Plastic pollution is among the gravest environmental crises facing humanity. Plastic production since 1950 has exceeded 8,300 million metric tons, with most plastic waste ending up in the environment, affecting wildlife, ecosystem functionality, and human health.
Simultaneously, the ability of disease-causing bacteria to withstand one or more antibiotics (known as antimicrobial resistance, or AMR) has surged to become a public health emergency now accounting for around 5 million deaths worldwide annually.
“AMR is an existential human threat,” says Tim Walsh, a professor at the University of Oxford and director of biology at the UK’s Ineos Oxford Institute of Antimicrobial Research, who spoke to Mongabay via video call. “It will kill more people [each year] than TB, HIV and malaria, and if unchallenged…
