In this guided review, you will learn about marine debris and its impacts on humans and the environment. This review seeks to outline the origins, pathways, and studies surrounding marine debris. In the following resources you will find information about the consequences of marine debris as well as the strategies being developed to mitigate its impacts.

Students will explore the origins and consequences of marine debris. They will illustrate the journey of a piece of discarded plastic and the events that occur as it enters a waterway. They will examine the data that reveals the pervasive impact it is having on water and widlife throughout the world. They will also propose possible solutions to curb marine debris.

Many people are familiar with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a large mass of plastics floating in the North Pacific that stretches as wide as the state of Texas. The reason for this accumulation? The North Pacific Gyre, formed by four prevailing ocean currents in the northern Pacific, continuously rotates at a clockwise pattern, keeping the debris in one large mass. Less noticed, however, is the North Atlantic Garbage Patch. This garbage patch sits hundreds of miles offshore of the southeastern United States and is about the same size as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Lula Gil founded Water Journey, a movement communicating sustainability through art and water sports. Her art consists of transforming plastic waste she finds at Rio de la Plata River, into pieces of art to raise awareness about the plastic pollution affecting the seas and inspire people to connect with Mother Nature through their habits. For her, art evokes sensitivity and helps to understand this topic from an intimate perspective. Here is a quick and easy step-by-step guide with a few tips to create plastic art.

Every year during Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup, hundreds of thousands of volunteers comb lakes, rivers and beaches around the world for trash. Over the course of nearly three decades, more than 9 million volunteers have collected nearly 164 million pounds of trash. But our ocean needs help more than once a year, and you can take a lead role on the front line of one of the world's most preventable problems by doing your own beach or waterway cleanup.

The Trash Free Waters program distributes 'The Flow' electronically to our many project partners and other interested stakeholders. 'The Flow' highlights important work that is happening at the local, state, national, and international levels related to trash reduction and prevention.

Through this initiative, thousands of community volunteers are collecting data along the upper, middle and lower Mississippi River to increase our understanding of the state of plastic pollution. This data is being generated through a 'citizen science' approach using a free mobile app for tracking upstream and coastal litter called the 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.

Modern life would be impossible without plastic - but we have long since lost control over our invention. Why has plastic turned into a problem and what do we know about its dangers?... 51 Trillion particles of microplastics float in our oceans. Yet there is very little science of how this affects our health. This video shows why we should gain back control over plastic in our lives.

Our oceans are polluted with a wide variety of marine debris, ranging from tiny cigarette butts and plastic bags to 4,000-pound derelict fishing nets and abandoned vessels. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines marine debris as any "persistent solid material that is manufactured or processed and directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, disposed of or abandoned into the marine environment or the Great Lakes. Trash and debris along the coasts of the United States mainly comes from littering or mass dumping.