Plastic is everywhere: In your home, your office, your school — and your ocean. Among the top 10 kinds of trash picked up during the 2017 International Coastal Cleanup were food wrappers, beverage bottles, grocery bags, straws, and take out containers, all made of plastic. How did it all get there? Why is it a problem? What can we do?
Help NOAA understand and prevent marine debris by recording what you pick up with the Marine Debris Tracker.
The problem with plastic
While it’s tough to say exactly how much plastic is in the ocean, scientists think about 8 million metric tons of plastic entered the ocean in 2010. That’s the weight of nearly 90 aircraft carriers, and the problem continues to grow.
These plastics come in many different forms. Just think about all the plastic items you use daily: the toothbrush you grab first thing in the morning, the container your lunch comes in, or the bottle you drink water from after your workout.
All these things get used and, eventually, thrown out. Many plastic products are single-use items that are designed to be thrown out, like water bottles or take out containers. These are used and discarded quickly. If this waste isn’t properly disposed of or managed, it can end up in the ocean.
Unlike some other kinds of waste, plastic doesn’t decompose. That means plastic can stick around indefinitely, wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems. Some plastics float once they enter the ocean, though not all do. As the plastic is tossed around, much of it breaks into tiny pieces, called microplastics.
Much of the plastic in the ocean is in the form of abandoned fishing nets.
The first thing that comes to mind for many people when they think of microplastics are the small beads found in some soaps and other personal care products. But microplastics also include bits of what were once larger items.
Microfibers, shed from synthetic clothing or fishing nets, are another problematic form of microplastic. These fibers, beads, and microplastic fragments can all absorb harmful pollutants like pesticides, dyes, and flame retardants, only to later release them in the ocean.
What can you do?
There are many ways to keep plastic out of the ocean! Here are two strategies:
- Reduce plastic use.
Think about all the plastic items you use every day. Can you count them all? Look around you. How many plastic things can you see? Being more aware of how and why you use the plastics that you do is the first step to reducing plastic use. Commit to changing your habits by reducing your use of disposable and single-use plastic items, reusing items and/or recycling them.
- Participate in a cleanup.
Volunteer to pick up marine litter in your local community. Find a cleanup near you!
NOAA’s Marine Debris Program (MDP) works to understand how plastics — and other marine debris — get into our ocean, how they can be removed, and how they can be kept from polluting our marine environment in the future.
Infographic text:
Commonly found Plastics include cigarette butts, food wrappers, beverage bottles, straws, cups and plates, bottle caps, and single-use bags.
How to help? Reduce, reuse, recycle. Dispose of waste properly no matter where you are. Get involved and participate in local cleanups in your area. Remember that our land and sea are connected.
Impacts include:
- Entanglement: Marine life can get caught and killed in derelict fishing nets and other plastic debris.
- Ingestion: Animals can easily mistake plastic debris for food.
Sources include:
- Boats/nets: Fishing gear can become marine debris when it is lost or abandoned.
- Littering: Intentional littering or improper disposal of trash can cause marine debris.
Debris can enter the water via:
- Rain and winds: Rain and wind can sweep debris into nearby waterbodies.
- Streams and storm drains: Streams and storm drains can carry debris directly into the ocean or Great Lakes.
Microplastics are small plastics less that 5mm. They can come from large plastics breaking down, or can be produced as small plastics such as microbeads, which can be found in products such as toothpaste and face wash.
The ocean is the origin and the engine of all life on this planet — and it is under threat.
A big part of the problem: pollution.
So how does trash get into the ocean? It’s dumped, pumped, spilled, leaked and even washed out with our laundry. Each year, we expose the world’s waterways to an increasing variety of pollutants — plastic debris, chemical runoff, crude oil and more.
Fortunately, it’s not too late to clean up our act. Share the dirty truth about ocean pollution and help make a difference.
