The Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic (LAPP) is a pro bono initiative concerning legal questions on plastics and is founded to address and research the legal issues related to plastic pollution.

On Friday evening 8 June, Thijs Bosker, Associate Professor at Leiden University College (LUC), was on television in NOS Jeugdjournaal about plastic pollution and microplastics

On Friday morning, 8 June, Thijs Bosker, Associate Professor at Leiden University College, was interviewed by NPO Radio 1 on plastic pollution in Antartctica: ''Anually, an additional 4 - 12 billion kilos of plastic ends up in our ocean''.

On 27 November 2019, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen) organized a symposium on the plastic pollution crisis.

From 27 to 31 January, a workshop on the regulation of plastic pollution based on scientific evidence will be held at the Lorentz Center in Leiden.

From 3 to 13 December you can see the exhibition Plastic Justice at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building. Esther Kentin, coördinator of the Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic, saw the exhibition at the Plastic Health Summit and initiated a collaboration with the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

On paper it is recycled, but in reality enormous quantities of plastic waste from the Netherlands end up in Asian seas. Researchers from the Leiden Institute of Environmental Sciences charted the fate of plastic food packaging waste from the Netherlands. They published their results on July 8 in the…

Roberto Arciero is part of RESPIRE project (Research Educational and Storytelling Project in Italian Remote Ecosystem), an international and interdisciplinary research team led by Martina Capriotti (University of Camerino) that received the National Geographic Meridian grant. Among the different topics,…

Shell, our country's largest company, is constructing a vast plastics plant in the United States. And it is doing so at a time when the European Union, led by the Netherlands, is launching a major pact to combat use of plastic.

Promotor: M.L. van Hecke

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A group of biology students are working on a solution to the world’s plastics problem by getting bacteria to make biodegradable plastic.

Promotor: P.M. Brakefield

Nanoplastics influence the behaviour of larval zebrafish, says new research by the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) and the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML). The researchers observed that a certain type of nanoparticles leads to stress reactions in the sugar balance, resulting in hyperactivity…

On Friday 8 February, the first Plastic Avengers Conference took place in Amsterdam. Initiator Merijn Tinga, the Plastic Soup Surfer from Leiden, brought together ‘independent plastic fighters' to arrive at a manifesto against plastic pollution. The Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic was also invited…

A political-legal study of rights invocation by pollution victims in China and Indonesia

How does invasive hybridization affect threatened native species?

Mapping out the problem of plastic pollution requires a lot of data over a large area. That's why scientists are increasingly turning to volunteers for help, also known as citizen science. But what are the challenges for a researcher when he or she involves the public in research in this way? Four Leiden…

Merijn Tinga, the Plastic Soup Surfer, launched the Pick Up 10 campaign. This campaign, supported by Google and National Geographic, uses photo recognition to identify and monitor litter through an app.

The cargo lost at sea as a result of the MSC Zoe disaster should be considered environmental pollution and information about it should be made public. This was the case made by Leiden Law School’s Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic (LAPP). Following their investigation, the government has finally decided…

Auke-Florian Hiemstra is the Leidsch Dagblad Person of the Year 2022.

Galaxies form and evolve through close interaction with their surroundings. As a result, the heavy elements ('metals') that are synthesized in stars, are found both inside and outside galaxies.

Below you will find an overview of the publications of The Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic.

Four Master's students Science Communication & Society made two podcasts on the theme Plastic for the end project of their study programme. With the podcasts, they helped the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) to draw attention to plastic pollution. And that was harder than it seemed. 'Be sure to test…

On Friday 8 February, the first Plastic Avengers Conference took place in Amsterdam. Initiator Merijn Tinga, the Plastic Soup Surfer from Leiden, brought together ‘independent plastic fighters' to arrive at a manifesto against plastic pollution. The Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic was also invited…

What is the influence of the 2016 ban on free plastic bags on the environment? Industrial ecologist Stefano Cucurachi received a LUF grant of €75.000 to answer this question.

The Grachtwacht (Canal Watch) conducts research on urban wildlife and the impact of plastic on nature. With our clean-ups, we not only collect waste, but also data. This way we try to find out the source of the waste and turn off the tap on shore. This way there is structurally less plastic in the c…

Leiden academics Remco Breuker and Auke-Florian Hiemstra stand to win the title of Person of the Year.

