According to a study described in a paper published in the journal “Science”, between 4.8 and 12.7 million tons of plastic in the oceans were thrown in 2010 by people living within 50 kilometers from the coasts. During that year, a total of 275 million tons of plastic waste were generated in 192 coastal nations.

This research was conducted by a group of researchers at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis led by Jenna Jambeck, assistant professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia’s College of Engineering. The researchers looked at the debris entering the oceans from land, seas and other sources.

A study published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” presents the results of a research on plastic waste in the world’s oceans. A group of scientists took samples of waste in various ocean areas in 2010 and 2011 and from the data they gathered they estimated that the amount of plastic in the oceans is up to 40,000 tons. Other researches that that took into account the data down to the ’70s estimated that thare might be up to one million tons of plastic in the oceans and this raises the question of what happened to the missing plastic.