There are 21,000 pieces of plastic in the ocean for each person on Earth

 News article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/03/08/ocean-plastics-pollution-study/

Scientific Paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0281596#pone.0281596.ref006

 The article I’ve chosen to write about is “There are 21,000 pieces of plastic in the ocean for each person on Earth”, written in the Washington Post in March of 2023 by Michael Burnbaum. The focus of this article is on the rapidly increasing numbers of plastics and microplastics found in the ocean, as well as the spread of plastics to other regions of the earth. The study that this article draws its data from, “A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required,” was also published in March of 2023, and as the name implies, this scientific article identifies a trend of increasing plastic content of the ocean and seeks to address it. 

The Washington Post article is fairly faithful to the study on which it is based, essentially highlighting the major findings of the study through quotes from its author, Marcus Eriksen, as well as briefly explaining the methodology of the study in a way that is more palatable to a general audience. The major points brought up were that the number of plastic particles in the ocean has been increasing for the last 15 years at a significant rate, and that during that time we have reached unprecedented levels of ocean plastic - 2.4 million tons. The article explains that plastic particles in the ocean can be degraded down to smaller pieces, and once they are under 5 micrometers they are known as microplastics. Plastics and microplastics that humans dispose of enter rivers, sewers, etc., and find their way to the ocean in great numbers. High levels of these microplastics pose a health risk to sea life when consumed, and the article also mentions that these microplastics are not just in the ocean, but are pretty much everywhere on earth, “as well as in the human bloodstream.” The article ends by briefly mentioning that a plastics treaty is being negotiated currently, with the goal being to finish by 2024. After doing some of my own research on the Plastics Treaty, it seems to be a UN treaty to create binding laws and reduce plastic waste, namely from packaging which makes up 40% of the total plastic waste.

The scientific article has a much more extensive description of the study’s methodology, including using plastic count data from 11,777 stations, some dating back to 1950, to track the plastic content in the OSL (ocean surface layer). These stations were all assigned to their own respective basins of the ocean, which include the North and South Atlantic basins, the North and South Pacific basins, the Indian Basin, and the Mediterranean Basin. This data was then used to create a model, such that results could be determined that would control for differences in sampling procedure, differences in location of stations (basins), and differences in wind activity, which mix and submerge plastics below the OSL. 

The results of this model were that a major increase in ocean plastic began around 2004 and has continued for the last 15 years. The authors state that the most reliable data is from 1990 and onward because the majority of the samples were taken in that time period. There is some discussion at the end of the article as to what these trends might indicate/what may have caused them. The level of plastics in the period from 1990-2004 is trendless if not even going down slightly, and the authors posit that this may have been a result of a series of legislations during that time period to reduce plastic waste, one such example being the 1991 “operation clean sweep”, which focused on reducing plastic waste in factories. The authors also theorize that the extreme rise in ocean plastic in the early 2000s could be due to the globalization of plastic products around that time leading to more plastic waste around the world, which eventually reaches the oceans. The article concludes by saying that without policy changes, the rate of plastics entering the ocean will more than double from 2016 to 2040.

Overall I would rate the Washington Post article as a 7/10. It does a decent job of breaking down the scientific article into something more easily digestible for the general population. The addition of quotes from the lead author of the study, Marcus Eriksen, was a good touch and helped reassure that the article accurately portrays the findings of the study. It does, however, misconstrue some of the information in the scientific article. At one point the Washington Post article says that only 10 percent of all the plastic in existence has been recycled. The study itself says that recycling rates have historically been low, but that particular claim and number are nowhere to be found, and nor is a source given for that statement. Other than that I would say the article does not take many liberties with exaggerating or minimizing the data from the study, but rather presents it fairly straight up without much slant. I was actually surprised that the scientific article seemed to be more opinionated than the news article, which you don’t see very often. Whereas the scientific article advocates strongly for change in policy in a section at the end, the Washington Post article merely mentions that negotiations are occurring now for legislation, and does so without really stressing its own viewpoint.