For safer drinking water, the ingenuity of simple solutions

1. Canada

Scientists used sawdust and tannins to trap microplastics in water, potentially paving a way to fight plastics pollution. A filter developed by a team at the University of British Columbia and in Chengdu, China, combined wood dust with the natural compound found in unripe fruit, creating a biodegradable material that trapped up to 99.9% of micro and nanoplastics.

Plastic debris from industrial waste and the breakdown of consumer goods can wreak havoc on aquatic ecosystems, in part by introducing toxic chemicals to marine life. For humans, the ubiquity of microplastics emerged with the first reports