As usual, PIMI is tracking the “Ocean Cleanup Project System001” and so we feel obligation to publish their team’s updates. The newest update says: Today, after several revisions from peers, our global assessment of plastic waste generation was published in the humanities and social sciences journal, Nature Palgrave Communications. The manuscript “Future Scenarios for Global Plastic Waste Generation and Disposal” presents a new and improved numerical method to predict plastic waste generation based on economic and demographic indicators.
Essentially, we created a high-resolution map for plastic waste distribution using several open-access global datasets, including country-scale statistics for municipal solid waste, as well as human population and gross domestic product (GDP) distributions. For the 2015 calendar year, we estimated that between 60 and 99 million metric tons of municipal plastic waste were improperly disposed of and released into the environment. A fraction of this waste will eventually be transported into the ocean. A nearly one-kilometer resolution distribution of where this waste was generated is presented in this interactive map
Laurent Lebreton an oceanographer writes about the project:
As we kick off 2019, the engineering team is working towards solutions to the challenges we face with System 001, while the research team remains focused on the study of oceanic plastic pollution. We believe that it is essential to understand the problem of ocean plastic pollution if we are to effectively solve it. Fortunately, our operations in the North Pacific have provided a great opportunity to conduct additional sampling to further the mission of our research.
At present, we are busy working towards establishing a plastic mass budget in the ocean. This means understanding where ocean plastic is coming from, where it is accumulating, and what happens to it in the long term. These questions involve improving our knowledge of various processes occurring at very different timescales. These questions are also essential to optimize mitigation strategies and the future of cleanup operations. Turning the tide on ocean plastics will require a combination of both preventive and curative strategies; from controlled consumer demand and material innovation to investment in better waste management infrastructures and collection technologies.
To read more “Click Here”
