Facts About Plastic Waste In The Ocean – Find out the key facts about plastics in the ocean with our infographics, find out their impact and how the EU is working to reduce plastic litter in the oceans.
The effects of today’s single-use, throwaway plastic culture can be seen everywhere on beaches and oceans. Plastic waste is increasingly polluting the oceans and according to one estimate, by 2050 the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight.
Facts About Plastic Waste In The Ocean
Plastics is one of the seven areas considered by the European Commission as critical to achieving a circular economy in the EU by 2050. In addition to the European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy, the Commission is expected to reduce the use of microplastics. Bring more plans to address plastic waste, including microplastics, later this year.
Plastic Free July
EU rules, adopted by MEPs on 27 March 2019, target lost fishing gear and 10 single-use plastics most commonly found on European beaches. Together these two groups account for 70% of marine debris. These new rules were also approved by the Council in May 2019.
Plastic doesn’t just make a mess on shore, it also affects marine animals that get stuck in large pieces and misuse the smaller pieces as food. Ingesting plastic particles can prevent normal food from being digested and attract toxic chemical pollutants to their organisms.
Marine litter causes economic losses to sectors and communities and producers that depend on the ocean: only about 5% of the value of plastic packaging remains in the economy – the rest is actually dumped, showing the need for a more focused approach to recycling and recycling. Reusing materials.
Single-use plastics are the largest single group found on seashores: items such as plastic cutlery, drink bottles, cigarette butts or cotton buds make up almost half of marine litter.
Countries Putting The Most Plastic Waste Into The Oceans
To address this problem, the European Union has implemented a total ban on single-use plastics, with alternatives already available among other items: cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws, drink stirrers and balloon sticks. MEPs have also added oxo-degradable plastic products and fast food containers made of polystyrene to the list.
For fishing gear, which accounts for 27% of marine litter, producers must cover waste management costs from port reception facilities. EU countries must collect at least 50% of lost fishing gear annually and recycle 15% of it by 2025.
In a resolution passed on March 25, the European Parliament called for urgent measures to reduce marine litter, including greater restrictions on single-use plastics and increasing the use of sustainable materials designed for fishing gear.
Fisheries and aquaculture wastes account for 27% of marine litter. To tackle the incidence of “ghost gear” (which is the loss of fishing gear at sea), MEPs should invest in mapping, reporting and monitoring, and research and innovation to develop environmentally friendly fishing gear. They call on the Commission to propose a phase-out of expanded polystyrene containers and packaging from fishing materials, as well as all unnecessary plastics and packaging in general.
Shocking Facts About Plastic Pollution
MEPs want to see a strengthened maritime vision in the European Green Deal, the Biodiversity Strategy and the Farm to Fork Strategy and call on the Commission to accelerate the development of a circular economy in fisheries and aquaculture.
Under plans adopted on Wednesday, single-use plastic items such as plates, cutlery, straws, balloon sticks or cotton buds will be banned in the EU.
Find out what the European Parliament is doing to ensure our resources are managed more sustainably.
Read what the European Parliament is doing to ensure the EU meets its ambitious targets to tackle climate change.
The Other Source: Where Does Plastic In The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Come From? • Updates • The Ocean Cleanup
Find out what the European Parliament is doing to avoid plastic waste and marine litter, as well as increase plastic recycling in Europe., Wilcox, C., Lavender Law, K., (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land to ocean, Science, 347, p. 768-771.
Good morning everyone. My name is Jenna and I am an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Georgia. While I was supposed to focus on environmental engineering, I fell in love with the study of solid waste, which is better known as trash or anything you recycle or throw away every day. The reason I feel waste is so different from designing water or wastewater facilities is that it involves people so closely. People have strong reactions to it – especially when the waste management system is physically close to them. Yet it is something we must create and manage every day. So when I talk today, I’m going to go through a lot of numbers, but when I do, I hope you keep in mind the same thing I do – there are always people behind these numbers.
It seems like we’ve been hearing a lot lately about concerns about plastic in our oceans and estimates of plastic in the ocean. Research interest in this issue has grown tremendously over the past 10 years. The results you hear about today arise from a scientific task force established 3.5 years ago at the National Center for Environmental Analysis and Synthesis. We are a diverse team – oceanographers, marine ecologists, solid waste specialists, statisticians, industrial ecologists, polymer scientists and engineers. When we got together, our starting point was to ask ourselves – what are the main sources of plastic in the ocean? We quickly discovered that land-based inputs can be an important resource. So we set out to find out just how much.
What we’ve done now is different than the numbers you’ve heard before – those numbers account for the amount of plastic already in the ocean – which we call the “sustainable stock”. What we looked at was the annual input – how much goes in each year. And it’s exciting to report this because it’s the first time we’ve combined sea and land with a number, and I’ll explain more about this number, but the way we’re most comfortable reporting it is “we say. It is estimated that people added 8 million metric tons — one metric ton is 1,000 kilograms, so 8.8 million US tons — of plastic to the ocean in 2010.
Plastic Pollution Facts That Show Why We Need To Do More
Our methodology for this assessment is to look at waste generation rates per person from 192 coastal countries in the world in 2010. Because most of the plastic entering the water is attributed to human activities near the coast, we limited our analysis to 50 km of coastline. From there, we looked at what percent of that waste was plastic, and what percent of it was illegal waste (that is, trash or waste if it wasn’t captured and dumped on land). From there there were three scenarios for entering the sea: low, middle and high. Our estimate of 8 million metric tons is that middle ground. 8 million metric tons of plastic is the equivalent of 5 bags (like this one) filled with plastic ending up in the ocean along every coastline in the world. It’s… huge.
And it could get worse. Assuming business as usual with a growing population, increased plastic consumption and increased waste generation, by 2025, this number will double – we could be adding 17.5 million metric tons of plastic per year. If that happens, our cumulative input over the period 2010 to 2025 will be 155 million metric tons.
The aim of this work is to develop this global assessment. But remember what I said earlier – behind these numbers are people living in culturally and socially different countries of the world. And to build our framework, we had to use country-level data – so we have a list of countries that are the best contributors. It’s getting a lot of attention, so I want to be clear about how we think about this list – it’s not about pointing fingers, but looking at things that strongly influence a country’s ranking on this list: First, population density Coastal – how many people litter within 50 kilometers of the sea Creating? Next, how much plastic waste does each person create? Finally, the percentage of mismanaged waste plays a role – how much of all that people throw away accidentally ends up in the ocean? At the top you find middle-income countries with fast-growing economies that have yet to develop waste management systems to handle the increase in waste generation that accompanies economic growth. One of the highest-grossing countries on the list is the United States, and our waste management systems are well-designed and highly effective, and only mismanaged waste from landfills, we have a large coastal population and a high waste generation rate.
We know
Chart: The Rivers Filling The Oceans With Plastic
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