Plastic in our Oceans

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Plastic Entering our Oceans

Every year it is estimated that at least 1 million metric tons (2.2 billion lbs) of plastic enters our oceans globally, according to recent high quality studies [1].

A single-use plastic water bottle that floating in the water, Gili Islands, Indonesia. Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash — A single-use plastic water bottle that floating in the water, Gili Islands, Indonesia
Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash

That is the mass of 2 262 fully loaded Boeing 747s (442 metric tons each), entering our oceans globally every year.

That works out to 2 737 metric tons (6 million lbs) of plastic going into the ocean every day, or the mass of 6 fully loaded Boeing 747s.

	Mass (tons)	Mass (lbs)	Mass of 747s
Per year	1 million tons	2.2 billion lbs	2262
Per week	19230.8 tons	42.4 million lbs	43
Per day	2737.9 tons	6 million lbs	6

Estimated plastic entering oceans globally (table by Webxspecialist)

Plastic Entering the Ocean from Rivers and The Coast

It is estimated that 6 million tons of plastic enters rivers and coastlines each year. [1]

Plastics entering rivers and coasts each year

6 million tons

Plastics entering the ocean each year

1 million tons

Comparison of plastics entering rivers and coasts with plastics entering the ocean per year. [1]

Resources

YouTube Videos

These videos are a useful starting point to understand plastics in our oceans.

The first two are excellent documentaries, and we believe most people will find them very informative to understand the impact of plastic impact on the ocean, animal life, and on our lives.

What Can Be Done About The Plastic Crisis? (Part 1) | Drowning In Plastic | Earth Stories

What Can Be Done About The Plastic Crisis? (Part 2) | Drowning In Plastic | Earth Stories

Why 99% of ocean plastic pollution is "missing" (Vox)

Data Resources / Charts / Graphs / Slides

In order to address the problem of ocean plastic it is important to know where most of the ocean plastic is coming from and why.

An excellent resource to understand which countries or areas are contributing most to ocean plastic pollution is the presentation slide deck at ourworldindata.org. Of particular interest are the slides which show that:

Only a small amount of plastic is recycled globally, only for a large portion of recycled plastic to discarded or incinerated later like other plastic (slide 5).
See also: Only 9 % of plastic is recycled globally in 2019.
0.5 % of global plastic waste ends up in the ocean (slide 8). While this may seem like a small percentage, due to how much plastic has been produced, this is estimated to result in at least a million tons of plastic each year being emitted into the ocean (current estimate at 1.7 million to be exact).
Most of the plastic waste generated globally comes from packaging (slide 11).
A large portion of the global plastic waste emitted into the oceans is from a few key countries (slide 17):
1. Philippines 36.3 %
2. India 12.9 %
3. Malaysia 7.4 %
4. China 7.2 %
5. Indonesia 5.7 %
6. Brazil 3.8 %
7. Vietnam 2.8 %
If an important goal is to reduce plastic going into the ocean, then appropriate resources and efforts should go to reducing the amount of plastics entering the oceans in these key countries.
Most ocean plastic arises from countries with a poor waste management management infrastructure. To reduce global ocean plastic pollution effectively, due focus and resources must be allocated to building waste management infrastructure in these key countries, as well as in other countries in the world.

Countries with smaller percentage contributions to global ocean plastic pollution, cannot be ignored either, as many countries small percentage contributions add up to a significant amount of ocean plastic pollution.

If you would like to suggest any other videos or resources, please

We are looking to Collaborate

We are looking to collaborate with anyone working on projects relating to plastics reduction, creating better infrastructure and systems for plastic waste management, plastics recycling, reducing or cleaning up plastics in the ocean, cleaning up plastics on beaches, or cleaning up the plastics in rivers.

Picture of the Ocean. Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash — Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

We have a diverse set of skills from website development, database design and implementation, data analysis, remote sensing analysis (radar and spectroscopy), to internet compatible robotics and sensor systems. We would love to be part of a project relating plastics reduction.

Read more about the skills we can offer here.

Sea turtle swimming in the ocean. Photo by Kris-Mikael Krister on Unsplash — Photo by Kris-Mikael Krister on Unsplash

Plastic Entering the Ocean per year Visualisation

We created the below visualisation to try and visualise that amount of plastic entering the oceans every year by showing 2 262 Boeing 747s in the below visualization:

Visualization (2262 Boeing 747s)

Each symbol displayed below represents the mass of a fully loaded Boeing 747.

If the aircraft visualisation (showing many aircraft) is not displaying, please click here to view the visualization using a different symbol.

1000 displayed...

2000 displayed...

2262 displayed

References

1. ourworldindata.org /plastic-pollution