Research: Focus on coasts to clean up ocean plastics

One area of open ocean in the North Pacific has an unusually large collection of microscopic plastics, or microplastics, and is known as the Great Pacific garbage patch. The patch has gained international attention, and the project The Ocean Cleanup plans to deploy plastic collectors to clean up the region.
However, a new analysis suggests that targeting the patch is not the most efficient way to clean up the oceans. They found that placing plastic collectors like those proposed by the project around coasts was more beneficial than placing them all inside the patch. An article about the research is published in Environmental Research Letters (News Item Imperial College London, 19 January 2016).
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Click here for the published article (985 kB).

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