第七届青年地学论坛

Since 1950, about 40 million tons of plastic debris have entered the ocean. Realizing the potential adverse effects to ecosystems, wildlife and human health, many countries have started banning single-use plastics. But the COVID-19 pandemic has halted these actions and led to an increased demand for single-use plastic intensifying pressure on an already out of control global plastic waste problem. While it is suspected to be large, the magnitude and fate of this pandemic-associated mismanaged plastic waste is unknown. Here, we use our newly developed MITgcm ocean plastic model to quantify the impact of the pandemic on plastic discharge. We show that 5.0±0.7 million tons of pandemic-associated plastic waste have been generated from 193 countries as of April 8, 2021, with 6.7±0.90 thousand tons released into the global ocean representing ~2% of the global total riverine plastic discharge. The model projects that the spatial distribution of the discharge changes rapidly in the global ocean within three years, with a significant portion of plastic debris landing on the beach and seabed later, and a circumpolar plastic accumulation zone will be form in Arctic. We find hospital waste represents the bulk of the global discharge (87%), and most of the global discharge is from Asia (63%), which calls for a better management of medical waste in developing countries.

COVID-19, plastic waste, ocean transportation