In 2013, if you’re someone who cares about the environment, your first and foremost concern is probably climate change. After that, you might worry about things like radioactive contamination, collapsing honeybee colonies and endangered ecosystems, among other contemporary environmental perils that fill recent news headlines.
But a number of researchers in the field are focused on a problem that has faded out of the news cycle: the piles of garbage that are growing around the world.