Estimated 1,455 tonnes of plastic floating in Mediterranean

A rough total of 1,455 tonnes of floating plastic is present across the Mediterranean, estimates a new study. Researchers at the Centre d’Estudis Avançats de Blanes (CEAB-CSIC) in Spain, gathered floating plastics using trawl nets and found that microplastics with a surface area of around 1 square millimetre (mm²) were the most abundant size of plastic particles found.
The Mediterranean Sea has a population of approximately 100 million people living within 10 km of the coastline, giving high potential for plastic accumulation. The researchers say that the issue of floating plastic waste is likely to get worse (News Item Science for Environment Policy, 11 November 2016).
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Click here for an abstract of the published article.
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