Oceans Plastics Charter

Increased attention is being directed at the problem of marine plastic pollution (Borrelle et al. 2017; Haward 20 18). Annually between 4.8 and 12. 7 million tonnes of plastic is estimated to be dumped in the world's seas and oceans (UNEP 2017) . A vast majority of marine plastic pollution (over 80%) derives from land-based sources. While this is a global problem-plastics reach the sea from all coastal states-83 % of land-based sourced marine plastic pollution originates from 20 of the world's 192 coastal states and the "top 20 polluting rivers were mostly located in Asia" (Lohr et al. 2017: 91 ). This can be explained in part as plastic waste is correlated to size of population (Lohr et al. 2017), but many developed countries have exported plastics to a number of Asian states for recycling (O'Neill 2019).