Scientists have found a “never-before-seen rise” in plastic pollution worldwide. They estimate that more than 170 tonnes of plastic particles are floating in the ocean. They asked for less plastic to be made and said that if plastic keeps getting into the environment at the current rate, it will be impossible to clean it up.
The study, done by the 5 Gyres Institute and published in the U.S. journal Public Library of Science – General, looked at the changes in ocean plastic from 1979 to 2019. The authors pointed out that plastic pollution in the oceans is getting worse quickly and said that the plastics industry is to blame because it doesn’t recycle or make plastics that can be recycled.
Erickson, the co-founder of the 5 Rings Institute, says, “The exponential growth of microplastics in the world’s oceans is a stark warning that we must act immediately and globally to stop focusing on cleanup and recycling and usher in a new era of corporate responsibility for the entire life cycle of their products.”
Solving problems at the source
If we continue to produce plastics at the current rate, cleanup is futile, and we’re hearing that recycling is taking too long while the plastics industry simultaneously rejects any commitment to buy recycled materials or design recyclable plastics,” he said. It’s time to get rid of plastic where it comes from.”
The researchers looked at 11,777 samples of floating plastic in the ocean to make a global time series to estimate the average amount and mass of microplastics in the sea’s top layer. They then combined this information with international policies meant to reduce plastic pollution to see how well they worked.
The results showed that since 2005, the amount and mass of plastics in the ocean had overgrown. This could be because of the exponential growth of plastic production, the spread of plastic pollution, or changes in how waste is made and handled on land.
Scientists think that there are at least 170 tonnes of small pieces of plastic in the ocean, making a total of about 2 million tonnes. They believe that the amount of plastic in water will increase about 2.6 times from 2016 to 2040 if nothing is done right away to stop the production of plastic on a global scale.
Scientists are telling governments to do something to stop the flow of plastic. We know the ocean is a very important ecosystem, and we have ways to eliminate plastic from polluting it. “Carpenter, who works at California’s San Francisco State University’s Center for Estuarine and Marine Sciences, said this. But plastic pollution keeps worsening, which is bad for marine life.”
United Nations meets to decide on response
He emphasized, “There needs to be a law that limits the making and selling of single-use plastics, or marine life will be in even more danger. Oceans need to be healthy for people to live on Earth.”
The United Nations will decide what to do about plastic pollution this spring. Researchers say international plastic policies are too scattered, need clear goals, and can’t be measured.
They want global corporations to take more responsibility for making plastics and for laws to cover the whole life cycle of plastics, from where they come from to how they are thrown away.
