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Nations responsible for much of the world's ocean plastic pollution have promised to start cleaning up their act.

At a UN oceans summit, delegates from China, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines said they would work to keep plastics out of the seas.

Some of the promises are not yet formalised and environmentalists say the measures proposed are not nearly urgent enough.

But UN officials praised the statement.

Meeting in New York, they said it was part of a clear international shift against ocean pollution.

Eric Solheim, the UN's environment director, told BBC News: "There are quite encouraging signs, with nations taking the ocean much more seriously. Of course, there is a very long way to go because the problems are huge."

It is estimated that 5-13 million tonnes of plastics flow into the world's oceans annually. Much of it is ingested by birds and fish – and fragments of plastic have even been found in organisms at the bottom of the ocean.

A recent paper said much of the marine plastic often originates far from the sea – especially in countries which have developed consumer economies faster than their ability to manage waste.

The Helmholtz Centre in Leipzig, Germany, estimated that 75% of land-borne marine pollution comes from just 10 rivers, predominantly in Asia.

Reducing the plastic loads in these rivers by 50% would reduce global plastic inputs by 37%, it said.

'Change in attitude'

Tom Dillon from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which campaign on oceans, urged China to move quickly.

He told BBC News: "For thousands of years the Maritime Silk Road was a pathway for export of Chinese culture and influence. Will the ocean be a vehicle for export of Chinese pollution, or a new culture of conservation and sustainability?"

A report to the UN conference from the Thailand government says most marine plastic debris is land-based, caused by inefficient waste management and poor handling of plastic wastes.

In Thailand, the total amount of garbage finding its way into the sea was estimated at 2.83 million tonnes in 2016 - of which 12% was plastic.

The Thai government says the nation has established a 20-year strategy to tackle the problem, including developing financial incentives for keeping plastic out of the sea and encouraging eco-packaging design and eco-friendly substitutes for plastics.

In Indonesia, the government is starting a mass education programme for schoolchildren, and in the Philippines new laws are being developed.

Part of the challenge is finding substitutes for plastics. An international prize for smarter materials and design for packaging was launched recently by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Follow Roger on Twitter @rharrabin</s>Hug your ocean extra tight today—it’s World Oceans Day! A United Nations-recognized, uh, holiday? Day of recognition? Celebration? Anyway, World Oceans Day has been around since 1992, and the environmental arm of the U.N. made it an official thing in 2008. It’s a day for reflecting on all the wonderful things the ocean does for all our lives, and the lives of non-surfers all over the planet.

It’s also a day for wringing our hands in worry over the mindbending challenges the ocean faces from ruinous environmental degradation.

Last year, the U.N. chose plastic pollution as the nefarious bit of human-caused damage to bring to the world’s attention. The tragedies of a plastic-filled ocean are more apparent with each new study. It’s not just that plastic garbage lining the beach is unsightly, nor that the occasional sea turtle gets caught in a plastic net. The real problem is that once plastic makes it into the ocean, it’s in there for thousands of years, breaking down into microparticles that find their way into the systems of pretty much every single animal living in the sea.

You eat seafood? You’re eating plastic. You’re also eating the petrochemical toxins that plastic was made from, and all the toxins those oceangoing plastics have absorbed, which they do, like little plastic sponges.

This unpleasantness about plastic pollution makes going for a surf as a way to celebrate World Oceans Day a hypocritical act indeed — pretty much every bit of surf gear you own is made from, or with, a whole mess of plastic.

Wetsuit? Neoprene is a kind of plastic. Surfboard? Fiberglass is a plastic. Polyurethane is a plastic. Epoxy is a plastic. Most of your leash is plastic. Your leash string is plastic. Tailpads are plastic. Your fin boxes are plastic. Surf in trunks, you say? Your nylon, polyester boardshorts are plastic. Plastic, plastic, plastic, we’re all walking human/plastic hybrids.

Ah, the irony. The depressing, depressing irony, of being a plastic-coated surfer on World Oceans Day.</s>London - Fact: by 2050 there will be more plastic in our oceans that fish. Every minute the equivalent of a dump truck full of plastic filters into the world's oceans. And everything we wash our synthetic garments, we are adding to the problem. Plastic pollution is flooding our oceans and environment and unless something is done now, we are all doomed.

