20 ms·
That's a good point, but "the major contributor" seems like a stretch. That article claims 640,000 tonnes/year of fishing equipment end up in the ocean, which i
by tfehring 5y ago
That's a good point, but "the major contributor" seems like a stretch. That article claims 640,000 tonnes/year of fishing equipment end up in the ocean, which is ~8% of the 8 million tonnes/year of overall plastic waste that end up in the ocean according to https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/30/paddling-in-plastic-meet-the-man-swimming-the-pacific-garbage-patch https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/30/paddling-in-...
- sa1 5y agoThis might be true, but it seems commonly described as the major contributor because it's 40-70% of floating plastic and macroplastics. On the other hand, microplastics sink to the ocean bed. https://hillnotes.ca/2020/01/30/ghost-fishing-gear-a-major-source-of-marine-plastic-pollution/ https://hillnotes.ca/2020/01/30/ghost-fishing-gear-a-major-s... I'm not sure which has more environmental impact.
- colechristensen 5y agoPlastics that do actually sink to the ocean bed are actually carbon sinks, a good thing as long as they don’t do so much damage to the ecology on the way down. The two major carbon sinks which really matter are building up global living biomass (i.e. replanting forests) and getting carbon locked in sediment on the ocean floor (by building up living ocean biomass that rains down on seafloor areas which are actively building up sediment.