Most plastic and microplastic in the marine environment comes from the agriculture sector, shipping and the fishing industry, a report by Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) researchers says.
Plastic seed coatings; spreading of sludges from wastewater treatment plants and the use of plastic mulching are key pollutants, while the study recorded 1816 containers from ships lost at sea in 2020, along with abandoned, lost, and discarded fishing gear.
Some of the plastic pollution is also a contributor to greenhouse gases, as in low density polyethylene in plastic milk bottles and shopping bags when exposed to solar radiation.
Microplastics - mainly fibres from clothing - threaten the food chain from its plankton base to the largest marine mammals.
Unless addressed, 99% of all seabirds will have plastic in their digestive systems by 2050, the study says. All marine turtle species are impacted by plastic pollution through ingestion and/or entanglement.
The report compiled by members of the marine microplastic research team in the Marine and Freshwater Research Centre (MFRC) at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), and Mal Deegan Productions in Dublin makes a number of recommendations.
It points out that the plastic pollution problem is a "complex multi-stakeholder process with many cross-sector linkages which cannot be successfully addressed in isolation".
The study commissioned by European network of marine NGOs Seas at Risk VzW was compiled by GMIT microplastic researchers Dr João Frias, Dr Róisín Nash, Dr Elena Pagter, Sindhura Stothra Bhashyam, and Malcolm Deegani MalDeegan Productions.
It has been published today on GMIT’s repository here