Ana L. Patrício Silva

TL;DR: There is a need to assess alternatives that allow reductions of PPE and reinforce awareness on the proper public use and disposal, and assessment of contamination and impacts of plastics driven by the pandemic will be required once the outbreak ends.

TL;DR: Plastics should remain in the top of the political agenda in Europe and across the world, not only to minimise plastic leakage and pollution, but to promote sustainable growth and to stimulate both green and blue- economies.

TL;DR: The sudden increase in plastic waste and composition due to the COVID-19 pandemic underlines the crucial need to reinforce plastic reduction policies and to implement them into action without delays, to scale up in innovation for sustainable and green plastics solutions and to develop dynamic and responsive waste management systems immediately.

TL;DR: Current practices to improve life cycle and waste management of plastics that can be implemented to reduce health and environmental impacts of plastics and reduce plastics pollution are discussed.

TL;DR: The results from this study show that the ingestion and persistence of small-sized polyethylene microplastics caused significant impairments on life-history traits of C. riparius.