New estimate on the input of plastic waste into the sea and its persistence

A team from the Netherlands and Germany collected data from different marine environments, including coastlines, the ocean surface, and the deep ocean and it found that larger plastics (>25 mm) make up more than 95 % of the initially buoyant marine plastic mass. Their model suggests an ocean plastic input of about 500 kilotonnes per year, smaller than previous estimates, but these results indicate that the residence times of plastics in the seas are higher than previously thought. If this is not remedied there will be a major negative impact on the marine ecosystem.