FAQ

There are several steps you can take to prevent plastic pollution, but some depend on recycling facilities in your area. Here are a few tips:

• Spread awareness for plastic pollution
• Organize beach, river bank or land cleanups (and start a fundraiser for The Ocean Cleanup while doing your local cleanup)
• Reduce your use of disposable plastics (including microbeads in cosmetics)
• Make sure you dispose of trash properly
• Wash your synthetic clothing as little as possible
• Reuse and recycle whenever possible
• Support us financially with a donation or apply to The Ocean Cleanup to help us develop our system
• Lobby to your (local) government

There are two main reasons why the Plastic Tracker can’t provide a trajectory for a specific location:

1. The release point is near the Caspian Sea. We are not currently modeling plastic dispersion in the Caspian Sea and therefore cannot provide a trajectory if it ends up there.
2. The plastic ends up in an inland depression. In some places on Earth like the Death Valley in California, the flow direction ends up in a depression where each particle gets stuck. It is therefore not likely to reach the ocean, and if it does we are not able to predict where at the moment.

The Plastic Tracker accurately represents plastics we usually find floating at the surface of the oceans, like bottle caps, crates, hard plastic. To find out more, please refer to this FAQ.

Yes. Due to the resolution of the ocean models (10km), the coasts have rough edges and a plastic particle drifting along the coasts will have a trajectory that can have rough edges. This also indicates potential for beaching.

Due to lack of validation of our plastic dispersion model data for latitudes above 80 degrees, we are unable to provide trajectories after a particle has reached the arctic circle. It is worth noting that plastic pollution has been observed in Svalbard and in the Arctic Ocean.

The Plastic Tracker uses a dispersion model that makes it difficult for particles to end up on the beach. It is mainly because whether a particle will beach or not is not fully understood yet, so our model makes them drift along the coast. So, this indicates that the plastic may end up beaching.

On top of that, research shows that plastic ending up on a beach can go back to the open ocean even years after being beached.

The ocean trajectory is modeled using a Lagrangian plastic dispersion model. A science popularization article explaining how these models work is available in this update. This model was first presented by Laurent Lebreton in peer-reviewed science journal Marine Pollution Bulletin in 2012.

The version used for this Plastic Tracker is based on the currents modeled by the Copernicus GLORYS reanalysis between 1993 and 2012. Particles are generated at rivers mouth using data from MERIT Hydro and the peer-reviewed paper “River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans”.

The inland trajectory is generated by following the flow direction given by the MERIT Hydro dataset from the user release point.

The probability of reaching the shore is extracted from the data used for The Ocean Cleanup 1000 rivers paper.

Yes. It represents how plastic dispersion is not an entirely deterministic process. You can’t really predict where a plastic piece will end up. What the Plastic Tracker shows is only a potential trajectory.

The Plastic Tracker displays a potential trajectory for the next 20 years, starting from the moment the particles arrives in the ocean. Regarding the inland trajectory, we do not provide an estimate of its duration. However, the probability we give that the trash reaches the shore can be thought of the probability it reaches the ocean in about a year.

There are many ways a plastic can get stuck during its trajectory on land or in rivers. We are able to provide a probability for a piece of plastic to reach the ocean for every point on the globe, using the data of our recent 1000 rivers paper. If this probability is above 10% (1 in 10), it’s considered a high probability. If it is between 0.1% and 10%, it’s considered medium, and if it’s below 0.1% , it is considered low. This probability gets higher when you get closer to a river or closer to the shore. It depends on the slopes near where the plastic is released, as long as the climate around the release point. For example, regular rains increase the probability to reach the shore because they drain the trash towards the rivers and oceans.