How Much Rubbish Goes Into The Ocean Each Year – A staggering 8-12 million tons of plastic are dumped into the oceans every year. This is expected to increase significantly over the next decade unless we take immediate action. But the G20 and the UN have no plans for direct action.
Of the 8-12 million tons, international cleanup efforts could collect about 10.5%, leaving 89.5% free to poison marine life and eventually contaminate the ocean floor. This figure is only an estimate. But it shows us two things:
How Much Rubbish Goes Into The Ocean Each Year
Of the 10.5%, 8.33% were mechanically collected (planned floating dredging operations), with 2.17% being hand-collected from the beaches. Machines are the most promising options for mass ocean cleanup.
What Happens To The Plastic Waste That Goes Into The Ocean?
With the increase forecast, we need to reduce the use of plastic on land to just what is needed to keep society sustainable. Even with single-use plastic bans, we won’t be able to stem the tide of plastics.
We could ban plastic entirely if it weren’t for the fact that modern humans need plastic for medical devices, computers and cheaper cars. Of course, this is not the case.
Scientists have come up with a new way to measure trash in the ocean — and the numbers are even worse than thought.
In 2010, eight million tons of plastic trash ended up in the ocean from coastal countries—far more than the total amount that was measured floating on the surface in ocean “trash.”
Here’s Where The Ocean’s Trash Comes From
That’s the bad news. The even worse news is that tonnage is set to increase tenfold over the next decade unless the world finds a way to improve the way it collects and manages rubbish.
The findings are part of a groundbreaking study published Thursday in Science that for the first time quantifies how much trash flows into the world’s oceans each year.
Until now, most efforts to measure ocean litter have involved counting samples of plastic floating on the surface in large patches of garbage in each of the world’s oceans. A study last year, for example, estimated that the amount of floating trash was at most 245,000 tons.
The new study also identifies the main sources of plastic waste and names the top 20 countries that generate the most ocean-related litter. China is first. The US is 20th. The rest of the list includes 11 other Asian countries, Turkey, five African countries and Brazil.
Countries Putting The Most Plastic Waste Into The Oceans
Although the United States has a highly developed garbage collection system, it still makes the top 20 for two reasons: it has a large, dense coastal population and, as a wealthy nation, it is a big consumer of produce. (See the video: “Are you eating plastic for dinner?”)
“What we’ve done is look at the other side of the equation—what’s coming out of the faucet, not what’s already in the tub,” said Cara Lavender Lowe, an oceanographer at the Marine Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and a co-author of the report. .
“The magnitude of the discrepancy is huge – 20 to 2,000 times the range of floating debris estimates. It’s quite shocking, especially when you consider the amount that goes into the ocean in one year and what we’re counting in the oceans has been going on for 50 years.”
To make the eight-million-ton figure understandable, Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer at the University of Georgia who led the study, likens it to stacking five bags of trash on every foot of coastline around the world.
Un Launches Campaign To Take Out Ocean Trash
1. China 2. Indonesia 3. Philippines 4. Vietnam 5. Sri Lanka 6. Thailand 7. Malaysia 8. Egypt 9. Nigeria 10. Bangladesh
Jambek and her team combined population and economic data from 192 coastal countries bordering the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans in addition to the Black and Mediterranean seas. They found that these countries create 275 million tons of trash annually, of which 4.8 to 12.7 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans. This is only 2 to 5 percent of the total waste created in these countries.
The use of plastic for consumer products has become increasingly dominant and production has steadily increased since the material first came into widespread use half a century ago. In 2012, for example, 288 million tons of plastic were produced worldwide.
Ocean plastic has turned up literally everywhere. It was found in the deep sea and buried in the arctic ice. It has been consumed with severe consequences by about 700 species of marine wildlife.
How Much Of Our Plastic Garbage Ends Up At Sea?
The pioneering study also creates a new mystery. Because the difference between what is found floating and what flows into the ocean is so wide, scientists now need to figure out where else it collects and in what amounts.
