Where Your Old Plastic Bottle Ends Up in the Ocean
This ingenious tool shows you how plastic travels the world
When a freak storm overturned a cargo ship, one of the 62 containers contained 5 million pieces of Lego.
Twenty-five years later, locals collect the Lego washing up on the beach — every day: Lego plastic flippers, Lego scuba gear, Lego spears, and tiny Lego lifejackets. Blue plastic octopuses in clumps of seaweed, if you are lucky.
For an animal living in the ocean? Not so lucky.
Plastic pollution in the ocean is becoming a serious problem for life on the planet. That’s why a team of researchers at The Ocean Clean Up created a tool to make this information accessible to everybody.
But first, how did we get here?
Out of mind, out of sight
In 1965, scientists found the first piece of oceanic plastic in a plankton recording device in the ocean.
More than half a century later, plastic pollution has built up so much in the ocean you can find microplastics in your table salt.
