Plastic Outnumbering Fish

There will be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the World Economic Forum has predicted.

16:34 16 February 2016

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the World Economic Forum have predicted that by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the sea. Their report called The New Plastics Economy was intended to highlight a pollution crisis in the ocean.

 

However, the study raises an important question: how do you measure plastic and count the number of fish to make such claims?

 

The report was based on a study led by Prof Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia who tried to carry out a global census of plastic pollution and made an estimate on how much of it will be dumped in the ocean. However, her estimate was confined to just San Francisco Bay. For this reason, Prof Callum Roberts from the University of York, said: "If that's not representative of the rest of the globe then you can see the potential for large deviations in this calculation.”

 

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s report took Jambeck’s research, which predictions were only until 2025, and project it forwards to 2050. By that time, there will be a total of 750 million tonnes of plastic in the ocean, the study implies.