Plastic Archives - 9xm News

Australian high school students collected more than 2,000 plastic bottles to form a greenhouse, 11 years later, the structure supplies food for the school’s garden

A project that began as an ecological lesson has transformed the lives of students at an Australian high school. In the country’s capital of Canberra, students at the Richardson Primary School in south Canberra collected more than 2,000 plastic bottles and transformed them into the walls of a greenhouse that has been working efficiently for […]

A Mexican entrepreneur began melting discarded plastic into wall and roof panels; within three years his startup had built 500 rooms and secured contracts for 300 homes

An entrepreneur began melting discarded plastic into walls Workers at a recycling plant in central Mexico are turning five and a half tonnes of discarded plastic bottles and old toys every day into strong building materials, helping low-income families get better homes while keeping waste out of local dumps. The process, developed in 2013 by […]

A Mexican entrepreneur turned discarded plastic into low-cost homes for families in poverty; each 430-460 sq ft house used 2 tonnes of waste, took 7 days to build and cost families about $280

An EcoDom prototype house built using its plastic panels. Plastic production has increased exponentially over the last few decades. A 2017 study published in Science Advances estimated that 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced globally since large-scale production began. Only a tiny fraction has been recycled, with huge amounts accumulating in landfills, ecosystems […]

A rotating ‘garbage island’ spreads over 1.6 million sq km in the Pacific: Plastic averages 50 kilograms per square kilometre, and 75 to 86% of the debris comes from fishing gear

A floating and rotating ‘garbage island’ of an estimated area of 1.6 million square kilometres lies between Hawaii and California, according to a scientific estimate published in 2018. The area of the island is said to be larger than Para and nearly three times the size of metropolitan France. What exists here is a plastic […]

Smithsonian researchers used X-rays, plastic cups and 216-yard spools of thread to find wild turtle nests; predators raided 13 of 16

Eastern box turtle (Image Credit: Canva) Finding a turtle nest in the wild is far more difficult than it sounds. Smithsonian researchers studying Eastern box turtles in Virginia have been using a combination of technology and surprisingly simple tools to locate nests and understand what happens to the eggs after they are laid. Their unusual […]

Meet Vera Wang, the Hawaii high school senior who built a coconut-based ocean filter as a sophomore; two years later, she found fungi in coconut husks that can biodegrade plastic and sunscreen

Wang’s work, done in the lab of Anthony Amend at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, was recognized at the 2026 Hawaiʻi State Science & Engineering Fair What started as a high school project to clean polluted ocean water has turned into a promising scientific discovery. Hawaii’s Kaiser High School senior Vera Wang was the […]