University of Birmingham study set to track the sources of plastic pollution

A new global initiative led by the University of Birmingham is set to show how focussing on rivers and river mouths can yield vital clues about how the world might manage its global plastic crisis.

The 100 Plastic Rivers Project is engaging with scientists in more than 60 locations worldwide to sample water and sediment in rivers, with an aim of better understanding of how plastics are transported and transformed in rivers and how they accumulate in river sediments, where they create a long-lasting pollution legacy.

Professor Stefan Krause, of the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, said: “Even if we all stopped using plastic right now, there would still be decades, if not centuries worth of plastics being washed down rivers and into our seas.”

“We’re getting more and more aware of the problems this is causing in our oceans, but we are now only starting to look at where these plastics are coming from, and how they’re accumulating in our river systems. We need to understand this before we can really begin to understand the scale of the risk that we’re facing.”

The 100 Plastic Rivers programme analyses both primary microplastics and secondary microplastics, and a key part of the project is to establish a standard method for the sampling and analysis of microplastics which can be used to provide and assessment of the plastic pollution of our river networks.

In a recently completed pilot study, the University of Birmingham team collaborated with the Clean Seas Odyssey citizen science project to test parts of the developed methodology based in sampling water and sediments from river estuaries around the UK and French Channel coast.

By analysing the samples taken by interested members of the public, they were able to test the sampling protocol and develop a picture of the different types of polymers accumulated in river sediments at their confluence with the sea.

The results of this initial survey showed a much wider variety of plastic types in the samples than had been anticipated.

This showed that even in relatively well-regulated countries like the UK and France, there are a variety of different sources contributing to a high concentration of microplastics in river systems.