171trillion pieces of plastic are polluting the seas as numbers continue to soar
Plastic pollution is soaring rapidly – and there are more than 171trillion particles, and rising, floating in our oceans, a study finds.
Some 2.3million tons of plastic waste clog up the seas and it will get worse if global treaties to limit pollution are not agreed soon, experts warn.
Failure to tackle the issue will see current pollution levels increase about 2.6 times by 2040, data shows.
The prediction comes after the 40-year study monitored plastic waste levels in the north and south Atlantic and Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Researcher Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of The 5 Gyres Institute, said: ‘We’ve found an alarming trend of exponential growth of microplastics in the global ocean since the millennium.
‘This is a stark warning that we must act now at a global scale. We need a strong, legally binding UN Global Treaty that stops the problem at the source.’
Fuelled by demand for disposable packaging, global plastic production has been increasing since the 1950s and reached 390.7million tons in 2021.
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