Eight Million Tons of Plastic Dumped in Ocean Every Year
It's equal to five grocery bags per every foot of coastline around the globe, says new study.
Scientists have come up with a new way to measure ocean trash—and the numbers are even worse than thought.
In 2010, eight million tons of plastic trash ended up in the ocean from coastal countries—far more than the total that has been measured floating on the surface in the ocean's "garbage patches."
That's the bad news. The even worse news is that the tonnage is on target to increase tenfold in the next decade unless the world finds a way to improve how garbage is collected and managed.
The findings are part of a groundbreaking study published Thursday in Science that for the first time quantifies how much garbage flows into the world's oceans every year.
Until now, most efforts to measure
