Plastic products dumped in British seas are carried to the Arctic region in two years’ time.
The scientists behind the study say that marine plastic pollution does “extreme harm” to the fragile polar environment.
“The ocean currents are like conveyor belts moving UK plastic very fast up north, which is the probably the worst place for plastic to be at this moment,” Erik van Sebille from Imperial College London said.
Much of the plastic waste winds up frozen into the Arctic ice. But with the area becoming warmer and the ice cap melting, pieces of plastic will be released.
This will increase the pressure on the wildlife and fish, many of which have suffered by mistaking plastic items for food.
“There is so much plastic in marine animals at the moment,” said van Sebille. “Almost every fish and bird that has been cut open for science, we find plastic inside it. It is really hard to find an animal that doesn’t have plastic inside it.”
This affects the entire ecosystem, he said: “As soon as one group of animals gets impacted, then other species get impacted, either because they don’t have food anymore, or because they are eating animals which have eaten plastic, so they get it inside them too.”
Some five trillion pieces of plastic are already afloat in the world’s oceans. Much of it collects in the better-known Great Pacific garbage patch, trapped there by Pacific currents, but scientists are increasingly concerned about the amount collecting in the Arctic ice.
