Study reveals the most common types of marine litter worldwide: food and beverage related plastics dominate shoreline debris globally, with them ranking among the top three most abundant usage types, and specifically, plastic food packaging, caps/lids, and plastic bottles
https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/news/food-and-drink-related-litter-dominates-global-plastic-pollution
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>A new study, led by the University of Plymouth, has revealed the dominant items of marine litter across seven continents, nine ocean systems, 13 regional seas and 112 nations, representing 86% of the global population.
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>Experts brought together and evaluated more than 5,000 beach litter surveys, to generate the world’s first overview of marine litter by usage type.
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>Their analysis shows that food and beverage related plastics dominate shoreline debris globally, with them ranking among the top three most abundant usage types in 93% of countries, including the UK and the world’s top five most populated nations – India, China, the USA, Indonesia, and Pakistan.
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>Specifically, plastic food packaging, caps/lids, and plastic bottles were among the top-ranked individual items in more than half of all nations. And they are followed by plastic bags and cigarette butts as the next most prevalent items.
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>An estimated 20 million tonnes of plastic waste enters the environment each year.
[Food and beverage plastics dominate global shorelines: A harmonized rank-based assessment of usage types to guide interventions: One Earth](https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(26)00113-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2590332226001132%3Fshowall%3Dtrue)
This is new too since plastics have only been as widespread in usage for the last 60 or so years.
We should really speed up some of the research we have on the microbes that can digest plastics. In terms of packaging and waste, I think nature has solved perfect biodegradable packaging, we just need to learn!
Buy a reusable stainless steel bottle. Fill it with water and use it. Eat inside restaurants on plates. Eat at home. Pack meals in reusable glass containers. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, but do what you can.
The throwaway mentality is destroying the environment and most people are too lazy to do these simple things.