The development of synthetic plastics derived from petrochemicals over the past two centuries has led to such a significant uplift in living standards that they are now ubiquitous in the daily life of almost every society. They are cheap to produce, sterile and, importantly, are highly chemically stable, being resistant to oxidation, depolymerization and biodegradation. They have been used to produce pivotal elements in food security, technological development, research, and medical procedures. This manifests in approximately 400 Mt of plastic produced worldwide annually. To meet diverse requirements, plastics exist as many chemically distinct polymers (e.g., polyamides, polyurethanes, rubbers), for which even plastics composed of the same polymer (e.g., polyethylene) can be chemically and materially very different by their molecular weights, degree of branching, and the inclusion proprietary plasticizers, fillers, or dyes. The huge volumes produced, the wide range of materials used and -given that only 20% is recycled (either mechanically, chemically or energetically) and the rest accumulates in landfills or as pollution on land or in rivers and oceans -plastic pollution is fast-becoming one of the most significant global issues of our time. Despite their chemical stability, polymer materials can be mechanically broken down via abrasive wear, or impact and tensile fractures into ever smaller pieces -microplastics (1 µm -5 mm) (MPs) and nanoplastics (1 nm -1 µm) (NPs). Morphologically, MPs come in a range of shapes and sizes which is determined by their material, original state and their his-toric breakdown pathways. These smaller pieces disperse more easily within and between environments, leading to their presence in almost every conceivable environment. MPs are now routinely detected in human samples, however, their inherent effects on human health are still under investigation. Nonetheless, they accumulate toxic materials such as hydrophobic organic pollutants and heavy metals, which then enter the food chain after ingestion by organisms, especially those in aquatic environments. As such, strategies should be developed to both detect and remove them from the environment and, simultaneously, their influence on animal and human health demands deeper investigation. To better understand the effects of MPs and NPs on their environment and human health, controllable studies must be performed using standard reference materials. This is problematic for a variety of reasons. Currently, many studies on the environmental and toxic impact of MPs, as well as strategies to remove or degrade them, use spherical particles synthesized using well-known colloidal techniques. However, the MPs found in nature are neither chemically pristine, nor morphologically homogeneous, nor monodisperse. The morphology of MPs is highly relevant to their toxicity due to the increased surface area and capacity to carry toxic pollutants. MPs sampled directly from the environment (e.g., rivers, oceans, waste-water treatment plants and soils) come from a diversity of unknown sources, being of unknown age and breakdown history and, as mentioned, are a diversity of chemical makeups. Additionally, they are very dilute and are vastly outnumbered by naturally found solids such as soils, minerals and biomass. Separating them from this mixture is not straightforward or scalable -this is by itself a research problem that would be aided by having access to reference MPs. Thus, strategies should be developed to produce large numbers of MPs and NPs which can be used as reference materials in controlled studies. Some examples of methods that produce appropriately polydisperse MP samples are laser ablation, or micro-abrasion. Whilst these methods provide reliable MPs and NPs with diverse morphologies, they are more useful for understanding the underlying processes of MP formation, and less suited for large-scale studies. Von der Esch et al. demonstrate that hydrolyzation and subsequent sonication of bulk plastics can be used to prepare MPs in large numbers and with high polydispersity. However, the resulting MP population is highly dependent on the chemistry of the material and the technique is unavailable for certain plastic types.