Marcus Eriksen

5 Gyres Institute

Brand names can be used to hold plastic companies accountable for their items found polluting the environment. We used data from a 5-year (2018–2022) worldwide (84 countries) program to identify brands found on plastic items in the environment through 1576 audit events. We found that 50% of items were unbranded, calling for mandated producer report...

Plastic removal technologies can temporarily mitigate plastic accumulation at local scales, but evidence based criteria are needed in policies to ensure that they are feasible and that ecological benefits outweigh the costs. To reduce plastic pollution efficiently and economically, policy should prioritize regulating and reducing upstream productio...

Plastic pollution is distributed patchily around the world’s oceans. Likewise, marine organisms that are vulnerable to plastic ingestion or entanglement have uneven distributions. Understanding where wildlife encounters plastic is crucial for targeting research and mitigation. Oceanic seabirds, particularly petrels, frequently ingest plastic, are h...

The rapid growth in science, media, policymaking, and corporate action aimed at "solving" plastic pollution has revealed an overwhelming complexity, which can lead to paralysis, inaction, or a reliance on downstream mitigations. Plastic use is diverse - varied polymers, product and packaging design, pathways to the environment, and impacts - theref...

In this Matters Arising, we respond to a recent article by Bachmann et al.1 We argue that dealing with plastics pollution as a novel entity within the planetary boundaries framework needs to consider the entirety of the plastics life cycle, from resource extraction to impacts on earth system processes. Singling out LCA quantifications to set a boun...

As global awareness, science, and policy interventions for plastic escalate, institutions around the world are seeking preventative strategies. Central to this is the need for precise global time series of plastic pollution with which we can assess whether implemented policies are effective, but at present we lack these data. To address this need,...

A mess of plastic It is not clear what strategies will be most effective in mitigating harm from the global problem of plastic pollution. Borrelle et al. and Lau et al. discuss possible solutions and their impacts. Both groups found that substantial reductions in plastic-waste generation can be made in the coming decades with immediate, concerted,...

This report was the product of a GESAMP Working Group, consisting of 15 independent experts based in North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and Australasia. The report was edited by Kershaw, Turra and Galgani. It with provides recommendations to encourage a more harmonised approach to the monitoring and assessment of plastic litter, inc...

Ballerini, T., Le Pen, J.-R., Andrady, A., Cole, M., Galgani, F., Kedzierski, M., Pedrotti, M.-L., Ter Halle, A., Van Arkel, K., Zettler, E., Amaral-Zettler, L., Brandon, J., Bruzaud, S., Durand, G., Enevoldsen, E., Eriksen, M., Fabre, P., Fossi, M.-C., Frère, L., Avio, C.G., Hardesty, D., Jambeck, J., Lavender-Law, K., Mansui, J., Nafrechoux, E.,...

The plastic that pollutes our waterways and the ocean gyres is a symptom of upstream material mismanagement, resulting in its ubiquity throughout the biosphere in both aquatic and terrestrial environments. While environmental contamination is widespread, there are several reasonable intervention points present as the material flows through society...

The abundance and distribution of plastic debris in the marine environment show patterns of near- and offshore generation, migration toward and accumulation in the subtropical gyres, fragmentation, and redistribution globally. Ecological impacts in the subtropical gyres include invasive species transport and rampant ingestion and entanglement; yet...

Microplastic debris floating at the ocean surface can harm marine life. Understanding the severity of this harm requires knowledge of plastic abundance and distributions. Dozens of expeditions measuring microplastics have been carried out since the 1970s, but they have primarily focused on the North Atlantic and North Pacific accumulation zones, wi...

Observations of floating micro- and macroplasticdebris, in the Open Ocean & LMEs, were compiled from reliable published sources.

Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. Here we report an estimate of the total number of plastic particles and their weight floating in the world’s oceans from 24 expeditio...

The authors wish to acknowledge the generous financial and in-­‐kind support of a number of organisa9ons: UNESCO-­‐IOC, IMO, NOAA, Plas9cs Europe and the American Chemistry Council. Output: Ø The TWAP Assessment Report report will be published in the first half of 2015 Indicators of floa9ng macro-­‐ and micro-­‐plas9cs in the ocean GESAMP: GESAMP...

Neuston samples were collected at 21 stations during an ∼700 nautical mile (∼1300 km) expedition in July 2012 in the Laurentian Great Lakes of the United States using a 333 μm mesh manta trawl and analyzed for plastic debris. Although the average abundance was approximately 43,000 microplastic particles/km2, station 20, downstream from two major ci...

An expedition on the sailing vessel Sea Dragon was organized and carried out by the 5 Gyres Institute to explore the presence and distribution of plastic pollution in the eastern South Pacific. The first sample was taken at 33°05'S, 81°08'W, subsequent samples were collected approximately every 50 nautical miles until reaching Easter Island, and th...

This review assesses the effects of environmental concentrations of bisphenol-A (BPA) on wildlife. Water concentrations of BPA vary tremendously due to proximity to point and non-point sources, but reported concentrations in stream/river water samples are less than 21 microg/L, and concentrations in landfill leacheate are less than 17.2mg/L. Extens...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Southern California, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-111).