![]() ![]() That's among the highest percentages ever found in fish on Earth, according to a recent study.Īnother study by the British research firm Eunomia said there may be as much as 70 million tons of plastic waste on the sea floor alone.Īnd it's not just fish or marine life that's affected, it's us: Rolf Halden, a professor of environmental health engineering at Arizona State University, said every human being in the developed world has traces of plastic constituents in his or her blood. Researchers said 73 percent of deepwater fish in the North Atlantic Ocean had eaten particles of plastic, known as microplastics. And, incredibly, trash has reached the stomachs of some of the deepest fish in the ocean. In this episode, Dianna Parker from the NOAA Marine Debris Program explains what a garbage patch is and isn't, what we know and don't know, and what we can do about this ocean-sized problem. Whether by errant plastic bags or plastic straws winding their way into gutters or large amounts of mismanaged plastic waste streaming from rapidly growing economies, that’s like dumping one New York City garbage truck full of plastic into the ocean every minute of every day for an entire year.įrom the tiniest plankton to the largest whales, plastics affect nearly 700 species in the ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one of many areas in the ocean where marine debris naturally concentrates because of ocean currents. ![]() ![]() "Some of it could be diverted to other countries, but most of them lack the infrastructure to manage their own waste, let alone the waste produced by the rest of the world." "It’s hard to predict what will happen to the plastic waste that was once destined for Chinese processing facilities," said Jenna Jambeck, associate professor at the University of Georgia's College of Engineering and co-author of the study. alone, nearly 4,000 shipping containers full of plastic recyclables a day had been shipped to Chinese recycling plants. The United States contributes as much as 242 million pounds of plastic trash to the ocean every year, according to that study.Ĭhina has begun to take steps to stem the tide of trash floating from its shores. The country recently banned the import of most plastic waste, according to a study published in June in Science Advances.Ĭhina has imported about 45 percent of the world’s plastic waste since 1992 for recycling, the study found. In the U.S. In fact, the top six countries for ocean garbage are China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Thailand, according to a 2015 study in the journal Science. This shouldn't be a surprise: Overall, worldwide, most of the plastic trash in the ocean comes from Asia. But specifically, scientists say, the bulk of the garbage patch trash comes from China and other Asian countries. ![]()
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