@Tomohaire replied above

There is definitely a growing body of research on microplastics, I feel like every week there's a new story about where they've been found (from mount everest to the womb). The gap we have found is the impact of microplastics specifically on plankton and the marine carbon cycle, with much of the existing research having been conducted by our partners Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

There is now a large range of alternatives to those common plastics - in fact, bioplastics, which aren't perfect but have far less impact than fossil plastics, have been around for 20 years and still only make up 1.5% of the plastics market. The reality is that businesses won't pay for the alternatives until they reach price parity, and they won't so until the price of fossil plastics factors in the cost it imposes on society (estimates range from 10 x to 100x the market price). As long as industry can claim that plastics are low impact + low cost, and as long as they are permitted by law (lack of plastics bans), the alternatives will struggle for adoption.