Photo credit: Marcus Eriksen/New York Time
Since the 1990s, its been common knowledge that our oceans are infested with plastic debris. But how much is there really?
Researchers have published a study in the PLOS One journal that estimates about 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic are currently floating in our seas. That’s 269,000 tons!
Using computer models, they came to this conclusion after sending ships out into the ocean and collecting samples of plastic in nets. The larger pieces were fishing nets and buoys that had been discarded.
Marcus Eriksen is the leader of the effort and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit group that combines scientific research with antipollution activism. He suggested an international program that pays fishing vessels for reclaimed nets to help fix the problem.
But there’s still a lot of concern for the bottles, toothbrushes, bags, toys and other small plastics that make their way into the ocean.
“Plastics are like a cocktail of contaminants floating around in the aquatic habitat,” said Chelsea M. Rochman, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Davis. “These contaminants may be magnifying up the food chain.”
Research will continue to test where the smallest pieces of plastic have gone.
But this is a problem we cannot stop unless we target the sources of the plastic debris.
The American Chemistry Council, which speaks for the plastics industries, issued a statement saying that its members “wholeheartedly agree that littered plastics of any kind do not belong in the marine environment,” and it cited industry efforts to combat the problem, including the 2011 Declaration of the Global Plastics Associations for Solutions on Marine Litter, which has led to 185 projects around the world.