In order to help raise awareness for plastic pollution in the oceans, British designer Stella McCartney has teamed up with non-profit organization Parley for the Ocean to use recycled plastic from the ocean in her collection items. The designer hopes to encourage other designers to make a similar decision to help cut down on plastic pollution in the oceans and make sustainability a priority in the fashion industry.

"Fashion is an industry that makes a significant impact on the health of the planet, and on its life support system—the oceans," said McCartney to Instyle. "Our goal has always been to challenge ourselves and the industry to do better, to continually ask ourselves how we can improve. We want to be responsible and accountable for the items we make and the ways we make them. And we need to start somewhere in order to progress. This partnership with Parley is another chapter in our journey."

This is not the first time McCartney has teamed up with Parley for the Oceans, the designer previously worked with Adidas and the NGO to develop a sneaker made from recycled plastic. Her new collaboration with Parley for the Ocean sees the designer applying this material to other high-end items, such as apparel, handbags, and footwear. McCartney is best known in the industry for her strong stance on sustainable fashion. She has incorporated sustainable and ethical practices in her label since its launch in 2001 by refusing to use real fur or leather and measuring the impact of her supply chain on the planet.</s>Researchers at The Ocean Cleanup—a Dutch foundation developing new technologies for ridding the oceans of plastic—say rivers carry an estimated 1.15-2.41 million tonnes of plastic into the sea every year, an amount that need between 48,000 to over 100,000 dump trucks to carry it away.

Their latest study, published in Nature Communications journal Wednesday, added that two-thirds of the pollution comes from the 20 most polluting rivers, the overwhelming majority in Asia with the Yangtze River in China topping the list.

The Yangtze, the world's third-longest river, "is the largest contributing catchment", dumping some 330,000 tonnes of plastic into the East China Sea.

This is followed by the Ganges River in India and a combination of the Xi, Dong and Zhujiang Rivers in China as well as four Indonesian rivers: the Brantas, Solo, Serayu and Progo.

The rest of the world shared the remaining 14 percent of plastic pollution via rivers, The Ocean Cleanup researchers said.

"Most of this river plastic input is coming from Asia, which emphasises the need to focus on monitoring and mitigation efforts in Asian countries with rapid economic development and poor waste management," they said.

The researchers however issued a disclaimer saying "there is very little data to document these assumptions and thoroughly verify the validity of our model."

"Yet, the relatively high concentrations of ocean plastic found at the surface of the North Pacific Ocean where buoyant plastics originating from Asia can accumulate, suggest that our assumptions are plausible," they said.

The study comes against the backdrop of the UN's first ocean conference opening in Miami on Monday, where plastic pollution was singled out as particularly harmful.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres cited a recent study that showed plastic could outweigh fish in 2050 if nothing is done.

Every year, more than eight million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean, costing at least $8 billion (7.1 billion euros) in damage to marine ecosystems and killing an estimated one million sea birds, 100,000 sea mammals and untold numbers of fish.

Explore further: Plastic pollution builds up in Arctic waters: study

More information: Laurent C. M. Lebreton et al. River plastic emissions to the world's oceans, Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15611</s>Henderson Island — an uninhabited atoll in the South Pacific, halfway between New Zealand and Chile — should be one of the most pristine places on Earth. It’s about as isolated as an island can be. But today, the UNESCO World Heritage site’s white sand beaches are coated in 38 million pieces of plastic that have bobbed across the world’s oceans — giving it the planet's highest density of anthropogenic debris and proving that the oceans are truly awash with garbage.

The garbage isn’t just an eyesore. Scientists worry it could harm marine life and even humans. Not only do animals get tangled in fishing lines and other large debris, but they ingest smaller bits of plastic as well, which then release toxic chemicals, like mercury. Predators absorb the chemicals consumed by their prey, allowing those chemicals to move up the food chain until they reach you and me. Garbage in the oceans could truly wreak havoc on your health.

But there’s a ray of hope. One ambitious foundation, which raised $31.5 million in donations in a matter of years, will attempt to clean up plastic trash in the North Pacific as early as 2018. Hundreds of other projects are attacking the problem across the world. Experts agree that it will take an army to clean up the plastic junk, but they are hopeful it will be done.

