MARINE DEBRIS

Documents

Publications/Documents

Year: 2024 Publisher: Elsevier Keyword: Asia, Beached plastic, Plastic water bottle, Polystyrene foam, River, Single use plastics
Plastic pollution in a rapidly developing nation: A comprehensive assessment of litter and marine debris surrounding coastal Cambodia
Publisher: Elsevier
Year: 2024
Country: Cambodia
Category: 3RproMar
Waste Theme: Marine Debris
Keyword: Asia, Beached plastic, Plastic water bottle, Polystyrene foam, River, Single use plastics

Cambodia is a rapidly developing country in Southeast Asia, a region forecast as an outsized source of plastic pollution into the world’s oceans. However, to date there has been no large-scale assessment of plastic pollution in the environment within the country. This study is a comprehensive assessment of plastic items and hotspots across 243 coastal, river and inland sites along the entire coastline of Cambodia, recording 46,927 items in transects throughout the study area. Plastic densities along coastlines were more than ten times those on riverbanks and more than twenty times that of inland areas. Averaging 70 plastic items per metre of coastline, Cambodia has among the highest average loads of whole plastic items recorded on coastlines globally. Single-use plastic bottles were the most abundant whole item recorded, overrepresented by drinking water bottles. Polystyrene foam was the most common fragmented item. We provide specific recommendations to reduce plastic in Cambodia’s environment.

The kNOwWaste Knowledge Platform was developed through a Project Cooperation Agreement funding by UNEP on 2016. The platform provides data and information on holistic waste management to stakeholders in Asia and the Pacific region. The platform was developed with the following aims: generate and consolidate data or information on holistic waste management, transform data into easily comprehensible outputs for use by key stakeholders, map out and disseminate information on international waste management projects under the GPWM and UNEP projects as well as other international partners, and provide capacity building support through dissemination of data or information support for relevant stakeholders on holistic waste and waste management system.
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