“What we found, quite shockingly and unexpectedly, is that most UK plastic ends up in the Arctic. Marine plastic pollution is a huge problem, with 5tn pieces of plastic now floating in the world’s oceans. It showed plastic pollution reaches the Arctic from the UK in two years and then circles the pole for many years. Plastic dumped into the seas around the UK is carried to the Arctic within two years, scientists have revealed, where it does “extreme harm” to the fragile polar environment. But the fate of plastic pollution from the UK was little understood until Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Imperial College London, analysed the issue.

Source: The Guardian July 05, 2016 08:09 UTC