Georgia: It has been studied that the oceans all over the world are being filled with enough plastic waste to thickly cover every coastline in the world.
Scientists have estimated that about 8 million tons of plastic rubbish comprising of food packaging and plastic bottles are being washed into the oceans each year.
If the accumulation of plastic waste is happening in this manner, it will definitely result to a tenfold increase of the total amount of plastic waste in the sea by the year 2020.
Jenna Jambeck, assistant professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia said that the estimated million metric tons of plastic rubbish that was gone into the oceans in 2010 is equivalent to five grocery bags that filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world.
By the year 2025, the annual input to the ocean would be about twice the input that happened in 2010, or 10 bags full of plastic per foot of the coastline.
So the accumulated waste input for 2025 would be nearly 20 times of the 2010 estimation which is equivalent to 100 bags of plastic per foot of coastline in the world.
Researchers have previously calculated that there were about 245,000 tons of plastic waste in the oceans.
But this waste was based on the amount of plastic found floating on the sea surface and not based on the plastic waste that has been already sunk.
The latest estimation of plastic rubbish in the sea water is with respect to the total input of plastic waste, from people living within 50 km of the coastline of the 192 countries.
The study that published in the journal Science has estimated that about 275 million tons of plastic waste was being generated each year in the 192 countries around the world.
Among this, a quantity between 4.8 million and 12.7 million tons of waste is being washed off or dumped into the sea.
Video on the accumulation of plastic waste in Ocean
