How digital tools can close data gaps ON LAND, ON WATER AND IN THE AIR How much plastic waste is in the environment and our oceans? Where and when was this waste introduced? In which regions does it accumulate particularly heavily, and under what weather and environmental conditions does it spread and how? Answers to these questions could contribute significantly to a better understanding of the origins and ecological consequences of the plastics crisis and possibly even help to contain it. So far, however, there is still a huge gap in the data available, not to mention the lack of international monitoring standards, which would be absolutely essential given the global scale of the crisis.60 The use of digital technologies in local sampling and collection campaigns (e.g., beach clean-ups), visual surveys (e.g., on board a fishing boat), and remote sensing (e.g., using drones or aircraft) offers great potential for better mapping and quantifying the extent of pollution, determining the composition of waste, and monitoring or even predicting its distribution paths. However, as a prerequisite, you need a multitude of people who contribute to collecting this data. When clean-ups become citizen science Compiling global statistics on marine litter and making the information freely accessible to the scientific community was the aim of the well-known US environmental engineer Jenna Jambeck when she developed the Marine Debris Tracker app in 2010. Based on the data collected with the help of the app, Jambeck was able to make the widely cited estimate in 2015 that more than eight million pieces of plastic end up in the sea every year.61 60 Interview statement by Tilman Floer, everwave; Matthis Wolf, dfki; Steffen Blume and Ellen Gunsilius, GIZ, see Ostrowski (2021) 61 Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2022) (2) Marine Debris Tracker Source: Marine Debris Tracker 45
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODI5MzU=