Over 1000 rivers accountable for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean

Abstract

<p>Plastic waste increasingly accumulates in the marine environment, but data on the distribution and quantification of riverine sources, required for development of effective mitigation, are limited. Our new model approach includes geographical distributed data on plastic waste, landuse, wind, precipitation and rivers and calculates the probability for plastic waste to reach a river and subsequently the ocean. This probabilistic approach highlights regions which are likely to emit plastic into the ocean. We calibrated our model using recent field observations and show that emissions are distributed over up to two orders of magnitude more rivers than previously thought. We estimate that over 1,000 rivers are accountable for 80% of global annual emissions which range between 0.8 – 2.7 million metric tons per year, with small urban rivers amongst the most polluting. This high-resolution data allows for focused development of mitigation strategies and technologies to reduce riverine plastic emissions.</p>

Plastic pollution research in Indonesia: state of science and future research directions to reduce impacts

“…Lebreton et al (2017) identified Java and Sumatra Islands to be areas of concern with their estimates predicting these islands to be responsible for 14.2% of global annual plastic exports to the oceans. More recently, Meijer et al (2019) identify 51 rivers on Java Island to be among the global top 1000 most polluting river. However, Java is not the only Indonesian island with high rates of plastic pollution.…”

“…Plastic pollution has been a topic of rising environmental concern in recent years. Model estimates show that between 0.8-30 million metric tonnes of plastic waste enter the marine environment annually around the globe (Borrelle et al, 2020;Lau et al, 2020;Meijer et al, 2019). The majority of plastic pollution is generated on land and transported through rivers to the marine environment (Lebreton & Andrady, 2019;Schmidt et al, 2017;Pawar et al, 2016).…”

Advancing floating macroplastic detection from space using hyperspectral imagery

“…An estimated 19-23 million metric tonnes of plastics enter aquatic ecosystems annually, which is predicted to increase by an order of magnitude in the coming decades [1,2]. Meijer et al [3] estimated that 0.8-2.7 million metric tonnes of macroplastic enter the oceans through rivers on an annual basis. Such global model estimates depend on reliable observational data, which has led to many studies on different monitoring techniques to improve large-scale detection and quantification of riverine macroplastic loads and plastics accumulated on beaches, lakeshores, and riverbanks.…”

Source-Specific Patterns of Marine Debris and Associated Ecological Impacts in the Red River Estuary of Xuan Thuy National Park, Vietnam

“…Another common type of land-based debris is plastic preproduction resin pellets (Karlsson et al, 2018). Land-based sources represent the majority of marine debris found in marine environments (Kershaw and Rochman, 2016;Meijer et al, 2020). On the contrary, ocean-based debris is dominated by more durable plastic items, with metal and glass typically less prevalent (Honorato-Zimmer et al, 2019a).…”

“…A major pathway for land-based plastic debris to get to the oceans is via rivers and streams (Lebreton et al, 2017;Meijer et al, 2020;Terzi et al, 2020). Recent research suggests that approximately 80% of the plastic debris in the oceans comes from rivers (Meijer et al, 2020).…”