Pie chart: Sources of ocean plastic waste

The pie chart shows the main sources of plastic waste in the oceans.

Overall, packaging was the biggest single source of ocean plastic, accounting for more than a third of the total. The remaining sources contributed smaller and more similar shares.

Packaging produced 36% of the waste, which was exactly twice the share of the next largest named source, fishing gear, at 18%. Together, these two sources made up 54% of ocean plastic, more than half of the total.

Textiles and tyres were the third and fourth largest sources, at 14% and 12% respectively. Their combined contribution of 26% was therefore smaller than that of packaging alone, and the two sources differed by only 2 percentage points.

The category labelled as other covered the remaining 20%, or exactly one-fifth of the total, and fishing gear accounted for nearly as much, at 18%. This was a larger share than either textiles or tyres, but it was still well below the figure for packaging. The smallest named source was tyres, which contributed only one-third as much as packaging, while textiles contributed less than half as much.