Plastic waste cleanup priorities to reduce marine pollution: A spatiotemporal analysis for Accra and Lagos with satellite data

Abstract

Plastic waste, with an estimated lifetime of centuries, accounts for the major share of marine litter. Each year, thousands of fish, sea birds, sea turtles, and other marine species are killed by ingesting or becoming entangled with plastic debris. Reducing marine plastic pollution is particularly challenging for developing countries owing to the wide dispersal of plastic waste disposal and scarce public cleanup resources. To costeffectively reduce marine pollution, resources should target “hotspot” areas, where large volumes of plastic litter have a high likelihood of ending up in the ocean.Using new public information, this study develops a hotspot targeting strategy for Accra and Lagos, which are major sources of marine plastic pollution in West Africa. The same global information sources can support hotspot analyses for many other coastal cities that generate marine plastic waste. The methodology combines georeferenced household survey data on plastic use, measures of seasonal variation in marine plastic pollution from satellite imagery, and a model of plastic waste transport to the ocean that uses information on topography, seasonal rainfall, drainage to rivers, and river transport to the ocean. For cleanup, the results for West Africa assign the highest locational priority to areas with heavy plastic-waste disposal along river channels or in steeply sloped locations with high rainfall runoff potential near rivers. They assign the highest temporal priority to just before the onset of the first-semester rainy season, when runoff from the first rains transports large volumes of plastic waste that have accumulated during the dry season.