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Research papers on Ocean plastic pollution

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  1. Plastic Pollution in the World's Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea

    Marcus Eriksen, Laurent Lebreton, Henry S. Carson, et al. · 2014 · PLoS ONE · 4,704 citations

    Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. Here we report an estimate of the total number of plastic particles and their weight floating in the world's oceans from 24 expeditions (2007-2013) across all five sub-tropical gyres, costal Australia, Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea conducting surface net tows (N = 680) and visual survey transects of large plastic debris (N = 891). Using an oceanographic model of floating debris dispersal calibrated by our data, and correcting for wind-driven vertical mixing, we estimat

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  2. River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans

    Laurent Lebreton, Joost van der Zwet, Jan-Willem Damsteeg, et al. · 2017 · Nature Communications · 3,993 citations

    Plastics in the marine environment have become a major concern because of their persistence at sea, and adverse consequences to marine life and potentially human health. Implementing mitigation strategies requires an understanding and quantification of marine plastic sources, taking spatial and temporal variability into account. Here we present a global model of plastic inputs from rivers into oceans based on waste management, population density and hydrological information. Our model is calibrated against measurements available in the literature. We estimate that between 1.15 and 2.41 million tonnes of plastic waste currently enters the ocean every year from rivers, with over 74% of emissio

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  3. Predicted growth in plastic waste exceeds efforts to mitigate plastic pollution

    Stephanie B. Borrelle, Jeremy Ringma, Kara Lavender Law, et al. · 2020 · Science · 3,184 citations

    Plastic pollution is a planetary threat, affecting nearly every marine and freshwater ecosystem globally. In response, multilevel mitigation strategies are being adopted but with a lack of quantitative assessment of how such strategies reduce plastic emissions. We assessed the impact of three broad management strategies, plastic waste reduction, waste management, and environmental recovery, at different levels of effort to estimate plastic emissions to 2030 for 173 countries. We estimate that 19 to 23 million metric tons, or 11%, of plastic waste generated globally in 2016 entered aquatic ecosystems. Considering the ambitious commitments currently set by governments, annual emissions may rea

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  4. Plastic debris in the open ocean

    Andrés Cózar, Fidel Echevarrı́a, J. Ignacio González-Gordillo, et al. · 2014 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 3,138 citations

    There is a rising concern regarding the accumulation of floating plastic debris in the open ocean. However, the magnitude and the fate of this pollution are still open questions. Using data from the Malaspina 2010 circumnavigation, regional surveys, and previously published reports, we show a worldwide distribution of plastic on the surface of the open ocean, mostly accumulating in the convergence zones of each of the five subtropical gyres with comparable density. However, the global load of plastic on the open ocean surface was estimated to be on the order of tens of thousands of tons, far less than expected. Our observations of the size distribution of floating plastic debris point at imp

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  5. Pathways for degradation of plastic polymers floating in the marine environment

    Berit Gewert, Merle Plassmann, Matthew MacLeod · 2015 · Environmental Science Processes & Impacts · 2,142 citations

    Each year vast amounts of plastic are produced worldwide. When released to the environment, plastics accumulate, and plastic debris in the world's oceans is of particular environmental concern. More than 60% of all floating debris in the oceans is plastic and amounts are increasing each year. Plastic polymers in the marine environment are exposed to sunlight, oxidants and physical stress, and over time they weather and degrade. The degradation processes and products must be understood to detect and evaluate potential environmental hazards. Some attention has been drawn to additives and persistent organic pollutants that sorb to the plastic surface, but so far the chemicals generated by degra

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  7. Plastic Accumulation in the Mediterranean Sea

    Andrés Cózar, Marina Sanz‐Martín, Elisa Martí, et al. · 2015 · PLoS ONE · 790 citations

    Concentrations of floating plastic were measured throughout the Mediterranean Sea to assess whether this basin can be regarded as a great accumulation region of plastic debris. We found that the average density of plastic (1 item per 4 m2), as well as its frequency of occurrence (100% of the sites sampled), are comparable to the accumulation zones described for the five subtropical ocean gyres. Plastic debris in the Mediterranean surface waters was dominated by millimeter-sized fragments, but showed a higher proportion of large plastic objects than that present in oceanic gyres, reflecting the closer connection with pollution sources. The accumulation of floating plastic in the Mediterranean

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  8. Plastic as a Persistent Marine Pollutant

    Boris Worm, Heike K. Lotze, Isabelle Jubinville, et al. · 2017 · Annual Review of Environment and Resources · 757 citations

    Synthetic organic polymers—or plastics—did not enter widespread use until the 1950s. By 2015, global production had increased to 322 million metric tons (Mt) year −1 , which approaches the total weight of the human population produced in plastic every year. Approximately half is used for packaging and other disposables, 40% of plastic waste is not accounted for in managed landfills or recycling facilities, and 4.8–12.7 Mt year −1 enter the ocean as macroscopic litter and microplastic particles. Here, we argue that such mismanaged plastic waste is similar to other persistent pollutants, such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which once threatened a

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  10. Plastic Pollution and Potential Solutions

    Christopher J. Rhodes · 2018 · Science Progress · 665 citations

    A review is presented of the manufacture and use of different types of plastic, and the effects of pollution by these materials on animal, human and environmental health, insofar as this is known. Since 2004, the world has made as much plastic as it did in the previous half century, and it has been reckoned that the total mass of virgin plastics ever made amounts to 8.3 billion tonnes, mainly derived from natural gas and crude oil, used as chemical feedstocks and fuel sources. Between 1950 and 2015, a total of 6.3 billion tonnes of primary and secondary (recycled) plastic waste was generated, of which around 9% has been recycled, and 12% incinerated, with the remaining 79% either being store