“What we need to do now is close the gap,” Richard Thompson, a marine biologist at Britain’s Plymouth University.
Eight million tons of plastic are thrown into the sea every year…that’s a whopping five bags full for every foot of the world’s coastline
So much plastic is thrown into the sea each year that it would fill five carrier bags for every foot of coastline on the planet, scientists have warned.
Study: Take Out Food, Drink Litter Make Up Majority Of Plastics In Oceans
Every year, about 8 million tons of plastic bottles, bags, toys and other plastic waste end up in the world’s oceans.
The “staggering” amount is far higher than previous estimates – and enough to leave an area around 25 times the size of Manchester ankle-deep in plastic waste.
Because of the difficulty in determining the exact amount, since much of it may have sunk, scientists said the true figure could be as high as 12.7 million tons polluting the ocean each year.
Dr Jenna Jambeck, one of the researchers from the University of Georgia in the US, said we are becoming “overwhelmed by our waste”.
How Does Plastic Get In The Ocean? 5 Questions We Need To Answer To Fix Plastic Pollution
Turtles can mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and eat them. The bags then block their stomachs, causing them to starve to death.
Seabirds often mistake floating plastic for food; over 90 percent of fulmars found dead around the North Sea have plastic in their stomachs. There are also concerns that eating fish that have consumed plastic could harm our health.
The scientists arrived at their figures by analyzing data on the amount of waste generated and how well it is disposed of in 192 coastal countries.
Their figures are much higher than those of previous studies, which looked only at litter floating on the surface and did not take into account plastic that had sunk to the sea floor or been trapped in ice.
How Much Trash Is In Our Oceans?
They estimate that between 4.7 million and 12.7 million tons of plastic entered the world’s oceans in 2010, with the best estimate being 8 million tons.
The figure is expected to grow every year. Between 2010 and 2025, about 155 million tons of plastic could end up in the ocean—enough to fill 100 bags per foot of shoreline.
China topped the league in plastic pollution, accounting for up to 3.5 million tons a year, or nearly a quarter of the total, according to the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose, California.
Writing in the journal Science, Dr Jambeck said that although the UK was not among the biggest polluters, we could not be complacent, adding that global action was needed to tackle the problem.
More Than 14m Tonnes Of Plastic Believed To Be At The Bottom Of The Ocean
Co-author Roland Geier, an associate professor of industrial ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said: “Removing plastic marine debris on a large scale will not be cost-effective and is probably simply not feasible.
“This means we need to prevent plastic from entering the oceans in the first place through better waste management, more reuse and recycling, better product design and material substitution.”
Frank Davis, director of the US National Center for Environmental Analysis and Synthesis, said: “The numbers are staggering, but the problem is not insurmountable.”
The Daily Mail has been campaigning for seven years for tougher action to reduce plastic bag waste. A major victory came in June last year when a 5p charge on plastic bags was announced in England.
World Oceans Day Installation Shows 1,580kg Plastic Waste Dumped In Australia’s Oceans Every Hour
The charge, which will be introduced by October, is expected to reduce the use of bags by up to 80 per cent and raise up to £100m a year for good causes.
Campaigners say the bags can take up to 1,000 years to break down, but are used in just 20 minutes on average.
SCOOPWHOOP FEBRUARY 2016 – In just 35 years, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish. There will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050 if the ongoing practice of plastic dumping continues, says a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
In the report, the World Economic Forum (WEF) states that at least 8 million tons of plastics are leaking into the ocean every year, which is equivalent to dumping the contents of a garbage truck into the ocean every minute.
A Trip To The Trash Isles
“If no action is taken, this is expected to rise to two per minute by 2030 and four per minute by 2050,” it noted.
The plastic has accumulated in five hotspots in the ocean called gyres, see here on this map of the world derived from information published by 5 Gyres. All that plastic just floating around is a huge waste of resources in a sustainable sense, where we should aim for a circular economy.
ABS – BIOMAGING – CANCER –
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