We currently live in what some scientists call the Age of Plastic. Long clear sheets of plastic are wrapped around food in your fridge. We drink out of plastic and carry our groceries in plastic. It's probably covering the screen you’re reading this story on. It has blanketed the Earth — so much so that scientists think there will be visible layers of plastic in Earth's sediment millions of years from now.

About 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year — enough to fill five plastic grocery bags for every foot of coastline in the world. The problem is so bad it’s impossible to find a pristine beach or region in the ocean, says Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

“Whenever we go out somewhere to measure plastic, we are almost sure to find it,” he says.

But the problem isn't as obvious as you think. Thanks to the ocean’s currents, a significant portion of trash ends up in huge systems of rotating currents called gyres, or simply “garbage patches.” There are five main garbage patches — one each in the Indian Ocean, the North Atlantic, the North Pacific, the South Atlantic, and the South Pacific.

Related: Scientists Have Wild Ideas for Getting Rid of Space Junk

Although garbage patches have captured people’s attention, Nancy Wallace, director of the marine debris program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says they aren’t easy to spot.

“You can sail through these ‘garbage patches’ and you wouldn’t even know you’re in it sometimes,” she says. “Because a lot of the time the plastic, or the debris, is so small, that you wouldn't see it. It’s also distributed throughout the water column or it’s on the bottom.”

Although the garbage patches don’t resemble Henderson Island, they’re still chock-full of rubbish. “We have to be absolutely ashamed as a society that we have been so careless with our waste and our plastic,” van Sebille says.

The garbage certainly haunted Boyan Slat — a young Dutch inventor who noticed the problem while diving off the coast of Greece in 2011. “I came across more plastic bags than fish,” he says. “And I then asked myself the question, ‘Well why don’t we clean this up?’”

At the time, Slat was only 16 and it took a few years until he decided that he could be a part of that “we.” He dropped out of college and founded The Ocean Cleanup foundation with the hope of cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The essential idea behind Ocean Cleanup is to use the same currents that created the garbage patch and let them push plastic into a curved network of large floating barriers. The trash would the ultimately be funneled toward a central tank where it can be collected once a month. Slat plans to deploy the project next year and thinks that the North Pacific will be garbage-free by the 2040s.

But Ocean Cleanup has been hit hard with criticism as large parts of the scientific community think it will be ineffective. “They are going at the problem from the wrong side,” van Sebille says. It makes no sense to clean up the garbage at the end of its journey, he adds, not when you can stop it earlier and prevent it from interacting with marine life.

Wallace thinks cleanup projects should target trash before it becomes a problem. “We want to focus on preventing new sources of debris rather than trying to do the open ocean cleanup because it's just more challenging,” she says. She quotes another marine biologist who “once said, 'If your bathroom is flooding because the sink is pouring out water, you don’t start mopping up the water, you turn off the faucet,’” she says. “That's a great way to look at it. We can't just keep pouring more and more in and hope that we can mop it up. We have to turn that faucet off.”

Slat, however, thinks scientists need to attack the problem from both ends — prevent garbage from ending up in the oceans, and clean up what's collecting in garbage patches.

“In a way, cleanup is prevention,” Slat says. “Because if the oceans will be polluted forever, if we have to forget what's already in there and the best thing we can do is not make it worse, I think that will be a very uninspiring message … So now that we've shown that there is a path in which we can make the ocean clean again, I think that will actually help to motivate people to work on that prevention side as well.”

But prevention will be a chore. “The really scary statistic is that in the five years we will be producing as much plastic as in all of the 20th century,” van Sebille says. “If you don't plug the holes, if you don't stop the wave getting into the ocean, the amounts we're seeing now are minuscule compared to what's coming. So we need to act fast.”

Change has already begun. A law enacted in 2015 prohibited those tiny plastic beads found in facial scrubs and body washes. Designed to exfoliate your skin, the beads easily slip through sewage treatment plants and are carried into rivers, lakes, and oceans. The law came shortly after a study estimated that 800 trillion beads were washed down the drains daily.

But it’s unlikely that we’re going to stop using plastic entirely. And van Sebille doesn’t think we have to. In fact, he says it promising that the use of plastic doesn't always come hand-in-hand with litter.

