A team of researchers from the 5 Gyres Institute (USA) has issued a warning: by 2040, the rate at which plastic enters the world’s oceans is expected to increase by 2.6 times. This alarming trend can be reversed if the global population takes action to combat it.
5 Gyres is a scientific organization dedicated to fighting plastic pollution and holds a special consultative status with the United Nations.
In their latest study, scientists from 5 Gyres discovered that there are 4.9 million tons of plastic waste floating in our oceans.
How They Found Out
The team analyzed a global dataset on ocean plastic pollution over a 40-year period, from 1979 to 2019. The data was collected from 11,777 stations across six key marine regions: the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea.
The analysis revealed a significant and rapid increase in both the quantity and distribution of plastic since 2005.
According to the researchers, in 2019, approximately 358 trillion plastic particles were estimated to be floating in our oceans, weighing around 4.9 million tons, as reported by the Daily Mail.
Marcus Eriksen, co-founder and lead researcher at the 5 Gyres Institute, considers the findings a serious call to action on a global scale.
The scientist expressed particular concern over the exponential rise of microplastic pollution in the world’s oceans at the beginning of the millennium. However, the exact cause of this surge remains unclear. In a concluding article for the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers noted that this trend could be influenced by political interventions, plastic production, fragmentation of existing plastic in the water, and/or the quality of waste management and trade.
Unfortunately, as the researchers warned, the situation could worsen significantly if immediate action is not taken.
The increasing prevalence of plastic in the ocean’s surface layer (OSL) calls for urgent intervention from the international political elite. Without such action, it will be impossible to minimize the ecological, social, and economic damages caused by plastic pollution, the team concluded.
***
Last year, around 200 countries, including the United States and China, approved a new United Nations agreement requiring a reduction in plastic production by 2024.
Plastic pollution has escalated into an epidemic, noted Espen Barth Eide, President of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA). Many viewed the approval of this new document as a step toward recovery.
This historic agreement aims to save the planet’s ecosystem from an impending collapse due to the spread of plastic and microplastic particles worldwide.
It represents the most significant environmental document of its kind since the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, which mandated governments to limit greenhouse gas emissions.