Rivers carry plastic across continents, so scientists tracked its movement across continents too.
Rivers carry plastic across continents, so scientists tracked its movement across continents too.
A sweeping new UC Santa Barbara-led study spanning four continents and eight countries has amassed one of the largest datasets ever collected on plastic pollution in rivers — offering insights that the researchers responsible believe are key to helping turn off the tap of plastic waste.
Between 2020 and 2023, researchers worked with local partners to collect data from river sites in Mexico, Jamaica, Panama, Ecuador, Kenya, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. But the study, published in the Journal of Environmental Management, was much more than data gathering.
“What’s really exciting about this effort is that we were able to answer the same question — what does plastic pollution actually look like in rivers — across many different contexts, geographies and cultures,” said lead author Chase Brewster, a project scientist in UCSB’s Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory.
Read more at University of California - Santa Barbara
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