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The Visibility Gap: From Ocean Plastic Data to Intelligence, Impact, and Verification
Summary
Despite lots of good cleanup and recycling efforts happening worldwide, plastic is still pouring into our rivers and oceans—largely because groups working on the problem lack good data to target their efforts efficiently. This paper describes Retide, a new platform that combines satellite imagery and environmental data to help pinpoint pollution hotspots, track cleanup progress, and verify results, potentially making plastic removal efforts smarter and more effective. Less plastic in our waterways ultimately means less of it breaking down into microplastics that can end up in our food and water supply, so tools like this matter for protecting both ocean ecos
Across the world, NGOs, municipalities, community organizations, and private-sector initiatives are already working to address plastic pollution through cleanup, collection, recycling, and waste management programs. Many of these efforts demonstrate strong local knowledge, operational creativity, and deep understanding of the environments in which they operate. Yet despite this work, large-scale plastic leakage into rivers and the ocean continues. Retide emerged from this broader need for environmental intelligence infrastructure within the plastic recovery ecosystem. By integrating satellite observations, environmental datasets, and verification systems, the Retide platform is being developed to support more coordinated approaches to cleanup planning, impact measurement, environmental reporting, and scalable ocean recovery systems.