There are “at least 5.25 trillion plastic particles” in the world’s oceans, a new study found.
Gerry & Bonni // Creative Commons / Via Flickr: gerr-bon
The study, published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, points out that "plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment." To study the problem, scientists consequently embarked on a series of 24 expeditions to look at and haul up plastic. The researchers ultimately visited 1,571 locations around the world.
The researchers also estimated that all the plastic in the ocean weighs 268,940 tons. And that's "highly conservative," they wrote, because even more plastic may be lying around on beaches, inside animals, on the seabed, or hidden elsewhere in the water.
jdj150 // Creative Commons / Via Flickr: jdan
A widely cited estimate puts the total human population since the dawn of the species at about 108 billion. The estimate comes from the Population Reference Bureau and includes with a number of qualifications. But assuming it's more or less accurate, it means there are about 48 times as many pieces of plastic as there are humans in the history of the world.
Or, put another way, this means that if we took all the plastic out of the ocean and divided it up among all of humanity ever, everyone would get (at least) 48 pieces each.
Of course, a lot of those pieces are very, very small. The study found that 92.4% of the particles were "microplastics" that are 4.75 millimeters or less thick. Still, most of those particles came from larger pieces breaking up. And larger "macroplastics" — things like fishing gear, old buoys, and bottles — actually contributed the most to the overall weight of the the oceans' plastic content.
And speaking of weight...