Ecologists Sound Alarm On Plastic Pollution
TORONTO (Dispatches) -- Ecologists studying the prevalence of plastic pollution in aquatic ecosystems around the world are concerned after measuring the scale of human response needed to reduce future emissions and manage what’s already floating around out there.
"Unless growth in plastic production and use is halted, a fundamental transformation of the plastic economy to a framework based on recycling is essential, where end-of-life plastic products are valued rather than becoming waste,” says Chelsea Rochman, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto (U of T), and senior author of a study published in Science outlining the accelerating pace with which plastic emissions enter Earth’s waterways annually.
"Even if governments around the world meet their ambitious global commitments, and other countries join those efforts to curb plastic pollution, worldwide annual emissions to rivers, lakes and oceans could be as much as 53 million metric tonnes by the year 2030,” says Stephanie Borrelle, Smith Postdoctoral Fellow at U of T and lead author on the study.
"Unless growth in plastic production and use is halted, a fundamental transformation of the plastic economy to a framework based on recycling is essential, where end-of-life plastic products are valued rather than becoming waste,” says Chelsea Rochman, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto (U of T), and senior author of a study published in Science outlining the accelerating pace with which plastic emissions enter Earth’s waterways annually.
"Even if governments around the world meet their ambitious global commitments, and other countries join those efforts to curb plastic pollution, worldwide annual emissions to rivers, lakes and oceans could be as much as 53 million metric tonnes by the year 2030,” says Stephanie Borrelle, Smith Postdoctoral Fellow at U of T and lead author on the study.