In the North Pacific, most of the floating waste comes from the large developed nations.
The best-known area of plastic accumulation at sea is spread out in the northern Pacific Ocean between the Hawaiian archipelago and California, over an area estimated to be three times that of France. It is this floating landfill, fed by the convergence of several ocean currents, that the non-profit media company The Ocean Cleanup has set itself the goal of cleaning up by 2040.
The objective seems impossible, but an expedition carried out on site in 2019 to test a waste collection device made it possible to look at the origins of the solid plastic collected in the region. Lost nets, which represent half of the pollution, had already been counted during a previous census. The research, published on 1is september in the newspaper Scientific Reportsshows that the majority of rigid debris comes from the fishing and aquaculture industry. “We also succeeded in attributing the plastic to countries with large fleets…
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