“I am hopeful that it's not like carbon dioxide, where the carbon dioxide that we emit is an inherent part of the burning of fossil fuels,” he says. “Here, the use of plastics doesn't mean it has to end up in the ocean.”

Instead of halting the production of plastic, experts argue we need to target areas where the problem is easiest to tackle. And that varies throughout the world. Take the U.S. and China. Although America generates nearly twice as much waste per person per day as China does, China tops the list of plastic polluters. That’s because the U.S. has the proper infrastructure to get rid of waste, whereas in rural China, it's rare to have a system for trash collection.

Many projects in China are trying to develop the proper infrastructure from the ground up.

“You have to look at the local challenges and culture and then develop the solutions around that and make the economic incentives work in each place,” Wallace says.

You have to look at where plastic causes the most harm, van Sebille argues. Out in the north Pacific, trash does little harm because there’s little marine life. But closer to the coasts, where animals live, trash can cause an array of dangers. Many scientists argue this is the best place to clean up.

Plenty of other cleanup projects target the coasts. Van Sebille points toward hundreds of small community groups that clean up their local beaches. Some U.S. cities have deployed trash collection boats into rivers that scoop up plastic before it can reach the ocean.

At the end of the day, every project counts.

“We’re seeing real investment from other countries that were not involved in the issue before,” Wallace says. Take Indonesia. Those volcanic islands are the second largest contributor to ocean garbage after China. Now, the country has started pilot projects that will help develop the infrastructure necessary to clean up trash.

“We need it all because we are facing this tsunami of new plastic,” van Sebille says. And although that might seem like a colossal problem, many experts are optimistic.

“We caused the problem," she says. "Therefore, we can solve the problem."</s>Today is World Oceans Day. It's the unofficial holiday that not only celebrates our oceans but also a day for respecting the earth's natural resources.

As pollution continues to ravage our oceans, people and organizations are encouraged to work together towards eliminating plastic pollution.

According to World Oceans Day, an offshoot of The Ocean Project, most plastic is not biodegradable and a vast majority of it is not being recycled effectively. There is such a giant volume that gets dumped into one of our most precious natural resources.

World Oceans Day provides guidelines for organizing group cleanups and information about the impact that plastic and other harmful trash has on our oceans and its inhabitants.

The video depicts a sea turtle suffering from a plastic straw that was stuck up one of its nostrils. Some people work to try and relieve the sea turtle of its pain and get the entire straw out. They successfully do it but it just goes to show how much polluting our oceans has terrible consequences not just for us but for its creatures.

So be mindful and try some strategies to create less trash. Recycle and put pressure on big manufacturers and corporations to create earth-friendly products.

The Georgia Aquarium will be holding special activities today to recognize World Oceans Day between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

PHOTOS | Our oceans, let's appreciate them and work to take care of them</s>Less than a week after President Donald Trump announced he was pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, the United Nations is hosting its first ever Oceans' Conference in New York.

The aim is to find solutions to some of the toughest problems facing the oceans — that includes coral bleaching, plastic pollution, overfishing and rising sea levels.

The scourge of plastic pollution alone is a massive challenge and according to some estimates, plastic will outweigh fish by 2050 and 99 per cent of sea birds will have ingested plastic.

By the end of the week as the Oceans Conference comes to a close, the general assembly will aim to pass a call to action.</s>Researchers at The Ocean Cleanup, the Dutch foundation developing advanced technologies to rid the oceans of plastic, today published the first-ever estimate of plastic emissions from rivers into the world’s oceans. Writing in Nature Communications, they calculate that rivers annually transport between 1.15 and 2.41 million metric tons of plastic waste into our oceans. Two-thirds of this input comes from the 20 most polluting rivers, most of which are located on the Asian continent.

The distribution of plastic in the oceans can only be mapped if the main sources of plastic pollution are known. By pinpointing these sources, The Ocean Cleanup can target the best possible locations in the ocean for the deployment of its cleanup systems. Additionally, knowledge about the sources of plastic pollution can aid prevention efforts.

It is commonly accepted that most plastic found in the oceans originates from land-based sources. It is also well known that rivers play a particularly important role in transporting mismanaged plastic waste from land into the ocean. Until now, however, researchers had quantified neither the total amount of plastic flowing out of the world’s rivers, nor how much plastic is emitted by each individual river. With today’s study, this information is now available.

