Levey (2015) mentions, "90% of sea bird sallow plastic"; which is reinforced by Wilcox et al. (2015) recent article, suggesting that threat of plastic to sea bird is increasing and spreading. Plastic wastes is major source of land and sea pollution. No wonder, plastic has revolutionized the global economy, however, increase in its use are responsible for environmental degradation, especially in ocean (Gregory, 2009). In this post, I will review three papers, which insight the composition of beach litter, formation of garbage patch and making international mechanism on sea pollution work better.
Kordella et al. (2013) studied the litter collected from volunteer clearer from 60 beaches along Greece in 2006 and a year later. The collection location consist of island, gulf (open and semi-open), lake etc. The litter is categorized broadly into metal, plastic, building material etc. Sources were classified broadly into land based (recreational and other); and marine based (navigation and fishery). R-factor and hierarchical cluster analysis method were used to analyse the data. Around 110 thousand items were observed. Among which plastic constituted 43% a dominant source of sea garbage. The analysis showed, plastic having dominant composition, affects beach regardless of its origin and location. The study suggest supply of solid waste facilities would help reduce these waste enter into ocean.
