00:00 From our homes to the roads and increasingly the environment, plastic is everywhere and
00:07 new research has found it's accumulating in patches of the South Australian Ocean.
00:14 We have found a potential accumulation zone off of Maiponga. We're looking at, yeah, probably
00:21 about 12-15km offshore from Maiponga.
00:27 Flinders University scientists used ocean current modelling to predict where plastic
00:32 particles are ending up in an effort to better understand the issue.
00:36 This information that we're finding is really beneficial because we have the understanding
00:40 to know how to implement change from our results. It's not so much about cleaning up what's
00:47 already out there, it's mitigating and stopping what's entering our ecosystem. That's a much
00:52 more achievable task.
00:54 Some of the microplastics the researchers found were from tyre particles washing into
00:59 stormwater. Others were from general waste breaking down in the environment. But the
01:05 vast majority were from synthetic clothing fibres.
01:09 They on average made up about 72% of what we were finding. So an easy way to mitigate
01:14 against that is to use washing machine filters because then when we're washing our clothes
01:18 that's not coming out in our waste water.
01:21 The team sampled water from the Torrens and Onkaparinga rivers and in the Gulf of St Vincent.
01:27 Their research has now been handed to the government.
01:30 And as a government we really want to hear about it and then work together on what we
01:33 can do to make things better.
01:35 A global problem with no easy solutions.
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