Marcus Eriksen

TL;DR: The total number of plastic particles and their weight floating in the world's oceans is estimated from 24 expeditions across all five sub-tropical gyres, costal Australia, Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea conducting surface net tows and visual survey transects of large plastic debris.

TL;DR: The presence of microplastics and coal ash in these surface samples, which were most abundant where lake currents converge, are likely from nearby urban effluent and coal burning power plants.

TL;DR: This paper used a rigorous statistical framework to standardize a global dataset of plastic marine debris measured using surface-trawling plankton nets and coupled this with three different ocean circulation models to spatially interpolate the observations.

TL;DR: The results demonstrate that without proper waste management, low-density populations can heavily pollute freshwater systems with consumer plastics.

TL;DR: Assessment of three broad management strategies, plastic waste reduction, waste management, and environmental recovery, at different levels of effort to estimate plastic emissions to 2030 for 173 countries found that 19 to 23 million metric tons, or 11%, of plastic waste generated globally in 2016 entered aquatic ecosystems.