Over 170 trillion plastic fragments in the oceans

Since 2005, plastic in the oceans has increased as never before in the last 40 years: there are over 170,000 billion plastic fragments floating on the surface, for a total weight of 2.3 million tons, and the speed with which they are introduced in water is destined to almost triple by 2040. This is indicated by a study published in the journal Plos One by an international research group led by Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of the Californian non-profit organization 5 Gyres Institute.

The work is based on data collected between 1979 and 2019 from nearly 12,000 stations located in six marine regions around the world (North and South Atlantic Ocean, North and South Pacific, Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea).

The information, reprocessed taking into account the winds, the selected sites and the inaccuracies due to poor sampling activity, gave rise to a model that shows that since 2005 there has been a rapid and significant increase in plastic on the surface of the seas .

Estimates updated to 2019 indicate an average of 171,000 billion plastic particles (mostly microplastics) weighing a total of 2.3 million tons.

Although most of the data was collected in the North Atlantic and Pacific, the researchers specify that the surge in marine plastics observed since 2005 reflects the global growth in plastic production and waste management policies.

Without a clear change of course, the rate of plastic entering the seas is set to increase by 2.6 times by 2040.

This “alarming trend of exponential growth of microplastics in the world's oceans since the beginning of the millennium”, comments Eriksen, “is a clear signal of the need to act now on a global scale.

We need a strong, legally binding United Nations global treaty on plastic pollution that stops the problem at the source."