Christopher Joyce

Trash sent for recycling moves along a conveyor belt to be sorted at Waste Management's material recovery facility in Elkridge, Md. In 2018, China announced it would no longer buy most plastic waste from places like the United States. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

A discarded plastic bottle lies on the beach at Sandy Hook, N.J. Packaging is the largest source of the plastic waste that now blankets our planet. Wayne Parry/AP hide caption

By one estimate, emissions from producing and incinerating plastics could amount to 56 gigatons of carbon — almost 50 times the annual emissions of all of the coal power plants in the U.S. — between now and 2050. Koji Sasahara/AP hide caption

Anne Schauer-Gimenez (from left) Allison Pieja and Molly Morse of Mango Materials stand next to the biopolymer fermenter at a sewage treatment plant next to San Francisco Bay. The fermenter feeds bacteria the methane they need to produce a biological form of plastic. Chris Joyce/NPR hide caption

The deep ocean is filled with sea creatures like giant larvaceans. They're actually the size of tadpoles, but they're surrounded by a yard-wide bubble of mucus that collects food — and plastic. Courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute hide caption

An artist's rendering of the mass extinction of life that occurred toward the end of the Permian Period, about 250 million years ago. Lynette Cook/Science Source hide caption

Debris blankets the north side of one of the Cocos Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean. Researchers found a huge amount of plastic both onshore and buried in the sand. Courtesy of Silke Stuckenbrock hide caption

The Xiahe mandible was originally found in 1980 in Baishiya Karst Cave. Researchers say the bone is 160,000 years old and came from a Denisovan. Dongju Zhang/Lanzhou University hide caption

A team of researchers found a surprisingly large amount of microplastic in the air in the Pyrenees mountains in southern France. VW Pics/UIG via Getty Images hide caption

The pronounced curve of this toe bone — the proximal phalanx — from a specimen of Homo luzonensis, an early human found in a Philippine cave, looks more like it came from tree-climbing Australopithecus than from a modern human, scientists say. Callao Cave Archaeology Project hide caption

The sea squirt Ascidia sydneiensis, a tubelike animal that squirts water out of its body when alarmed, is one of 48 additional nonnative marine species in the Galapagos Islands documented in a newly published study. Previously, researchers knew of only five. Courtesy of Jim Carlton hide caption

The U.S. used to ship about 7 million tons of plastic trash to China a year, where much of it was recycled into raw materials. Then came the Chinese crackdown of 2018. Olivia Sun/NPR hide caption

A rare photo of "type D" killer whales off South Georgia island, located between South America and Antarctica, shows the whales' blunt heads and tiny white eye patches. Courtesy of J.P. Sylvestre hide caption

A curious harbor seal checks out diver Mike Weber as he and other divers pick up golf balls in the waters off the coast of Northern California. His daughter wrote a paper about all the golf balls found in the ocean from nearby golf courses. Courtesy of Alex Weber hide caption

Sachets like these, developed to market consumer goods to the poor, have become ubiquitous all over Asia. Jes Aznar for NPR hide caption