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The long-term fates of land-disposed plastic waste

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 3, pages 733–735 (2022)Cite this article

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The large quantities of plastics stored in landfills and dumpsites are often overlooked when discussing plastic pollution. Improperly managed waste disposal sites can leak plastics to the environment, requiring immediate action. Mitigation must be supported by research to quantify the scale of the problem and prioritize efforts.

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Fig. 1: Global distribution and fate of disposed PW in SWDSs.

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Acknowledgements

Xunchang Fei thanks the supports from Debris of the Anthropocene to Resources (DotA2) Lab at NTU.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Xunchang Fei, Yuliang Guo & Yao Wang

  2. Residues and Resource Reclamation Centre, Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute, Singapore, Singapore

    Xunchang Fei, Yuliang Guo & Yao Wang

  3. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Mingliang Fang

  4. College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China

    Ke Yin

  5. College of Chemistry and Environmental Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

    Hongping He

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  1. Xunchang Fei
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Correspondence to Xunchang Fei.

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Fei, X., Guo, Y., Wang, Y. et al. The long-term fates of land-disposed plastic waste. Nat Rev Earth Environ 3, 733–735 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00354-0

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