Plastic Ocean: The world dumps 8 million metric tons of plastic waste

Shoddy waste management and littering across the globe added eight million metric tons of plastic to the ocean in 2010, posing significant dangers to marine life say scientists. The five worst offenders listed in the study published in the journal Science were China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. The United States ranked 20th.

We need to prevent plastic from entering oceans in the first place.

Roland Geyer, Associate Professor at University of California Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management

The United States was the only wealthy nation in the top 20, and its ranking was due to the high rate of waste generation by its citizens, coupled with the nation’s large amount of coastline. The study is the first of its kind to measure the amount going in from 192 countries with a coastline in 2010, instead of the amount currently in the ocean, which previous studies have examined. The method for determining that amount was a mathematical model that was based on the per-person waste generation for 192 countries with a coastline.

Using the average density of uncompacted plastic waste, 8 million metric tons would cover an area 34 times the size of Manhattan ankle-deep in plastic waste.

Roland Geyer

World Plastic Ocean