We Need a Data-Rich Picture of What’s Killing the Planet

YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD about the plague of plas­tic trash in the oceans. You’ve seen YouTube videos of sea tur­tles with drink­ing straws in their noses, or whales with stom­achs full of marine lit­ter. But how much plas­tic is out there? Where is it com­ing from? We don’t real­ly know, because we haven’t mea­sured it. “There’s a pauci­ty of data,” says Mar­cus Erik­sen, cofounder of the 5 Gyres Insti­tute, a non­prof­it focused on end­ing plas­tic pollution.

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