‘The total load of floating plastic for the ice-free waters of the Arctic Ocean was estimated to range from around 100 to 1200 tons, with 400 tons composed of an estimated 300 billion plastic items as a mid-range estimate,’ the authors wrote in their study.

‘The fragmentation and typology of the plastic suggested an abundant presence of aged debris that originated from distant sources.’

The researchers claims that the Arctic is a ‘dead end’ for floating plastic waste dumped in the Atlantic Ocean off Europe and the United States.

This waste is swept north by ocean currents to a ‘polar graveyard’, they said.

Levels of plastic found east of Greenland and in the Barents Sea off Norway and Russia were far higher than expected for the sparsely populated regions.

Abstract from The ArcticOcean as a dead end for floating plastics in the North Atlantic branch of the Thermohaline Circulation
The subtropical ocean gyres are recognized as great marine accummulation zones of floating plastic debris; however, the possibility of plastic accumulation at polar latitudes has been overlooked because of the lack of nearby pollution sources. In the present study, the Arctic Ocean was extensively sampled for floating plastic debris from the Tara Oceans circumpolar expedition. Although plastic debris was scarce or absent in most of the Arctic waters, it reached high concentrations (hundreds of thousands of pieces per square kilometer) in the northernmost and easternmost areas of the Greenland and Barents seas. The fragmentation and typology of the plastic suggested an abundant presence of aged debris that originated from distant sources. This