Plastic Waste Knows No Bounds
By JoAnna Wendel 22 May 2017
It’s like the island of misfit toys, only less endearing. Way out in the South Pacific Ocean, more than 5000 kilometers away from any large land mass, tiny, uninhabited Henderson Island carries the highest density of plastic debris reported anywhere on the planet.
Researchers occasionally visit the island, which is the largest of the United Kingdom’s Pitcairn Islands, but only every 5 to 10 years. This time around, a group from the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia, didn’t just find glassy aquamarine waves lapping against pristine, white sand—they found piles and piles of plastic debris. An estimated 37.7 million pieces of plastic, to be precise, weighing as much as 17 metric tons.
https://eos.org/articles/plastic-waste-knows-no-bounds
