Research suggests that plastic pollution must be reduced by at least 5% every year to make progress towards UN targets by the end of the century.
Research suggests that plastic pollution must be reduced by at least 5% every year to make progress towards UN targets by the end of the century.
The study, a collaboration between researchers at Imperial College London and GNS Science, suggests that reducing plastic pollution by 5% per year would stabilize the level of microplastics – plastics less than 5 mm in length – in the surface oceans.
However, the modelling shows that even reducing pollution by 20% per year would not significantly reduce existing microplastics levels, meaning they will persist in our oceans beyond 2100.
Microplastics have been found to be circulating in all of the Earth’s oceans and some of the greatest concentrations of them are thousands of miles from land. These tiny particles of plastics can be hazardous to marine life and they find their way back from our oceans into human food systems.
Read more at Imperial College London
Photo Credit: flockine via Pixabay
