ocean is currently covered with tens of thousands of tonnes of floating plastic debris, dispersed over millions of square kilometres. A large fraction is composed of fishing nets and ropes while the rest is mostly composed of hard plastic-objects and fragments, sometimes carrying evidence on their origin.

Contamination of the environment by pollutants like heavy metals is a growing phenomenon mainly driven by anthropogenic activities.

Anthropogenic activities continue to be a major source of recalcitrant toxicants such as heavy metals (HMs) in the environment.

Effectively dealing with hazardous and recalcitrant pollutants such as heavy metals (HMs) has become global challenge with limited options available for reprieve.

The containment of the spread of covid 19 pandemic and limitations on commercial activities, mobility and manufacturing sector have significantly affected waste management, Waste management is critical to human development and health outcomes, especially during the covid 19 pandemic. The invaluable service provided by the waste management, sector ensures that the unusual heaps of waste that poses health risks and escalate the spread of covid 19 is avoided. in this study, we assess the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on waste management by observing lockdown and social distancing measures.

Face masks help prevent the spread of coronavirus and other diseases, and mass masking is recommended by almost all health groups and countries to control the COVID-19 pandemic (Brooks et al., 2020). Recent studies estimated an astounding 129 billion face masks being used globally every month (3 million / minute) and most are disposable face masks made from plastic microfibers (Prata et al., 2020). With increasing reports on inappropriate disposal of masks, it is urgent to recognize this potential environmental threat and prevent it from becoming the next plastic problem.

Over the years, the world was not paying strict attention to the impact of rapid growth in plastic use. This has led to unprecedented amounts of mixed types of plastic waste entering the environment unmanaged. Packaging plastics account for half of the global total plastics.

Plastic production pellets collected from beaches of south west England contain variable concentrations of trace metals (Cr, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb) that, in some cases, exceed concentrations reported for local estuarine sediments. The rates and mechanisms by which metals associate with virgin and beached polyethylene pellets were studied by adding a cocktail of 5 mg L1 of trace metals to 10 g L1 pellet suspensions in filtered seawater. Kinetic profiles were modelled using a pseudo-first-order equation and yielded response times of less than about 100 h and equilibrium partition coefficients of up to about 225 ml g1 that were consistently higher for beached pellets than virgin pellets. Adsorption isotherms conformed to both the Langmuir and Freundlich equations and adsorption capacities were greater for beached pellets than for virgin pellets. Results suggest that plastics may represent an important vehicle for the transport of metals in the marine environment.