The Arctic Ocean Is Becoming A ‘Dead End’ For Our Trash

Billions of pieces of plastic dumped by North Americans and Europeans are ending up in the Arctic.

The Arctic Ocean has become a “dead end” for the plastic floating through our oceans, scientists say.

A new study published Wednesday in Science Advances found that the Arctic Ocean is accumulating high concentrations of plastics ― specifically in the Greenland and Barents seas. The plastic trash is brought in from distant regions by currents in the Atlantic Ocean, creating a sort of “plastic conveyor belt,” as the researchers put it, which ends up in the Arctic.

Researchers from University of Cádiz in Spain and other institutions around the world sampled pieces of plastic floating in the Arctic on an expedition in 2013, reports The Washington Post. The researchers estimate that there are around 300 billion tiny pieces of plastic on the Arctic’s surface ― with likely even more on the seafloor below.

Notably, the scientists think that this plastic largely comes from waste dumped in the ocean by North Americans and Europeans.

“This plastic is coming from us in the North Atlantic,” lead author Andrés Cózar Cabañas told The New York Times. “And the more we know about what happens in the Arctic, the better chance we have” of solving the problem.

Source: The Arctic Ocean Is Becoming A ‘Dead End’ For Your Trash