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  11. Microbial Ecotoxicology of Marine Plastic Debris: A Review on Colonization and Biodegradation by the “Plastisphere”

    Justine Jacquin, Jingguang Cheng, Charlène Odobel, et al. · 2019 · Frontiers in Microbiology · 523 citations

    Over the last decades, it has become clear that plastic pollution presents a global societal and environmental challenge given its increasing presence in the oceans. A growing literature has focused on the microbial life growing on the surfaces of these pollutants called the "plastisphere," but the general concepts of microbial ecotoxicology have only rarely been integrated. Microbial ecotoxicology deals with (i) the impact of pollutants on microbial communities and inversely (ii) how much microbes can influence their biodegradation. The goal of this review is to enlighten the growing literature of the last 15 years on microbial ecotoxicology related to plastic pollution in the oceans. First

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  12. The fundamental links between climate change and marine plastic pollution.

    Helen V. Ford, Nia H. Jones, A. Davies, et al. · 2021 · The Science of the total environment · 392 citations

    Plastic pollution and climate change have commonly been treated as two separate issues and sometimes are even seen as competing. Here we present an alternative view that these two issues are fundamentally linked. Primarily, we explore how plastic contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the beginning to the end of its life cycle. Secondly, we show that more extreme weather and floods associated with climate change, will exacerbate the spread of plastic in the natural environment. Finally, both issues occur throughout the marine environment, and we show that ecosystems and species can be particularly vulnerable to both, such as coral reefs that face disease spread through plastic po

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  13. Reducing environmental plastic pollution by designing polymer materials for managed end-of-life

    K. L. Law, R. Narayan · 2021 · Nature Reviews Materials · 381 citations

    Plastics are a ubiquitous class of synthetic polymer materials used in virtually all commercial and industrial sectors. The majority of global plastics consists of polymers with carbon–carbon backbones, whose environmental persistence and low cost have resulted in a massive reservoir of plastic waste that resides in landfills and the environment. Although plastic debris contaminating the ocean has been documented for decades, details about plastic debris composition, distribution, impact and ultimate fate in the environment remain elusive. In this Review, we present an overview of environmental plastic contamination and discuss the origin (feedstock) and degradation behaviour of plastics to

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  17. Marine Litter Windrows: A Strategic Target to Understand and Manage the Ocean Plastic Pollution

    A. Cózar, S. Aliani, O. C. Basurko, et al. · 2021 · 61 citations

    Windrow is a long-established term for the aggregations of seafoam, seaweeds, plankton and natural debris that appear on the ocean surface. Here, we define a “litter windrow” as any aggregation of floating litter at the submesoscale domain (<10 km horizontally), regardless of the force inducing the surface convergence, be it wind or other forces such as tides or density-driven currents. The marine litter windrows observed to date usually form stripes from tens up to thousands of meters long, with litter densities often exceeding 10 small items (<2 cm) per m2 or 1 large item (>2 cm) per 10 m2. Litter windrows are generally overlooked in research due to their dispersion, small size and ephemer

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  20. Plastic Pollution and Small Juvenile Marine Turtles: A Potential Evolutionary Trap

    E. Duncan, A. Broderick, Kay Critchell, et al. · 2021 · 49 citations

    The ingestion of plastic by marine turtles is now reported for all species. Small juvenile turtles (including post-hatchling and oceanic juveniles) are thought to be most at risk, due to feeding preferences and overlap with areas of high plastic abundance. Their remote and dispersed life stage, however, results in limited access and assessments. Here, stranded and bycaught specimens from Queensland Australia, Pacific Ocean (PO; n = 65; 1993–2019) and Western Australia, Indian Ocean (IO; n = 56; 2015–2019) provide a unique opportunity to assess the extent of plastic (> 1mm) ingestion in five species [green (Chelonia mydas), loggerhead (Caretta caretta), hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata), oli

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  21. Plastic pollution of four understudied marine ecosystems: a review of mangroves, seagrass meadows, the Arctic Ocean and the deep seafloor

    B. Walther, M. Bergmann · 2022 · Emerging Topics in Life Sciences · 42 citations

    Plastic pollution is now a worldwide phenomenon affecting all marine ecosystems, but some ecosystems and regions remain understudied. Here, we review the presence and impacts of macroplastics and microplastics for four such ecosystems: mangroves, seagrass meadows, the Arctic Ocean and the deep seafloor. Plastic production has grown steadily, and thus the impact on species and ecosystems has increased, too. The accumulated evidence also indicates that plastic pollution is an additional and increasing stressor to these already ecosystems and many of the species living in them. However, laboratory or field studies, which provide strong correlational or experimental evidence of ecological harm d

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  23. Unleashing the Potential of IoT in Tackling Ocean Pollution: A Data-Driven Approach for Marine Ecosystem Conservation

    S. Srinivasan, T. Saravanan, J. Vimala Ithayan, et al. · 2023 · 2023 Second International Conference On Smart Technologies For Smart Nation (SmartTechCon) · 30 citations

    This study investigates the potentially revolutionary role that the Internet of Things (IoT) may play in combating the urgent ocean pollution problem and promoting the growth of ecologically sound marine ecosystems. An approach that is data-driven has become essential in light of the fact that pollution poses a risk to the delicate balance of marine life and puts the future of the seas in jeopardy. The user can get real-time data on water quality, pollutant levels, and plastic trash dispersion if the user installs sensors and devices that the IoT enables. This will allow us to gain a greater knowledge of the patterns and causes of pollution. Using the plethora of information at people’s disp

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