This article is part of our new ‘Ocean Science in Action’ series, which highlights achievements and success stories from our network of endorsed Decade Actions.
From Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench, in freshly fallen Antarctic snow and even in our blood – plastic is everywhere. Plastic waste makes up 80% of all marine pollution, and microplastics were found in every marine turtle, over half of all whales, and a third of seals examined in studies published in 2018-2019. Yet, despite this growing crisis, only 9% of all plastic ever produced has been recycled, with the vast majority ending up in landfills or the environment. To protect the ocean and human health, we must drastically reduce plastic pollution.
In this article, we highlight three initiatives endorsed by the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021–2030 (‘Ocean Decade’) that are pioneering innovative solutions through science, data and knowledge, and collaboration to prevent plastic from entering the ocean.
Every year, plastic kills over 100,000 marine mammals and more than one million seabirds. Sea turtles, fooled by the scent, snap up plastic bags thinking they are jellyfish. To seals and other marine mammals, plastic looks like squid or other prey. Skimming the surface, seabirds scoop up plastic bits, mistaking them for fish, and feed them to their chicks.
Another painful illustration of the scale of the problem – an « island of garbage » made up of 1,8 trillion pieces of plastic and weighing 80,000 tons floats in the Pacific Ocean. It is three times the size of France and growing out of control every year. At this rate, by 2050, there could be more plastic than fish by weight!
Smarter ocean cleanup starts with solutions that tackle plastic pollution at its roots, built on an understanding of where it comes from, how it moves, and where it ends up. The three success stories below highlight how the Ocean Decade is developing and scaling low-cost technologies that address plastic pollution from source to sea.
Plastic Fischer: Preventing ocean plastic in rivers
A simple social message on a metal plate by the Seine river in France reads: « Don’t litter – the sea starts here! » Rivers, nature’s highways to the seas, are responsible for carrying 80% of global plastic waste from land to the ocean.
To stop plastic pollution in rivers, Plastic Fischer designs simple technologies, accessible even to developing countries. Their 3L approach – locally built, low-tech, and low-cost – relies on materials available almost anywhere in the world.
Floating barriers called « TrashBooms » trap plastic waste while allowing marine life to pass through. Attached with steel mesh that extends 50 centimeters below the surface, each unit can be connected to others to form a chain that easily adapts to different river sizes. Since 2021, nearly 2 million kilograms of river plastic were collected across six cities in India and Indonesia.
“It takes simple, effective and low-cost solutions to address the global plastic crisis at scale,” said Karsten Hirsch, CEO & Founder of Plastic Fischer. “Our proven technology significantly reduces plastic pollution in the world’s most polluted rivers and we look forward to replicating this across the globe.”
Starting in 2022, Plastic Fischer has prevented over 690,000 kg of plastic from entering the Indian Ocean. The project has already created long-term jobs for underserved communities in Kerala, India, with local authorities looking to scale up this model across the state.
Plastic Drawdown: Developing national responses to plastic pollution
Efforts to address marine plastic pollution are often undermined by fragmented governance and legal gaps at national and local levels. In many countries, especially developing ones, limited knowledge, funding, and capacity hinder the implementation of pollution policies.
Plastic Drawdown, led by Common Seas, is an innovative rapid assessment tool that helps governments to tackle plastic pollution in contexts where data and capacity may be limited. This tool has been developed with the support and input of 27 governments, more than half of whom were Small Island Developing States.
“Plastic Drawdown maps the movement of plastic waste through a country: from its initial use, through the generation of plastic waste, to its movement into and within the environment,” explains Dr Charlotte Davies, Common Seas’ Managing Director. “Using this baseline data modelling of plastic waste flows, Plastic Drawdown allows us to explore the potential for different policies and initiatives to reduce plastic pollution over the next decade.”
In The Gambia, Plastic Drawdown contributed to the development of a National Action Plan to End Plastic Pollution. This roadmap aims to reduce plastic pollution by 86%, positioning The Gambia as a leader among developing coastal economies.
With support from UK Aid, Plastic Drawdown is now expanding to work with the governments of Grenada, Guinea-Bissau, Papua New Guinea, Saint Lucia, and Tuvalu. It has already identified policies that could reduce plastic pollution by 8.5 million kg per year.
Automated Debris Imaging System: Using AI to monitor plastic density in the ocean
Plastic pollution in the ocean is scattered, unpredictable, and constantly shifting. One area might be heavily polluted today and nearly clear tomorrow. To clean it up effectively, we need real-time insights into where the plastic is.
The Ocean Cleanup is an international non-profit that develops and scales technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. They aim to achieve this goal through a dual strategy: intercepting in rivers to stop the flow and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean. The team has developed the Automated Ocean Debris Imaging System (ADIS), a monitoring system for floating marine litter that can be deployed onboard ships to help them more effectively understand its movements to then extract the discarded plastic. The project deploys a fleet of low-cost AI cameras on global shipping vessels to map the plastic they encounter along their way.
“The success of ADIS in mapping plastic hotspots for targeted cleanup, is dependent upon international collaboration with a range of vessel owners and the wider shipping industry,” said Robin De Vries, ADIS lead for The Ocean Cleanup. “Intercontinental shipping lanes frequently cross plastic accumulation zones, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and are essential to frequent mapping of floating plastic litter in those areas to help accelerate our mission to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.”
With successful deployments across all ocean basins, ADIS has produced its first global dataset with over 10 million images of floating debris. By 2030, it aims to operate hundreds of ship-mounted cameras to map marine plastic and support effective cleanup efforts.
Addressing plastic pollution effectively requires a comprehensive, system-wide approach. Source-to-sea management, which considers the entire journey of plastic – from its origins on land to its impacts in the ocean – is essential for lasting change. As the coordinating agency for the Ocean Decade, UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission plays a critical role in advancing this approach through its partnership with the Action Platform for Source-to-Sea Management (S2S Platform), helping to integrate efforts across land, freshwater, coasts, and the ocean for a healthier, more sustainable ocean.
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About the Ocean Decade:
Proclaimed in 2017 by the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) (‘the Ocean Decade’) seeks to stimulate ocean science and knowledge generation to reverse the decline of the state of the ocean system and catalyse new opportunities for sustainable development of this massive marine ecosystem. The vision of the Ocean Decade is ‘the science we need for the ocean we want’. The Ocean Decade provides a convening framework for scientists and stakeholders from diverse sectors to develop the scientific knowledge and the partnerships needed to accelerate and harness advances in ocean science to achieve a better understanding of the ocean system, and deliver science-based solutions to achieve the 2030 Agenda. The UN General Assembly mandated UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) to coordinate the preparations and implementation of the Decade.
About the UNESCO-IOC:
The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (UNESCO-IOC) promotes international cooperation in marine sciences to improve management of the ocean, coasts and marine resources. The IOC enables its 151 Member States to work together by coordinating programmes in capacity development, ocean observations and services, ocean science and tsunami warning. The work of the IOC contributes to the mission of UNESCO to promote the advancement of science and its applications to develop knowledge and capacity, key to economic and social progress, the basis of peace and sustainable development.
