How Much Plastic is Polluting the Ocean?

Written by Donna Laframboise on May 21, 2018. Posted in Current News

SPOTLIGHT: Peer-reviewed studies, published six months apart, produce wildly different estimates.

BIG PICTURE: In June 2014, the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a paper by a team of Spanish researchers. The PNAS website tells us it “strives to publish only the highest quality scientific research,” and that papers “undergo rigorous peer review” beforehand.

Titled “Plastic debris in the open ocean,” the paper acknowledges that the magnitude of this problem is “still unknown.” Its authors synthesized “data collected across the world to provide a global map and a first-order approximation.”

After performing numerous calculations involving 3,000 ocean samples, they concluded that the “global load of plastic on the open ocean surface” is “far less than expected.” In their estimation, it amounts to between “7,000 and 35,000 tons.”

Six months later, a second research paper was published in another peer-reviewed journal, PLOS ONE (which stands for the Public Library of Science). Written by individuals affiliated with reputable organizations in Australia, Chile, France, the US, and elsewhere, its version of reality is dramatically different.

According to this team, at least 268,940 tons of plastic is “afloat at sea.” These people explain their math and their models at some length. Their paper looks impressive and convincing to a layperson.