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Plastic Waste

Every minute, two garbage trucks of plastic are dumped into our oceans. Currently, 300 million metric tons of plastic winds up in the oceans. The amount of plastic trash that flows into the oceans every year is expected to nearly triple by 2040 to 29 million metric tons.

Microplastics in different forms are present in almost all water systems in the world, be they streams, rivers, lakes, or oceans. There is more microplastic in the ocean than there are stars in the Milky Way.

There are five massive patches of plastic in the oceans around the world. These huge concentrations of plastic debris cover large swaths of the ocean. One patch in particular, known as the “Great North Pacific Garbage Patch” covers 1.6 million square kilometers of water.

By 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than there are fish (by weight).

There is an estimated 75 to 199 million tons of plastic waste currently in our oceans, with a further 33 billion pounds of plastic entering the marine environment every single year.

Plastic has been found at 36,000 feet (approximately 11km) in the Mariana Trench, meaning not even the deepest part of the world’s oceans can escape contamination.

Over 1 million marine organisms are killed each year due to plastic pollution in the ocean. Animals who eat plastic often starve because the plastic prevents them from properly swallowing food.

The chances of disease on a coral reef are enhanced by 22-fold by plastics. In 2018, a huge survey of the 159 coral reefs across Asia-Pacific region showed that over 11.1 billion plastic particles are entangling the corals, and this number is estimated to increase dramatically by 40% by 2025. Plastic debris may also cause physical damage to the corals by exhausting the resources for the wound-healing process. Importantly, more than 7000 species of fishes, invertebrates, plants, sea turtles, birds, and marine mammals can be found in the coral reef ecosystem.

Animals are now colonizing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, meaning that they are consuming the plastic waste and also living in previously uninhabited areas. All of these developments disrupt the natural marine ecosystem.Many animals at the base of the food chain eat microplastics. These animals are then consumed by others than humans eat.

The ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ (GPGP)

The most well-known example of large plastic accumulations in surface waters is the so-called ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ (GPGP). The largest accumulation of plastics within ocean basins is the North Pacific. This results from the combined impact of large coastal plastic inputs in the region, alongside intensive fishing activity in the Pacific ocean.

The vast majority of GPGP material is plastics — trawling samples indicate an estimated 99.9 percent of all floating debris. The authors estimate the GPGP spanned 1.6 million km2. This is just over three times the area of Spain, and slightly larger in area to Alaska (the USA’s largest state).

The GPGP comprised 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, with a mass of 79,000 tonnes (approximately 29 percent of the 269,000 tonnes in the world’s surface oceans). Over recent decades, the authors report there has been an exponential increase in concentration of surface plastics in the GPGP.