In less than twenty years, an “exponential” increase in plastic in the oceans

Plastic has been poisoning the world's waters for decades.

Every year, at least 8 million tons of such waste ends up in the ocean, the equivalent of one garbage truck being unloaded every minute, according to a committee of experts from the American Academies of Sciences, Engineering and medicine.

Bottles, packaging, fishing nets... Plastic floats erratically in all corners of the seas, mixes, decomposes over time under the effect of light or mechanical degradation, before going to pollute the seabed.

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Understanding the full extent of this global phenomenon remains complex.

Researchers from American universities wanted to establish a chronology of the amount of plastic floating on the surface of the oceans from 1979 to 2019. They used data already published or from new surveys of floating plastics collected using nets. to the microscopic mesh (most about 1/3 of a millimeter)…

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