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Rivers as microplastic factories
Summary
This perspective paper argues that rivers will continue generating and releasing microplastics for centuries, even if all new plastic pollution were stopped today. Plastic already buried in riverbanks and floodplains will gradually break into smaller pieces through natural water flow, erosion, and weathering. The study reframes rivers as long-term microplastic factories rather than just transport routes, meaning human exposure through water supplies will persist far into the future.
Abstract Even in an ideal future where macroplastic emissions into rivers are entirely eliminated, plastic stored in river channels and floodplains, will be remobilized, and fragment into microplastics through its interaction with natural fluvial processes, such that riverine plastic emissions will continue for centuries As more time passes, rivers may cut new routes through plastic deposits, such as landfill sites, whilst deposits of plastic in the oceans will eventually become rocks, perhaps becoming uplifted as plastic mountain ranges, ready to start the cycle again. These processes can generate ongoing lulls and fluxes of secondary microplastics, prolonging threats to ecosystems and human health for millennia. In this perspective, we explore how understanding the way todays rivers move and deposit sediment—based on fluvial geomorphological knowledge—can help explain where and how plastic debris breaks down into microplastics, and how this insight can be used to better manage and reduce long-term plastic pollution in rivers.