Revolution Plastics Institute

Revolution Plastics Institute

Dr Noorin Khamisani

I think that what's really sad is that the state of our planet right now is that it is drowning under the plastic waste.

Dr Cressida Bowyer

Whether it's macroplastics, microplastics or nanoplastics, we now find these plastics everywhere on the planet.

Prof Steve Fletcher

From the top of the tallest mountain to the bottom of the deepest ocean.

Prof Alex Ford

We're seeing it washing up on our shores all around us as we speak.

Dr Cressida Bowyer

We also find them in our bodies.

Dr Noorin Khamisani

It's out of control.

Dr Cressida Bowyer

The environmental and ecological challenges we're facing are that plastics are interfering with healthy functioning of ecosystems.

Prof Alex Ford

We have got a chemical crisis, the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis.

Prof Steve Fletcher

The Revolution Plastics Institute has a really strong mission driven research agenda to tackle the negative effects of plastic pollution across the entire plastics lifecycle.

Prof Fay Conceiro

Collaboration within our group in the University of Portsmouth is absolutely essential to finding how to deal with the problem of plastics.

Prof Alex Ford

We need to be able to live sustainably. And to do that, you need to have those people that understand the different components of how society works.

Prof Steve Fletcher

We can have all the scientific and economic and social evidence we need, but ultimately it's about changing policy to actually make a difference.

Hugo Lynch

Industry is not aware about what the chemical composition of their plastics is, what happens when it breaks down and what the effect of that is when it's made into something else. Researchers leading the direction in terms of gathering knowledge and sharing recommendations is the only way we're going to move the dial.

Noga Levy-Rapoport

The research has an incredibly important role to offer. We know that political education, when packaged publicly in an accessible way, can totally transform the way that people envision a sustainable future. 

Dr Cressida Bowyer

Portsmouth as a case study site is a very interesting place because it's an island city.

Prof Alex Ford

It is a mesocosm of what's going on around the UK and what's going on around the globe.

Prof Steve Fletcher

Portsmouth is the perfect place to host the Revolution Plastics Institute because Portsmouth as a city exhibits all of the challenges we face when trying to tackle the global plastics crisis.

So we can test out solutions and ideas here that we can apply elsewhere and hopefully scale up to make a real difference.

Prof Fay Conceiro

If you have hundreds, thousands of people collecting data, you can really build up a good picture of what's happening in our environment.

Prof Steve Fletcher

The goal of the Revolution Plastics Institute is to bring people with us on a journey, whether you're in government. in the private sector, in a campaign group or a member of the public. We've all got a role to play in tackling the global plastics crisis, and that's what our institute will do.

Prof Andy Pickford

We are accumulating vast amounts of plastic waste.

Nigel Salter

We've produced more plastic in the last ten years than in the previous 100 years. We're currently producing 400 million tonnes of plastic waste per year. That's set to double by 2040. And of that plastic waste, only 9% is being recycled.

Dr Noorin Khamisani

We need to be challenging the status quo and we need to transform the way that we work with plastics.

Noga Levy-Rapoport

Our plastic waste is an enormous symptom of our addiction to fossil fuels. This has resulted in a very difficult state for our planet, but crucially, it's resulted in a lot of people feeling like they can't see a way out, a way to live without plastic.

Dr Cressida Bowyer

The abnormal has become completely normal, and people can't actually remember a time when these plastic mountains weren't present.

Nelmo Munyiri

It’s very important that everyone takes action right now, and not tomorrow and not the day after. Not after a year, or after ten years. We need that action right now.