Major sources and sinks of microplastics and marine litter

Description

Marine litter and plastic pollution come mainly from landbased sources (UNEP 2018e; IRP 2019; van Truong et al. 2019) including agriculture, building and construction, transportation and a wide variety of personal care, pharmaceutical and healthcare products (Adyel 2020). Also from sea-based activities which arises from multiple sources (GESAMP 2015; GESAMP 2020b), for example maritime equipment which is made of plastics, fisheries and aquaculture (FAO 2020), shipping and offshore operations and ship-based tourism.