science

Reminder to never ever believe science journalism, especially not the headlines.

If you're going to form an opinion on it please read the actual article itself or otherwise withhold judgement until you come across a reputable source like a science educator or an expert who actually holds a qualification.

So a few years back social media was going wild over the science journalism headlines, claiming that only 10 rivers in the world contributed like 95% of plastic waste in the oceans, and most of those rivers were in Asia.

(Disclaimer that I haven't gone back and looked at the most recent research so what I quote is not necessarily true now and you should be skeptical about comments on social media just as much as science journalism.)

I'm not going to bother to re-read the study in question because it's probably out of date now so the numbers may be slightly off because memory is fallible but this is basically how it goes:

The study says that 95% of land-based plastic waste that makes its way into the ocean via rivers is deposited into the ocean by 10 major rivers, with 7 of them being in Asia and none of them being in the western world. I'm hazarding a guess here but I don't think it was mapping and modelling the flow of microplastics at all. It was a good study but it shouldn't have been of particular note, especially not to the lay community, because if I said that the overwhelming majority of all water which travels from land, into rivers, and makes it into the ocean is deposited by a handful of major rivers you'd be like "Okay, that would make a lot of sense" and so if I told you that the majority of plastic waste that travels from land, by rivers, and then into the ocean basically follows the same pattern you'd be like "Yeah, that tracks". Tiny waterways flow into small rivers which flow into major rivers which then flow into the ocean. Thrilling stuff, right?

But the science journalism of the time starts saying that 95% of plastic waste in the ocean comes from just 10 rivers or that 7 rivers in Asia are responsible for most of the plastic waste in the ocean.

Social media picks this up and starts saying that 7 rivers in Asia, mostly China (which is true), are generating the vast majority of plastic waste that is in the Ocean.

So we've gone from 95% of plastic (likely only the stuff that is large enough to see) which travels from land into the rivers and then into the ocean has its last leg of the journey happening through 10 major rivers -> Asian rivers/Chinese rivers are responsible for nearly all of the plastic waste in the ocean!!

A study that was released at about the same time examined the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where it's suspected that a lot of plastic waste accumulates in the oceans and so that makes it ideal for studying the source of plastics, found that of the identifiable waste the majority of it (around 40-50%) came from the fishing industry, the next biggest source was from the big Tsunami that hit Japan (at like 20-30%) and then the rest was pretty small numbers.

So of all the plastic in the GPGP, half was from the fishing industry, 1/4 to 1/3 was from an unpreventable natural disaster, leaving the last ~25% to come from places like land-based sources, such as the rivers in Asia mentioned above.

Also note that China had either recently banned importing plastic waste from developed countries or they hadn't done it yet, so take that for whatever it's worth.

(Now that we know more about microplastics and their sources, I'd be really interested in knowing how the overall plastic load in the ocean looks and what impacts a country's car-dependence has on these numbers.)

But I bet if you asked 100 adults who is most responsible for the plastic waste in the ocean, 90 of them are going to tell you that it's the developing world/Asia/China and half of that number will refer to this study because of how much of a sensation it caused at the time.

There have been a few other times when headlines like this have stuck in the public consciousness and which have been so completely off-base that you're better off being completely uninformed.

The more sensational a science journalism headline is, the more inclined I am to read the study and often it's really disappointing how badly research gets covered.