Fate and impact of past, present and future consumer plastic on soil

Soil provides us with 98.8% of our food and by 2050 we need to increase the production by 70%; yet our soils are degrading. Soils were recently recognised as a sink for plastic.

This is particularly of concern for agricultural soil health due to extensive and increasing plastic use in farming such as plastic mulching and unintentional plastic introduction through biosolid applications.

Based on plastic persistence, widespread use and recent results in soil eco toxicology and eco system effects, plastic has been proposed as driver of global change. However, critical data to clarify the impact of plastic on soil health is currently lacking.

This project employs a multidisciplinary approach to determine the extent of plastic contamination in agricultural soils as well as the fate of plastic and its impact on soil processes while providing training and knowledge gain that will be transferred to the EU and further exploited.

SoPla_Fate will address the current knowledge lack by (1) quantifying the polymer distribution and concentration in different agricultural soils.

Polymer properties including size, shape and surface area will be quantified for representative samples. (2) State-of-the-art analytical instruments and workflows will be employed for the fingerprinting, screening and identification of plastic additives. (3) The workflows will further be employed to determine the leaching and partitioning behaviour of additives from plastic and aged plastic into the soil environment. (4) The impact of different plastic aspects such as polymer type, additive composition and aging induced changes to polymers and plastic on vital soil processes will be quantified.

The outcomes from SoPla_Fate will advance our assessment of potential soil health impairment though plastic pollution highlighting the importance of an integrated multidisciplinary research connecting plastic fate in soil with its impact.