World’s Most Comprehensive Study Shows More Plastic in Our Oceans Than Scientists Thought

Published in Eco Watch by Marcus Eriksen - Dec. 15, 2015

The 5 Gyres Institute co-authored this study which is the most comprehensive estimate of small plastics in the world’s oceans. There were two other papers published earlier, one by Cozar (2014) and Eriksen (2014) using separate data sets.

The paper published last week in Environmental Research Letters, A Global Inventory of Small Floating Plastic Debris, uses three ocean models and every dataset published since the 1970s. With 10 authors contributing to it, it’s the best so far. This new study suggests there are 15 to 51 trillion microplastic particles in the world’s oceans, weighing somewhere between 93 and 236,000 metric tons. This is roughly seven times more than what we thought before.

Photo credit: 5 Gyres

Why is it more? It has more data and more recent data. It combines the efforts of three different ocean models, so the resolution is a lot better. There’s also a lot more plastic in the ocean. Consider that in 2013 the plastics industry reported 300 million metric tons of new plastic produced in that year and a lot of it used for single-use throw away products sent to countries that have poor waste management. That combo is a recipe for trashed seas.

What is the end game for all of the plastic out there? Research shows that if we can turn off the tap, most of it will sink or wash ashore. The ocean is very dynamic and turbulent, constantly throwing things out, tearing it apart and sinking it. Humanity will have to live with this geologic layer on the ocean floor and beaches worldwide. Call it the Plasticene. Plastic is the index fossil that marks in geologic time that humans were here.

What can we do about it? We’ve got to turn off the tap using two big ideas.

1. Waste management around the world must improve and that means getting away from burning and burying our waste. Diverging waste to responsible management schemes, like compost facilities and recovery and recycling, must improve.

2. Product design is a mandatory part of the solution. The single use throwaway product concept is trashing our oceans. No waste management scheme is going to effectively clean up the proliferation of poorly designed products and packaging, like plastic bags, plastic straws, microbeads, water bottles, etc. Go to our microbeads campaign to see how we’re holding companies accountable for putting millions of microplastic fragments in your facial cleansers and toothpastes.

These two solutions—waste management and product design—must happen simultaneously. We cannot expect countries to take out huge loans to pay to improve their waste management. It would be grossly unfair to create that economic burden, while the poorly designed products and packaging continue to trash our land and sea. We need the plastics industries that make and manufacture single-use throw away products to step up and design for a better future.

The Ocean Is Contaminated by Trillions More Pieces of Plastic Than Thought

Published in Take Part by Taylor Hill - Dec. 15, 2015

New research shows that the plastic problem is growing, but the full impact on marine life remains unknown.

(Photo: Rosemary Calvert/Getty Images)

Somewhere between 15 trillion and 51 trillions pieces of plastic litters the world’s oceans, a new study has found. That’s three to 10 times more plastic than scientists had previously estimated.

The study, led by climate scientist Erik van Sebille at London’s Imperial College and coauthored by researchers at nonprofit group 5 Gyres, built on the findings of two papers published last year. The scientists tapped every data set on plastic pollution published since the 1970s and ran the numbers through three computer models

The total weight of small plastic pieces that accumulated in 2014 alone is estimated to be between 93,000 and 236,000 metric tons, “which is only approximately one percent of global plastic waste estimated to enter the ocean” annually, the researchers wrote.

The study only focused on microplastics (those less than 200 millimeters in size) that could be captured by trawling nets pulled along the ocean surface. Thus the researchers’ estimates do not count plastic waste that ends up sinking to the ocean floor or is ingested by fish and other marine species.

Each American throws away as much as 185 pounds of plastic a year. In the last decade, the total weight of plastic products entering the market has risen from 225 million tons in 2004 to 311 million tons in 2014, according to industry group association Plastics Europe.


“These estimates are larger than previous global estimates, but vary widely because the scarcity of data in most of the world ocean,” the researchers wrote. Studies estimate that large amounts of plastic go undetected because they sink to the ocean floor or are eaten by fish.

In one study, deep-sea fish in the North Pacific gyre were estimated to have ingested between 12,000 and 24,000 metric tons of microplastics annually.

According to the new study, the wide range in the estimated amount of plastic entering the world’s oceans every year “reveals a fundamental gap in understanding.”

But the data available shows that the North Pacific Ocean, often referred to as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” has the highest density of plastic thanks in part to the region’s circular ocean currents and wind patterns.

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