Microplastics, tiny pieces of plastic less than 5 millimeters across, now show up in places as remote as Arctic sea ice and the deep sea, more than 1,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. Much of that plastic is reaching the ocean by flowing through rivers—and the largest rivers in densely populated areas are most to blame. A visualization from data artist Dan McCarey shows the estimated flow through 10 key rivers, with the largest amount of plastic in the Yangtze River in China.
“I wanted to do something on microplastics because I thought it was interesting that the volume of microplastics going into the ocean is so huge,” says McCarey, who created the data visualization as an entry in an innovation challenge from National Geographic. The data comes from a 2017 study that estimated that 10 rivers—the Yangtze, Yellow, Hai, Pearl, Amur, Mekong, Indus, and Ganges Delta, along with the Niger and Nile rivers in Africa—are responsible for the vast majority of plastic that flows from rivers to the ocean. “I tried to visualize what that flow would look like.”
McCarey hopes to work with a museum to install a larger version of the visualization that visitors can explore. If someone looks at a river now, while they might notice larger plastic trash, the smallest microplastics aren’t visible. Making the data visible is designed to lead to more support for other solutions—from bans on single-use plastic to devices that can help catch larger plastic in rivers before it breaks down.