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Estuaries and coastlines capture most plastic before it gets out to sea, providing a chance to stop ocean pollution

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2024-08-07 18:00:04

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by Melissa Bowen, Gaoyang Li, Giovanni Coco and Zheng Chen, The Conversation

If you ask someone where plastic ends up, they will usually say the ocean. It's not a surprising answer because we have known since the 1970s that plastic is accumulating in the subtropical oceans, far from land.

Most people have heard of the "great garbage patch," a region of the North Pacific between Hawaii and California, where plastic is accumulating. Images of remote plastic-covered beaches often appear in the media.

However, the numbers don't add up. Estimates of all the plastic drifting in the ocean show less than 10% of what enters rivers and coastlines reaches the subtropical accumulation zones.