Various Data – Marine Debris
Topic Key
Analysis of Marine Debris
Source: NOAA
"Drawing on decades of experience in marine and coastal pollution research, Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) undertook a collaborative project with Ocean Conservancy (OC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program (NOAA MDP) to better understand marine debris within the United States."
Debris Tracker Data
Source: Marine Debris Tracker
"Debris Tracker is designed to help citizen scientists like you make a difference by contributing data on plastic pollution in your community. We've been tracking litter since before smartphones existed, and we're still driven by uniting technology and citizen science to fight plastic pollution. Every day, dedicated educational, non-profit, and scientific organizations and passionate citizen scientists from all around the world record data on inland and marine debris with our easy-to-use app, contributing to our open data platform and scientific research."
Litter Glitter
Source: Osprey Initiative
"The patented Litter Glitter is a tactical, small stream litter collection device used to intercept floating litter from storm water runoff. Osprey Initiative utilizes these devices to intercept litter closer to the source, preventing its flow further downstream.
Initial tests indicate a 80+% success rate in preventing the downstream loss of floating litter. Osprey collects this data to create tailored solutions, while also handling all aspects of installing and maintaining the Litter Glitter."
Marine Pollution Statistics & Facts
Source: Condor Ferries
"Marine life, as we know it, is suffering irreparable damage from the chemical pollution of the waters and the millions of tons of mismanaged waste dumped in the oceans each year. The result is a planetary crisis with over 100 million marine animal’s lives get lost every year, and the decay of the ocean's ecosystem."
Mississippi River Bottle Tracking
Source: Marine Debris Tracker
" The Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative enlists the help of ‘citizen scientists’ in America’s heartland to collect data on the state of plastic pollution along the river. To date, over 100,000 plastic litter items have been catalogued through the project. The data gathered is helping to create the first-ever plastic pollution ‘map’ along the river, which can be used by cities and towns to take action."
Our World In Data: Plastic Pollution
Source: Global Change Data Lab
This resource provides data (including charts) on a variety of plastic pollution topics, such as "cumulative global plastics production, decomposition rates of marine debris items, plastic waste generated by coastal populations, surface plastic particles by ocean basin," and much more.
Sources of Marine Debris
Source: NOAA
"The International Coastal Clean-up shows us that Texas, Idaho, Illinois and many of the urbanized mid-Atlantic states stand out as having particularly high debris loads, along with several states on the Gulf coast."
Waste Abatement Campaign Success
Source: Science Direct
"Plastic production is increasing globally and in turn there is a rise of plastic waste lost into the coastal and marine environment. To combat this issue, there is an increase in policies that target specific types of plastic waste (such as microbeads and plastic shopping bags). Given that such anthropogenic waste have environmental impacts, reduce the tourism income of an area and result in human health issues, identifying effective abatement policies is imperative to reducing waste and litter before it enters the ocean."