EU Single-Use Plastics Directive: bans, tethered caps and bottle targets
The EU’s 2019 directive banned ten single-use items, made tethered caps mandatory from 2024 and set 90% bottle collection by 2029.
Oceans and rivers
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tonnes of plastic leaked to the ocean in 2019 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development scope)
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s narrower estimate: 22 million tonnes leaked to the environment, 6.1 million to water and 1.7 million…
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tonnes of plastic entering rivers, lakes and seas in 2016
Recommended headline range for plastic entering water: 19–23 million tonnes a year, or 36–44 tonnes every minute.
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The ‘450 years to degrade’ claim has no source; here is what is measured
The only systematic review of plastic degradation rates found an HDPE bottle would take about 58 years at sea for half of it to…
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19–23 million tonnes of plastic entered rivers, lakes and seas in 2016
Even the most ambitious commitments would leave tens of millions of tonnes of plastic entering aquatic ecosystems every year.
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More than 1,000 rivers carry 80% of plastic into the sea, not just ten
Ocean plastic comes from thousands of small urban rivers, overturning the earlier claim that ten big rivers carry 90% of it.
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171 trillion plastic particles now float on the world’s oceans
Surface plastic has risen sharply since 2005 and is mostly microplastic, according to 40 years of ocean sampling.
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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a plastic soup, not an island
At least 79,000 tonnes of plastic drift across 1.6 million square kilometres, and nearly half the mass is abandoned fishing nets.
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Less plastic enters the ocean than thought, but it lasts for decades
A Nature Geoscience model finds 3.2 million tonnes of floating plastic in the ocean, fed by only about 0.5 million tonnes a year, mostly…
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About 2% of all fishing gear is lost at sea every year
Interviews with fishers worldwide show enormous annual losses of nets, lines, hooks and traps, a lethal source of ocean plastic.