We’ve been hearing for years about all the plastic that is going into our oceans, creating enormous gyres, washing up on beaches, threatening marine life and marine ecosystems in ways we don’t even know yet. A study last year called Valuing Plastic by the Plastic Disclosure Project and Trucost, estimated plastic caused about $13 billion in damages to marine ecosystems each year
Tracking all of that plastic, which ranges from plastic bags and bottles to tiny microbeads of plastic broken down from larger sources, has been an ongoing challenge for scientists. With each new study, we get a little closer to figuring out just how much there might be out there—and it’s worse than we thought.
A new study, Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean, published in the journal Science last week, estimated that plastic debris washing into the ocean from 192 coastal countries reached somewhere between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons in 2010.
That’s enough to cover every foot of coastline in the world. Based on the inputs it used—solid waste data, population density and economic status—it calculated that these countries produced a total of 275 metric tons of plastic waste and then figured out how much of that ends up in the ocean.
Previous studies had suggested the amount could be around a quarter million tons but this study found that it was likely many times more.
Population size and the quality of waste management systems largely determine which countries contribute the greatest mass of uncaptured waste available to become plastic marine debris,” said the researchers.
Without waste management infrastructure improvements, the cumulative quantity of plastic waste available to enter the ocean from land is predicted to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025.
They’re projecting that by 2025 the amount of plastic could reach 155 metric tons annually unless waste management techniques improve.
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