For this study, a team lead by The Ocean Cleanup researcher Laurent Lebreton created a model from the combined global geospatial information on: population density, waste management, topography, hydrography and the locations of dams. After calibrating the model against field measurements of plastic flows from various rivers across the world, it was used to obtain a global picture of the annual river plastic emissions into the oceans.

Of the 40,760 ocean-bound rivers studied, just 20 are responsible for two-thirds of the global plastic input. In total, between 1.15 and 2.41 million metric tons of plastic are deposited into the oceans by rivers. The model also shows that plastic input from rivers is highly correlated with drainage of debris from the river banks and creeks leading into main waterways, and that this river-to-ocean input therefore varies per season. Worldwide, three quarters of the plastic released annually enters the oceans between May and October.

Boyan Slat, Founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup stated: “We’re pleased to see how many initiatives have been taken in the past few years to raise awareness of the ocean pollution problem. However, for our work in the deep ocean to succeed in the long run, it’s crucial that governments and other organizations speed up their efforts to mitigate the sources of the problem we aim to resolve. The results of this latest study can assist with those efforts.”</s>SA’s oceans are getting a clean sweep. This is according to Plastics SA who launched its Operation Clean Sweep campaign on World Oceans Day‚ at uShaka Marine World in Durban on Thursday.

The goal of the campaign is to contain the loss of plastic pellets‚ flakes and powder used by the plastics industry.

Plastics SA’s director of sustainability Douw Steyn said it is about time the plastics industry takes a look at itself and the role it plays in contaminating the oceans and threatening marine life.

"We, as the plastic industry, make the pellets and flakes used in the manufacturing of plastic bags‚ bottles, and so on. The pellets are smaller than a sunflower seed but create huge damage to the ocean," Steyn said.

"When these micro-plastics spill onto the floor during manufacturing, they are swept down a drain‚ into a sewer and from there into rivers and ultimately the sea. Plastic bags are easy to spot and pick up; plastic pellets are not. They are ingested by turtles‚ birds and marine life and cause a great deal of damage."

Judy Mann Lang‚ CEO of the South African Association for Marine Biological Research‚ said that research suggests there is more than 250,000 tonnes of plastic in the seas and that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish. "But we need to maintain hope‚" she said‚ "which is why we are celebrating World Oceans Day globally — 600 events will take place today to celebrate the world’s oceans."

Mark Liptrot‚ sustainability manager at packaging company Constantia Afripack, said the effect of plastics on our oceans is a growing problem. "Micro-plastics repel water and attract chemical pollutants, such as pesticides and toxins. These poisons are ingested by small marine life which, in turn, is eaten by bigger marine animals. We haven’t begun to understand the extent of this problem."

Steyn said Plastics SA hopes that all those involved in plastic manufacturing will take a voluntary pledge to partner in Operation Clean Sweep. "We are talking about 20-plus raw material suppliers, such as Sasol; 1,800 companies making plastic products; and about 230 recycling companies. Together, the industry employs more than 60 000 people. This is a global campaign and it’s time for our members to come on board."

Plastics SA has spent the last two years creating South African-specific training material for use on the shop floor. "It has to be practical‚ it must be measurable. At the next global plastics alliance meeting in December, in Indonesia, we will have to give feedback on our progress."

Plastics SA will publicise the campaign through its allied plastic associations‚ its magazine and regular, provincial tours.

Steyn is optimistic: "I believe the industry has a responsibility to clean up and if we are committed we can ensure a cleaner environment. Plastic just doesn’t belong in the oceans."</s>Fresh from a gruelling sea journey of more than seven hours negotiating 38.6 km of the world’s busiest shipping lanes on a paddle board, Lizzie Carr is on a mission.

She recently became the first woman to cross the English Channel solo on the flimsy stand-up craft, to draw attention to the “global plastic crisis”.

From fishing lines to flip flops, there are more than 5 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the world’s oceans, according to a 2014 study published in a Public Library of Science journal.

Plastic degrades over time into tiny particles known as microplastics which can be ingested by marine life, together with plastic microbeads used in toiletries and other household products, harming the food chain and environment.