In a new series of articles, we explore how the humanities study topics related to sustainability. First up: waste. How and why study waste as a humanities scholar? We asked Elena Burgos Martinez, University Lecturer South and Southeast Asian Studies, and Katarzyna Cwiertka, Professor of Modern Japan…

After years of lobbying by environmental activists, a deposit scheme for small plastic bottles is to be introduced on 1 July 2021. One of the leaders in the fight is alumnus Merijn Tinga. The university will have collection points for plastic bottles and is also supporting the Plastic Spotter citizen…

On 17 October 2019, Laure d'Hondt defended her thesis 'Addressing Industrial Pollution in Indonesia. The Nexus between Regulation and Redress seeking'. The doctoral research was supervised by prof. A.W. Bedner and dr. J.A.C. Vel.

The sand on European beaches may look pristine, but in every kilogram of sand there are on average 250 microplastics: fragments smaller than 5mm. These results are part of a study from Leiden researchers with the help of beach-goers throughout Europe.

How dangerous are micro- and nanoplastics? Do they affect the environment? What harm can they do to our bodies? Questions that we can now finally answer because of Fazel Abdolahpur Monikh. Together with his colleagues, he developed a method to detect and quantify nano-sized plastics. Their paper has…

Promotores: Prof.dr. P.M. Brakefield, Prof.dr. B.J. Zwaan (Wageningen Universiteit)

Canal Watch (De Grachtwacht), which has been cleaning canals since 2018, has received the Dutch Research Council (NWO) Communication Initiative Award.

The Plastic Soup Foundation and Parley for the Oceans hosted the very first Plastic Heath Summit in Amsterdam on 3 October, covering the most relevant and pressing health concerns surrounding plastics and human health. Beyond discussing the latest findings in the field we asked the urgent question:…

Using the principles of Industrial Ecology in Environmental Policy making in two cases: transition to a hydrogen economy and chlorinated compounds.

Two weeks after 3 October the Leiden canals were still full of plastic disposable cups. Auke-Florian Hiemstra and fellow students have fished thousands of these cups out of the canals and photographed them. Now they put a photo of one of these canal cups on Instagram every day.

UNPLASTIC, a research project by Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) won the Dopper Changemaker Challenge 2019. LUC student Roos Kolkman represented UNPLASTIC during the semi-finals on Saturday.

The mission of our group is understanding how science communication works to improve the interaction between science and society. We believe better science communication can improve our society and engage many different groups with science, also improving science.

Leiden University and the city of The Hague are working closely together to increase the impact of our research and education in order to contribute as much as possible to the development of the city.

'We have to look for products that can replace ordinary disposable plastics, for example of organic material. Within 20 years, the average plastic use of a household will be largely reduced.' According to Thijs Bosker, Associate Professor at Leiden University College, in Edition NL of Tuesday, October…

Help us spot and clean up the plastic in the canals of Leiden! Leiden University is calling on the good folk of Leiden to help our researchers study the plastic in the city’s canals. And if you’d like our canals to be plastic-free, why not donate towards a fleet of canoes to clean them up?

From 26 to 29 September 2017 the International Conference on Microplastic Pollution in the Mediterranean Sea was held.

Every Sunday you can help fish plastic and other floating garbage out of the Leiden canals. You can use your own canoe or loan one from Plastic Spotter and join the garbage-fishing fleet. Annetje Ottow, President of Leiden University, was one of the crew on Sunday 4 July.

Do e-waste workers display enhanced effects of adverse health effects due to informal e-waste processing in Nigeria? Is there a difference between the health outcomes of the exposed and the control groups? Are there difference in health effects within and between job groups (collectors, dismantlers,…

The research group Science Communication and Society has been physically within the Institute of Biology (IBL) since 2012 and has become a formal part of the institute in 2018. The mission of this group is understanding how science communication works to improve the interaction between science and s…

A place where scientists and students from Leiden University and residents of The Hague come together to create innovative solutions for sustainable living in the city: that's what the Sustainable City Lab aims to be. When we talk about "sustainable living" we think of many different things. For example:…