Oil spills aren’t the big(gest) problem
Headline-grabbing oil spills account for just 12 percent of the oil in our oceans. Two to three times1 as much oil is carried out to sea via runoff from our roads, rivers and drainpipes. Tweet this fact »
More plastic than fish
Up to 12 million metric tons: That’s how much plastic we dump into the oceans each year.2 That’s about 26 billion pounds — or the equivalent of more than 100,000 blue whales — every single year. By 2050, ocean plastic will outweigh all of the ocean’s fish.3 Tweet this fact »
5 garbage patches
There’s so much junk at sea, the debris has formed giant garbage patches. There are five of them around the world, and the largest — the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — includes an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of trash4 and covers an area twice the size of Texas. Tweet this fact »
Plastic poses a double danger
Ocean plastic can be broken into smaller pieces — known as microplastics — by sun exposure and wave action, after which it can find its way into the food chain. When it eventually degrades (which can take hundreds of years in the case of a plastic bottle5), the process releases chemicals that further contaminate the sea. Tweet this fact »
Indonesia, India top the trash tally
More plastic in the ocean comes from Indonesia and India than anywhere else6 — together, they contribute more plastic to the world's coastal environments than the next seven countries combined, including the United States, which ranks third on the list. Tweet this fact »
Pollution is in fashion (literally)
With each load of laundry, more than 700,000 synthetic microfibers7 can be washed into our waterways. Unlike natural materials such as cotton or wool, these plasticized fibers do not break down. One estimate puts the number of plastic microfibers in the ocean at 4 billion per square kilometer.8 Tweet this fact »
Tons of trash sits on the bottom
As unsightly as ocean pollution is, what we can’t see may be worse: Scientists estimate that some 14 million metric tons of ocean garbage9 actually rests on the seafloor, meaning we’re unlikely to ever be able to clean it up. Tweet this fact »
Even nutrients can become harmful
When dumped at sea in large amounts, agricultural nutrients such as nitrogen can stimulate the explosive growth of algae. When the algae decompose, oxygen in the surrounding waters is consumed, creating a vast dead zone that can result in mass die-offs of fish and other marine life.10 Tweet this fact »
The number of dead zones is growing
In 2004, scientists counted 146 hypoxic zones11 (areas of such low oxygen concentration that animal life suffocates and dies) in the world’s oceans. By 2008, that number jumped to more than 400.12 In 2017, in the Gulf of Mexico, oceanographers detected a dead zone nearly the size of New Jersey13 — the largest dead zone ever measured at the time. Tweet this fact »
The oceans are losing mussel mass
One effect of greenhouse emissions is increased ocean acidification, which makes it more difficult for bivalves such as mussels, clams and oysters to form shells14, decreasing their likelihood of survival, upsetting the food chain and impacting the multibillion-dollar shellfish industry. Tweet this fact »
We’re making a racket down there
Noise pollution generated by shipping and military activity can cause cellular damage to a class of invertebrates that includes jellyfish and anemones.15 These animals are a vital food source for tuna, sharks, sea turtles and other creatures. Tweet this fact »
- Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates, and Effects. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2003. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. //doi.org/10.17226/10388.
- Jambeck, J. R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T. R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., Narayan, R., & Law, K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. In Science (Vol. 347, Issue 6223, pp. 768–771). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). //doi.org/10.1126/science.1260352
- World Economic Forum. (2016). The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics. //www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_New_Plastics_Economy.pdf
- Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F. et al. Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic. Sci Rep 8, 4666 (2018). //doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-22939-w
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Marine debris is everyone's problem. //www.whoi.edu/fileserver.do?id=107364&pt=2&p=88817
- Law, K. L., Starr, N., Siegler, T. R., Jambeck, J. R., Mallos, N. J., & Leonard, G. H. (2020). The United States’ contribution of plastic waste to land and ocean. In Science Advances (Vol. 6, Issue 44). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). //doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd0288
- Napper, I. E., & Thompson, R. C. (2016). Release of synthetic microplastic plastic fibres from domestic washing machines: Effects of fabric type and washing conditions. In Marine Pollution Bulletin (Vol. 112, Issues 1–2, pp. 39–45). Elsevier BV. //doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2016.09.025
- Parker, L. (2022, June). Ocean Trash: 5.25 Trillion Pieces and Counting, but Big Questions Remain. National Geographic. //education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ocean-trash-525-trillion-pieces-and-counting-big-questions-remain
- Barrett, J., Chase, Z., Zhang, J., Holl, M. M. B., Willis, K., Williams, A., Hardesty, B. D., & Wilcox, C. (2020). Microplastic Pollution in Deep-Sea Sediments From the Great Australian Bight. In Frontiers in Marine Science (Vol. 7). Frontiers Media SA. //doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.576170
- National Ocean Service. Nutrients: Pollution Tutorial. U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. //oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_pollution//010nutrients.html
- DYBAS, C. L. (2005). Dead Zones Spreading in World Oceans. In BioScience (Vol. 55, Issue 7, p. 552). Oxford University Press (OUP). //doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[0552:dzsiwo]2.0.co;2
- Diaz, R. J., & Rosenberg, R. (2008). Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems. In Science (Vol. 321, Issue 5891, pp. 926–929). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). //doi.org/10.1126/science.1156401
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2017, August). Gulf of Mexico ‘dead zone’ is the largest ever measured. U.S. Department of Commerce. //www.noaa.gov/media-release/gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone-is-largest-ever-measured
- Bullard, E. M., Torres, I., Ren, T., Graeve, O. A., & Roy, K. (2021). Shell mineralogy of a foundational marine species, Mytilus californianus , over half a century in a changing ocean. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Vol. 118, Issue 3). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. //doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2004769118
- Weilgart, L. 2018. The impact of ocean noise pollution on fish and invertebrates. Report for OceanCare, Switzerland. 34 pp. //www.oceancare.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/OceanNoise_FishInvertebrates_May2018.pdf