“When you hear... about microplastics and microbeads, there’s still a lot of confusion around what that means, and how we’ve contributed to that,” Carr told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Every four miles along the trip from England to northern France, she collected water samples for microplastics analysis by Plymouth University.

Carr has also launched #PlasticPatrol campaigns, combining free paddle-board lessons with clean-up operations of waterways, canals and harbours across Britain, to encourage local communities to get onboard.

She is now developing a phone app and a crowd-sourced map to encourage the public to photograph plastic pollution to identify trends and hot spots. “It’s about putting the power into the hands of the people,” she said.

Plastic debris has been found littering the oceans from the North to the South Poles and around remote Pacific islands.

But only 1 per cent is thought to be floating on the sea surface – the remaining 99 per cent is scattered along coast lines, buried deep in sea-beds or hidden in the guts of marine creatures, said Erik van Sebille, oceanographer and associate professor at Utrecht University.

Marine experts fear there could be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050, measured by weight, according to a factsheet from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a UK-based charity working to end waste in the economy.

“(Plastic) is shockingly widespread – it literally is almost everywhere in the ocean, it’s omnipresent,” said van Sebille, who studies how ocean currents move plastic around.

KEEP IT IN THE ECONOMY

Internationally, significant efforts are being made to remove plastic from the world’s water bodies.

One example is “The Ocean Cleanup”, a Dutch foundation formed after a speech by a concerned Dutch teenager went viral online. It aims to clear over half of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, an area between Hawaii and California where ocean currents have concentrated plastic debris.

Meanwhile, customers must pay for plastic shopping bags in some countries like Britain and Ireland, while France has banned them outright, adding disposable plastic cups and plates from 2020.

Kenya is also bringing in a complete ban on household and commercial plastic packaging after a successful grassroots social media campaign.

With an estimated $80-billion to $120-billion of plastic packaging material lost to the economy each year, there is a financial incentive for business to reuse plastic.

Unilever, the food and personal goods giant that owns brands such as Dove and Lipton, has developed new technology to recycle plastic sachets, which normally end up in landfill or as litter, and channel them back into the supply chain.

It will open a plant later this year in Indonesia to test the viability of the technology.

Forty per cent of plastic produced globally is destined for single-use packaging, according to Stephanie Wright, an environmental scientist at King’s College London.

“It’s a material that lasts forever, but we’re using it as a one-off,” she said.

Last month, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the Prince of Wales’ International Sustainability Unit launched a $2-million prize to come up with new ways to design packaging to help keep plastics out of the ocean.

World record-breaking sailor Ellen MacArthur told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that today’s approach to plastic is unsustainable.

“It’s built to keep a chicken fresh or to keep shampoo in a container, and be cheap to sell, but there’s no process for that material to be recovered and to create (a) restorative, regenerative and ultimately resilient model,” she said.

MacArthur’s interest in the issue came from having to make the most of limited resources at sea.

“When you sail around the world on a boat... you take with you what you need for your survival, and you manage it down to the last drop of diesel and the last packet of food,” she said.

“You know what finite is when you’re 2,500 miles away from the nearest town and there is no more,” she added.

Scientist Wright warned that the problem of plastic pollution could be around for a long time.

“Even if we stop putting litter into the sea tomorrow... all the plastic that’s still there is going to continue to break down,” she said. “We have to anticipate it might get worse in the future.”

This year’s World Oceans Day, marked on Thursday, has a focus on tackling plastic pollution and preventing marine litter.

Van Sebille argues that, at this stage, preventative measures to stem the flow of plastics would be more effective than trying to clean up the mess.

Plastic production has seen “an exponential increase” since the 1950s, he said. “On current trends, in the next five years we’ll be producing more plastic than all the twentieth century,” he said. “There’s an enormous amount of plastic coming our way.”

Cities could take the lead in an urbanising world, as they are widely responsible for waste management, he suggested.

He also advocated fixing the holes in the current recycling process where a third of plastic packaging ends up being lost or wasted during collection and processing.

“The oceans belong to us all,” he said. “This is really a worldwide problem that we, as global humanity, need to tackle”.
At a United Nations-Oceans summit, delegates from China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, four of the top polluters of plastic into the oceans, pledge to reduce their levels of oceanic plastic pollution.