Five Trillion Pieces Of Plastic - More than five trillion pieces of plastic, which weighs as much as two massive cruise liners, are found to be floating in the world's oceans. According to a new study, the total weight of the five trillion pieces of plastic pollution in the world's seas is now estimated to be almost 269,000 tonnes.
The study on five trillion pieces of plastic pollution was conducted by an international team of scientists from the US, France, Chile, Australia and New Zealand. They made the calculation after gathering data from 24 expeditions collected over a period of six years, between 2007 and 2013, according to the Daily Mail.
The five trillion pieces of plastic research was published in the journal PLOS One. It is known to be the first study to look at plastics of all sizes in the world's oceans.
However, the scientists said that the study revealed the figures were "highly conservative" and that it did not take into account "the potentially massive amount" that is no longer afloat.
The five trillion pieces of plastic article also cited trade body Plastics Europe as saying that 288 million tons of plastic were produced worldwide in 2012, according to The Independent.
Plastic from five sub-tropical 'gyres' - huge areas of circulating ocean currents, as well as coastal Australia, the Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea - were scooped up through nets. Visual surveys reportedly provided the data on large fragments of plastic material.
The data on the five trillion pieces of plastic in the oceans was combined and a computer simulation of floating debris dispersal was reportedly used to suggest a minimum of 5.25 tons of plastic particles in the oceans, most of which are termed "micro plastics", measuring less than 5mm.
The massive volume of plastic pieces was mostly from products such as food and drink packaging and clothing. The data was taken from 24 expeditions over a six-year period to 2013.
These five trillion pieces of plastic may be spread out around the globe. However, much of the garbage reportedly accumulates in five large ocean gyres. These gyres are known to be circular currents that churn up plastics in a set area. Each of the major oceans have plastic-filled gyres, including the famous "great Pacific garbage patch", spanning a massive area roughly the size of Texas.
Traversing the large waste-filled gyres in a boat was akin to sailing through "plastic soup," according to one scientist.
"You put a net through it for half an hour and there's more plastic than marine life there," she said. "It's hard to visualise the sheer amount, but the weight of it is more than the entire biomass of humans. It's quite an alarming problem that's likely to get worse."
Sub-tropical gyres are notorious for gathering plastic. However, the recent research on the five trillion pieces of plastic revealed that the garbage was not confined only to these ocean "dustbins."
The smallest particles have gotten distributed to remote parts of the world, including sub-polar regions. This means that the gyres "shredded" large plastic items and ejected the pieces.
"Our findings show that the garbage patches in the middle of the five sub-tropical gyres are not the final resting places for the world's floating plastic trash," said Dr. Marcus Eriksen, the study's lead researcher and director of research at the Five Gyres Institute in Los Angeles.
"The end-game for micro-plastic is interactions with entire ocean ecosystems," she added.
The scientists also found that large plastics from the five trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean were abundant near coastlines.
"Microplastic" particles on the oceans' surface were found to be much less than expected. This suggests that some of it was being removed.
Removal processes reportedly included degradation by sunlight, biodegradation, loss of buoyancy, entanglement with settling detritus, beaching, and ingestion by fish and other organisms.
Researchers found that albatrosses on remote pacific islands were ingesting so much plastic that their stomachs become full that they die. The sharp foreign objects from different types of plastics were also found to be lacerating their gut walls.
Somewhere else, sea turtles are also being found with stomachs full of debris from the five trillion pieces of plastic. This is because they are prone to mistaking bags for jellyfish. When they ingest the foreign objects, they can block the digestive tract, leading to a slow death from starvation.
A recent estimate on the cause of death of seabirds found dead on beaches revealed that 90 per cent of the birds have ingested plastic.
"This is the first study that compares all sizes of floating plastic in the world's oceans from the largest items to small microplastics. Plastics of all sizes were found in all ocean regions, converging in accumulation zones in the sub-tropical gyres, including southern hemisphere gyres where coastal population density is much lower than in the northern hemisphere," the scientists concluded in the study of five trillion pieces of plastic on the online journal Plos One.
According to The Guardian, researchers predict that the volume of five trillion pieces of plastic garbage will increase in the coming years due to rising production of throwaway plastic. Only 5% of the world's plastic are known to be recycled.
"Lots of things are used once and then not recycled," said one of the researchers in the study. "We need to improve our use of plastic and also monitor plastics in the oceans so we get a better understanding of the issue."
"I'm optimistic but we need to get policy makers to understand the problem. Some are doing that - Germany has changed the policy so that manufacturers are responsible for the waste they produce. If we put more responsibility on to the producer then that would be part of the solution," he added.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
