Assessment of the Plastic Inputs From the Seine Basin to the Sea Using Statistical and Field Approaches

Abstract

Global estimations state that between 0.5 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic enter the oceans each year. They are, however, associated with great uncertainties due to methodological difficulties to accurately quantify land-based plastic fluxes into the oceans. New studies at basin scale are thus needed for better model calibrations. Here, a modeling approach based on Jambeck's statistical method and a field approach are compared in order to (i) quantify plastic fluxes in the Seine River and (ii) characterize and constrain uncertainties of both approaches. Despite the simplicity of the statistical approach and rough extrapolations, both methods yield similar results, i.e., between 1,100 and 5,900 t/yr of plastic litter flowing into the Sea of which about 88-128 t/yr are removed by cleaning operations. According to the marine strategy framework directive (2008/56/EC), actions are required to quantify plastic fluxes entering the oceans. Among different methods, a better use of the data from the waste collection should be considered. The development of a national and homogenous platform listing all the collects would be a first step in that direction.

Abundance of plastic debris across European and Asian rivers

“…PO soft also contains multilayer plastics. and local [39] modeling approaches and to optimize prevention and collection strategies.…”

Plastic debris in rivers

“…Suspended plastic concentrations were measured between 0.08 and 0.24 items/m 3 (0.0002-0.0054 g/m 3 ) in European rivers. The ratio of floating to suspended plastic concentration ranged from almost 1 (Po) to over 300 (Rhine) (van der Wal et al, 2015). Besides these studies, no data on suspended plastics is available to date.…”

“…Following this approach, the Po and Buna/Bojana rivers were identified as main regional sources of plastic emission. More recently, Tramoy, Gasperi, Dris, Colasse, Fisson, Sananes et al (2019) adopted the Jambeck et al (2015) model to assess emission for the Seine in France for comparison to an observation-based approach. Using local available hydrological and plastic data, an annual emission of 1,100-5,900 tonnes/year, of which 1.9-15.4% was estimated to be floating plastic litter.…”

“…Studies that sampled floating or suspended plastics generally report results in concentrations, both in items/m 3 or kg/m 3 . Values range from 0.03 to 0.05 items/m 3 (0.004-0.079 g/m 3 ) in European rivers (Danube, Po, Rhine) (van der Wal et al, 2015)) to 0.24 items/m 3 in Chilean rivers (Rech et al, 2014;. A peak value of 3.4Á10 3 items/m 3 was measured after heavy rainfall in the Los Angeles river basin (Moore et al, 2011).…”

“…This is caused by (Adam et al, 2019) increased initial mobilization of plastic waste, (AghaKouchak et al, 2018) remobilization of accumulated plastic debris, and (Andrade et al, 2019) the introduction of nonwaste plastic items into rivers and oceans. To date, most models only take into account mismanaged plastic waste to estimate plastic transport and emission into the ocean (Lebreton et al, 2017;Schmidt et al, 2017;Tramoy, Gasperi, Dris, Colasse, Fisson, Sananes et al, 2019). Future work should also consider the additional nonwaste plastic transport.…”