Plastic Waste in Australia
3
Introduction
Somewhere in the remote North Pacific Ocean sits the largest accumulation of plastic waste
in the world. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it has come to be known, spans 1.6 million
square kilometres.
2
It is
twice the size of Texas, three times the size of France,
3
and 17 times
the size of Tasmania.
There are four other
areas of the world’s oceans
where our plastic
waste accumulates
4
, including in the South Pacific.
5
They might be smaller in comparison to
the one in the North Pacific, but each one is enormous in its own right.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of an estimated total of 1.8 trillion pieces of
plastic waste.
6
This is equivalent to 250 pieces of plastic for every human on the planet.
7
One study found that between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tonnes of plastic waste generated
on land entered the ocean in 2010, and estimated that this would increase by an order of
magnitude by 2025.
8
It is now thought that, by weight, there could be more plastic than fish
in the sea by 2050.
9
Globally, 32% of plastic packaging escapes collection systems and ends up in the
environment.
10
Plastic can be found even in the deepest parts of the ocean, where it
represents up to 80% of marine litter, often in the form of microplastics.
11
This has a very
serious adverse impact on marine life and exacerbates other stresses on ocean health.
12
Plastic pollution kills an estimated one million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals each
2
Lebreton et al (2018)
‘
Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic
’
,
Scientific
Reports
, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w
3
The Ocean Cleanup (2023)
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
, https://theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-
garbage-patch/
4
Ibid.
5
Markic et al (2023)
‘
Microplastic pollution in the intertidal and subtidal sediments of Vava'u, Tonga
’
,
Marine
Pollution Bulletin
, https://www.grida.no/publications/876
6
Lebreton et al (2018)
‘
Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic
’
https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/plastics/overview
7
The Ocean Cleanup (2023)
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
8
Jambeck et al (2015) 'Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean',
Science
,
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1260352
9
Ellen Macarthur Foundation and McKinsey & Company (2016)
The New Plastics Economy
–
Rethinking the
Future of Plastics
, p. 17, https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/the-new-plastics-economy-rethinking-
the-future-of-plastics
10
Ibid
, p. 15.
11
International Union for Conservation of Nature (2021)
Marine plastic pollution
,
https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-brief/marine-plastic-pollution
12
Wootton et al (2022) ‘
Microplastic in oysters: A review of global trends and comparison to southern
Australia
’,
Chemosphere,
p 1, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653522025589