World’s plastic waste mapped from space for the first time – By Victoria Seabrook (Sky News) / May 9, 2022
The Global Plastic Watch team took Sky News on a virtual tour of the site before it launched, showing the hundreds of plastic waste sites scattered round the world.
Sprawling dumps of plastic waste can now be mapped from space thanks to a new tool using satellite imagery and artificial intelligence, in what is believed to be a world first.
From a burning waste on a Sri Lankan beach to an Indonesian site seeping into a river, Global Plastic Watch (GPW) can detect sites as small as five by five metres, presenting them in an interactive global map of plastic in near real-time.
“It’s not about naming and shaming,” but “empowering governments” with information to help tackle the problem, explained Fabien Laurier, a key architect of GPW.
The free, public tool, entirely funded by the philanthropic Australian Minderoo foundation, is designed to help stop plastic from flowing into the ocean. It has been “applauded” by the United Nations.
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