Plastic waste in the marine environment: A review of sources, occurrence and effects.
By W. Li, H. Tse, Lincoln Fok. Science of the Total Environment, 2016
1,498 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This review article summarises the sources, occurrence, fate and effects of plastic waste in the marine environment. Due to its resistance to degradation, most plastic debris will persist in the environment for centuries and may be transported far from its source, including great distances out to sea. Land- and ocean-based sources are the major sources of plastic entering the environment, with domestic, industrial and fishing activities being the most important contributors. Ocean gyres are particular hotspots of plastic waste accumulation. Both macroplastics and microplastics pose a risk to organisms in the natural environment, for example, through ingestion or entanglement in the plastic. Many studies have investigated the potential uptake of hydrophobic contaminants, which can then bioaccumulate in the food chain, from plastic waste by organisms. To address the issue of plastic pollution in the marine environment, governments should first play an active role in addressing the issue of plastic waste by introducing legislation to control the sources of plastic debris and the use of plastic additives. In addition, plastics industries should take responsibility for the end-of-life of their products by introducing plastic recycling or upgrading programmes.
Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/23d9409691c8966647ce2e099e8c28cc938ddcb1
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In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
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Citations in the corpus
- Viewpoint – Ocean Plastic Pollution: a convenient but distracting truth? (2019, neutral): “ocean plastics, our over reliance on conveniently packed goods [41], as well as discarded or lost fishing equipment, often from poorly managed fishing practices [45].”
- FloW: A Dataset and Benchmark for Floating Waste Detection in Inland Waters (2021, background): “The wastes, especially the plastics inundating into the oceans are severely threatening the marine lives and causing sustained pollution to the whole ecosystem [24] (as illustrated in Figure 1(a)).”
- Microplastics in the Antarctic marine system: An emerging area of research. (2017, neutral): “Secondary microplastics, both particles and fibres, result from the breakdown of macroscopic plastic ocean debris, which is common throughout the world's oceans (see Li et al. (2016) for review).”
- Secondary Microplastics Generation in the Sea Swash Zone With Coarse Bottom Sediments: Laboratory Experiments (2018, neutral): “Monitoring of coastal zones worldwide shows that the types of plastics typically found on the beaches and in sea/ocean coastal zones tend to reflect the most commonly used plastics (Andrady, 2011; Li et al., 2016).”