Plastic waters, plastic land. Pandemic pollution

Marine pollution. Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean.

Plastic debris in the marine environment is widely documented, but the quantity of plastic entering the ocean from waste generated on land is unknown. By linking worldwide data on solid waste, population density, and economic status, we estimated the mass of land-based plastic waste entering the ocean. We calculate that 275 million metric tons (MT) of plastic waste was generated in 192 coastal ...

Editorial: Plastic Pollution

Marine birds and plastic pollution

The intrinsic properties and widespread presence of plastic particles in the marine environment have profound effects on birds inhabiting the world's oceans. Industrial and user-plastics composed of polystyrene, polypropylene, polyethylene, styrofoam, and polyvinyl chloride are the most prevalent forms of plastic marine pollution. Their dispersal and accumulation, in average densities of 1000 t...

Marine Plastic Pollution in Waters around Australia: Characteristics, Concentrations, and Pathways

Plastics represent the vast majority of human-made debris present in the oceans. However, their characteristics, accumulation zones, and transport pathways remain poorly assessed. We characterised and estimated the concentration of marine plastics in waters around Australia using surface net tows, and inferred their potential pathways using particle-tracking models and real drifter trajectories...

Plastic Pollution Patterns in Offshore, Nearshore and Estuarine Waters: A Case Study from Perth, Western Australia

Plastic pollution in marine surface waters is prone to high spatial and temporal variability. As a result increases in pollution over time are hard to detect. Selecting areas, based on variable oceanographic and climatological drivers, rather than distance-based approaches, is proposed as a means to better understand the dynamics of this confounding variability in coastal environments. A pilot ...