● Citizen science app. The Ready-to-use smartphone app is a tool for participative detecting and monitoring visually and recognisable plastic residues in soil, the societal impact of this app is high, different stakeholders as farmers, students, industry professionals are engaged and monitoring plastic residues in the soils of the 11 CSSs. Actual numbers indicate that the app has been downloaded by 827 persons on Android/Google, 1100 persons on iOS/Apple and 3300 institutions (schools, etc..) so a total of 5227 persons.
● Preliminary results on microplastics transport in soil columns have indicated that irrigation intensity enhances the 3 studied types of microplastics (LDPE, PBAT and starch-based plastic) vertical transport.
● Social impact for farmers practices transformation. Workshops with farmers are taking place, from the second half of 2023 until winter 2025, in those workshops engagement and awareness are expected to increase, once the farmers know the concentration on microplastics in their sampled fields.
● Socio-economic impact for the development of new solutions/adaptation of existing practices. Results from the questionnaires performed at the 11 CSSs will give insight into the actual practices on plastic use and their respective economical effect. Therefore, in the workshop's adaptation and implementation strategies will be discussed.
● Raised awareness on soil health and plastic pollution. Several experiments are carried out with soil invertebrates (micro, meso and macroinvertebrates), the obtained results will be presented in conferences, scientific papers and widespread dissemination media.
● Soil microcosm and pot experiments identified strong interactions between plastics and organic pollutants like pesticides and veterinary medicines that have undesirable effects on key soil microbial processes (e.g. N cycling) and the diversity of bacteria, fungi and protists, although the magnitude and the direction of the effects vary from soil to soil. Besides that, plastics strongly affect the dissipation of pesticides and veterinary medicines.
● More efficient methods to analyse NPs. The standardized method on microplastic measurement is being developed and validated; The NPs analysis method has been also tested and validated.
● Identified strains of the plastisphere -> pave the way towards future biotechnological development for plastic recycling. Isolation of microorganisms capable of degrading plastics is taking place, once the meta-analysis is developed and the selection of microorganisms is done, the first steps are settled into some alternatives for plastic recycling efficiency.
