90% of plastic polluting our oceans comes from just 10 rivers

"Over the last decade we have become increasingly alarmed at the amount of plastic in our oceans.

More than 8 million tons of it ends up in the ocean every year. If we continue to pollute at this rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050.

But where does all this plastic waste come from?

Most of it is washed into the ocean by rivers. And 90% of it comes from just 10 of them, according to a study.

Rivers of plastic

By analyzing the waste found in the rivers and surrounding landscape, researchers were able to estimate that just 10 river systems carry 90% of the plastic that ends up in the ocean.

Eight of them are in Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong; and two in Africa – the Nile and the Niger.

"We were able to demonstrate that there is a definite correlation in this respect," said Dr. Christian Schmidt, one of the authors of the study from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. "The more waste there is in a catchment area that is not disposed of properly, the more plastic ultimately ends up in the river and takes this route to the sea."

Schmidt and his team found that the quantity of plastic per cubic metre of water was significantly higher in large rivers than in small ones."


World Economic Forum