Plastics have outgrown most man-made materials and have long been under environmental scrutiny. However, robust global information, particularly about their end-of-life fate, is lacking. By identifying and synthesizing dispersed data on production, use, and end-of-life management of polymer resins, synthetic fibers, and additives, we present the first global analysis of all mass-produced plasti...

The author, Louis E. Narens, is a mathematical psychologist who is currently a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he had been since 1979. He received his Ph.D. in 1970 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Narens’ publications range over several important areas of research in the behavioral and social sciences, especially the theory of measur...

obvious that there was a qualitative difference between seminal book What Is Life (1944, Cambridge University life and non-life. .. " (p. 53). However, all the evidence Press). When World War Two began the subject was goes to show that early men saw nature as being of one poised for major advances. kind, but for just the opposite reasons to nineteenth The war led to a great range of technical d...