Environmental Research Letters LETTER • OPEN ACCESS Abundance of plastic debris across European and Asian rivers To cite this article: C J van Calcar and T H M van Emmerik 2019 Environ. Res. Lett. 14 124051 View the article online for updates and enhancements. This content was downloaded from IP address 31.149.52.250 on 09/01/2020 at 08:51 Environ. Res. Lett. 14 (2019) 124051 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab5468 LETTER Abundance of plastic debris across European and Asian rivers OPEN ACCESS C J van Calcar1,2 and T H M van Emmerik1,3 RECEIVED 1 The Ocean Cleanup, Batavierenstraat 15, 3014 JH, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 6 August 2019 2 Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Delft University of Technology, Stevinweg 1, 2628 CN, Delft, The Netherlands REVISED 3 Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 3, 6708 PB, Wageningen, The 4 November 2019 Netherlands ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION 5 November 2019 E-mail:
[email protected] PUBLISHED Keywords: plastic, pollution, rivers, marine litter, plastic composition 11 December 2019 Supplementary material for this article is available online Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Abstract licence. Plastic pollution in the marine environment is an urgent global environmental challenge. Land-based Any further distribution of plastics, emitted into the ocean through rivers, are believed to be the main source of marine plastic this work must maintain attribution to the litter. According to the latest model-based estimates, most riverine plastics are emitted in Asia. author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation However, the exact amount of global riverine plastic emission remains uncertain due to a severe lack and DOI.