Cleaning up just 40% of global plastic pollution would take 1 billion people a year

There would have to be a 25-40 per cent reduction in plastic production across the 173 countries included in the study, writes Louise Boyle

It would take a billion people each year to clean up less than half the world’s plastic pollution, a new study has found. 

Ecologists from the University of Toronto are warning of the monumental scale of action needed to curb plastic waste entering the world’s rivers, lakes and oceans.

Because there are no environmentally acceptable thresholds set for plastic pollution, the team came up with a target scenario of 8 million metric tons (Mt), based on the estimated amount of waste entering oceans in 2010.

Between 24-34m Mt of plastic waste currently enters aquatic ecosystems every year, according to the research paper published on Thursday in the journal Science.

The researchers considered three key strategies to reduce plastic waste, including cutting production and banning products; improving management of plastic waste and continuous cleanups.

The research team found that even if all these efforts were working simultaneously, the effort to reduce plastic waste in the environment would be enormous:

- There would have to be a 25-40 per cent reduction in plastic production across the 173 countries included in the study

- The level of waste collection and management would have to increase at least 60 per cent across all economies

- Clean-ups of plastic pollution would have to jump to 40 per cent each year.

Dr Stephanie Borrelle, the study’s lead author, said: "To put that last number into people power, the cleanup alone would require at least 1 billion people participating in Ocean Conservancy's annual International Coastal Cleanup.

”This would be a Herculean task given this is 660 times the effort of the 2019 cleanup.”

Even if a massive global effort was coordinated and undertaken to clean up plastic waste, the volumes entering the natural world would remain unacceptable. 

Chelsea Rochman, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, who was also part of the study added: "The global community must coordinate a fundamental transformation of the plastics economy, one that reduces the amount of virgin plastic production, and reimagines how we make use and dispose of plastic materials.”