Plastic in the Depths: how pollution

took over our oceans

So much plastic pours into the sea every year that species are now endemic to it. A new
Guardian series looks at where it comes from, the harm it does and what can be done about it

Chris Michael Seascape editor

Mon 25 Jul 2022 06.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/25/plastic-in-the-depths-how-pollution-
took-over-our-oceans

B y now, it is well known that the oceans swirl with plastic. More than

8m tonnes pour into the seas every year, spewed out via rivers, dumped
along coastlines or abandoned by fishing vessels. Plastic even contaminates
ocean air, where particles are kicked up by spray and then blown about the planet
by the wind. In many places on Earth, it is literally raining – and snowing –
plastic.
While most images of ocean pollution show plastic bottles bobbing on the surface
or straws being yanked from turtles’ noses, these are misleading: bottles and
straws make up only a fraction of the total.

That is why, in the coming months, the Guardian’s Seascape project will take a
microscope to the ocean to find out exactly what is in this plastic avalanche,
where it comes from, what harm it is doing – to marine life and to us – and what
can still be done about it.

The type of plastic that proliferates through the different levels of the ocean
ecosystem depends in large part on where you look. While bags and food
wrappings dominate the shoreline, further out to sea it is abandoned fishing gear
and plastic lids that choke the deeper waters.

Some of the sources of plastic are surprising, too: cigarette butts – yes, the filters
are made largely of plastic – or sachets, those little packets for individual servings
of ketchup or soap. Sachets, as Seascape reporter Karen McVeigh has exposed,
are a huge pollution problem, particularly in Asia where they were presented by
companies such as Unilever as a convenient way to dispense affordable products
for those on low incomes. They have proved to be an intractable pollutant – tiny,
difficult to collect and all but worthless to recycle.

Some of the sources of plastic are surprising, too: cigarette butts – yes, the filters
are made largely of plastic – or sachets, those little packets for individual servings
of ketchup or soap. Sachets, as Seascape reporter Karen McVeigh has exposed,
are a huge pollution problem, particularly in Asia where they were presented by
companies such as Unilever as a convenient way to dispense affordable products
for those on low incomes. They have proved to be an intractable pollutant – tiny,
difficult to collect and all but worthless to recycle.

Then there’s the vast, unseen churn of microplastics – trillions of tiny fibres,
beads and shards. Plastic is now so fully integrated into the Earth’s water system
that every week most people drink a credit card’s worth of it.

Microplastic itself has many sources. It comes from clothes fibres, swirling into
the drain from washing machines. It comes from nurdles, the “Lego blocks” for
bigger plastics that are frequently spilled accidentally in their billions from
container ships, causing as much damage as oil spills (though still not yet
classified as hazardous).

And it comes, in huge quantities (representing more than a quarter of all

microplastic in the ocean), from tyre dust, the residue generated from synthetic
rubbers, fillers and softeners as people drive their cars (or , to a lesser but still
notable degree, bicycles) down the street.

Lest we get too bogged down, we will also look at what can be done about all this
plastic – how to clean it up, how to stop it getting there in the first place, and
what you can do to help.

There’s now so much plastic in the ocean that scientists are treating it as a new
biome: the plastisphere. The species that live there are now endemic to it. Plastic
is their forever home, but it doesn’t need to be ours.