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Plastic in the deep sea: Virtually unaltered after a quarter of a century:
Plastic products are durable. On one hand this is a great advantage, but on the other hand, if the plastic enters the environment, this advantage turns into a problem. According to current knowledge, natural degradation, as with organic matter, does not take place. It can only be estimated, how long plastic debris actually remains in the environment. Corresponding long-term experiments are lacking.
This applies particularly to the deep sea that is only poorly explored itself. Plastic objects that are found by chance with the help of deep-sea robots or other underwater vehicles are difficult to date. However, during an expedition with the German research vessel SONNE in 2015, researchers from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and the Kiel University were able to recover several pieces of waste from the seabed of the Eastern Pacific Ocean in a depth of more than 4000 meters. Conducting a little detective work allowed to constrain the age of deposition quite accurately. For the first time, this offered the opportunity to conduct a long-term study on plastic degradation in the deep sea. The study was published today in the international journal Scientific Reports.
[...] Overall, the study provides the first scientifically sound indication of the fate of plastic debris in the deep sea. "This study builds also an important basis for our new project HOTMIC, where we aim to trace the plastic waste entering the ocean from the continents to the large oceanic eddies and further to their final sink, the abyssal seafloor," says Dr. Haeckel.
Journal Reference:
S. Krause, M. Molari, E. V. Gorb, et al. Persistence of plastic debris and its colonization by bacterial communities after two decades on the abyssal seafloor [open], Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-66361-7)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @05:01PM
Most plastic the issue is of type and disposal.
We have in the US been shipping our pollution to China and surrounding countries for ages now. However, we also took the time to clean up our act. We are 99.9999% the way there. At this point we are arguing over silly things. At this point we need to get other countries to help out. Build good landfills use the three R's. Until that happens nothing will happen. Plastic locked in a landfill is a good place for it. Along with paper. It is a store of CO2 and burring it is a good idea. Better is not to do it in the first place but that rarely happens. But instead we do silly things like ban straws. That is such a tiny fraction of what is going on it is bonkers to even play with. Yet we do it pat ourselves on the heads and pretend we didn't just order something from Amazon that comes wrapped in plastic, shipped over in a huge ship, and created a nice toxic stew on the manufacturing end.
I also stopped recycling paper. I toss it in the landfill. Lock up as much CO2 as you can. Bury it. Trees are exceedingly good at pulling it out of the air. Do not recycle it.