When plastic came into our lives in the 1950s, it was a revolution. “When I was a student, I remember this slogan – plastic saves our trees! We don’t need to cut down our trees because now we have this safe, good, and healthy material,” says Dr Nikolai Maximenko (International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii). Today, hardly a week goes by when the news doesn’t include a story about how this durable, cheap, malleable material may not be as safe, good, and healthy as we thought.

“It is everywhere, but while scientists estimate we are adding an order of 10 million tonnes of plastic every year to the ocean,” says Maximenko, “and we expect to see accumulations of huge amounts, the maximum that we can derive from our observations is well below 1 million tonnes. So where is it all?”

Knowing where plastic is, where it comes from, and how it interacts with winds, currents, and marine life is vital for developing policies and actions to tackle this global issue. “Maximenko and his collaborator shared a vision of a community working together to create a global observing system for marine debris,” says Dr Artur Palacz (Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences, and project officer at the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project). The Integrated Marine Debris Observing System (IMDOS) has brought that vision to life.

…
Read the full story Building a global observing system for marine debris: the IMDOS initiative