The costs of removing the unsanctioned import of marine plastic litter to small island states.

ABSTRACT: Small island states receive unprecedented amounts of the world's plastic waste. In March 2019, we removed as much plastic litter as possible from Aldabra Atoll, a remote UNESCO World Heritage Site, and estimated the money and effort required to remove the remaining debris. We removed 25 tonnes at a cost of $224,537, which equates to around $10,000 per day of clean-up operations or $8,900 per tonne of litter. We estimate that 513 tonnes (95% CI 212-814) remains on Aldabra, the largest accumulation reported for any single island. We calculate that removing it will cost approximately $4.68 million and require 18,000 person-hours of labour. By weight, the composition is dominated by litter from the regional fishing industry (83%) and flip-flops from further afield (7%). Given the serious detri

SUBMITTER: Burt AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7483532 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature