Laurent Lebreton

Biographic Data

ID6929102
NAMELaurent Lebreton
GIVEN NAMESLaurent
FAMILY NAMELebreton
SIGNATURELEBRETON L
AFFILIATIONSThe Ocean Cleanup
ORCID0000-0002-7443-2100
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS11
TOTAL CITATIONS0
AUTHOR COUNT11
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2014
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2024
H-INDEX0

  • Seven years into the North Pacific garbage patch: Legacy plastic fragments rising disproportionally faster than larger floating objects

    Open AccessLaurent Lebreton, Robin de Vries et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2024

    The North Pacific garbage patch has accumulated floating plastic pollution for several decades. The Ocean Cleanup, a not-for-profit organization that works to retrieve this floating plastic, has conducted systematic surveys in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre since 2015. The dataset, now spanning seven years, includes the deployment of trawls of varying sizes and the collection of aerial imagery. Here, we report a synthesis of these measurement…

  • An inshore–offshore sorting system revealed from global classification of ocean litter

    Open AccessCarmen Morales‐Caselles, Josué Viejo et al.ARTICLENature Sustainability2021References: 2

  • Predicted growth in plastic waste exceeds efforts to mitigate plastic pollution

    Open AccessStephanie B Borrelle, Jeremy Ringma et al.ARTICLEScience2020

    A mess of plastic It is not clear what strategies will be most effective in mitigating harm from the global problem of plastic pollution. Borrelle et al. and Lau et al. discuss possible solutions and their impacts. Both groups found that substantial reductions in plastic-waste generation can be made in the coming decades with immediate, concerted, and vigorous action, but even in the best case scenario, huge quantities of plastic will still accum…

  • A spatially variable scarcity of floating microplastics in the eastern North Pacific Ocean

    Open AccessMatthias Egger, Rein Nijhof et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2020

    Plastic waste accumulating in the global ocean is an increasingly threatening environmental issue. To date, the floating and thus most visible fraction of ocean plastic pollution has been mapped at global scale. Yet, large knowledge gaps exist in our current understanding of the transport and transformation processes of positively buoyant plastic debris at the sea surface. Observations at sea typically report an apparent scarcity of microplastics…

  • The physical oceanography of the transport of floating marine debris

    Open AccessErik van Sebille, Stefano Aliani et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2020

    Marine plastic debris floating on the ocean surface is a major environmental problem. However, its distribution in the ocean is poorly mapped, and most of the plastic waste estimated to have entered the ocean from land is unaccounted for. Better understanding of how plastic debris is transported from coastal and marine sources is crucial to quantify and close the global inventory of marine plastics, which in turn represents critical information f…

  • Future scenarios of global plastic waste generation and disposal

    Open AccessLaurent Lebreton, Anthony L Andrady et al.ARTICLEPalgrave Communications2019

    The accumulation of mismanaged plastic waste (MPW) in the environment is a global growing concern. Knowing with precision where litter is generated is important to target priority areas for the implementation of mitigation policies. In this study, using country-level data on waste management combined with high-resolution distributions and long-term projections of population and the gross domestic product (GDP), we present projections of global MP…

  • Joint effort among research infrastructures to quantify the impact of plastic debris in the ocean

    Open AccessDiarmuid Ó Conchubhair, Deirdre Fitzhenry et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2019

    Marine debris is one of the most significant problems facing the marine environment, endangering wildlife, polluting oceans and is an issue which holds global significance. Plastics constitute a large proportion of marine debris, and their persistence can cause a number of negative consequences for biota and the environment, including entanglement and ingestion, which can lead to mortality. Most plastics never biodegrade and instead break down in…

  • Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic

    Open AccessLaurent Lebreton, Boyan Slat et al.ARTICLEScientific Reports2018

    Ocean plastic can persist in sea surface waters, eventually accumulating in remote areas of the world’s oceans. Here we characterise and quantify a major ocean plastic accumulation zone formed in subtropical waters between California and Hawaii: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). Our model, calibrated with data from multi-vessel and aircraft surveys, predicted at least 79 (45–129) thousand tonnes of ocean plastic are floating inside an area …

  • River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans

    Open AccessLaurent Lebreton, Laurent C M Lebreton et al.ARTICLENature Communications2017

    Plastics in the marine environment have become a major concern because of their persistence at sea, and adverse consequences to marine life and potentially human health. Implementing mitigation strategies requires an understanding and quantification of marine plastic sources, taking spatial and temporal variability into account. Here we present a global model of plastic inputs from rivers into oceans based on waste management, population density …

  • A global inventory of small floating plastic debris

    Open AccessErik van Sebille, Chris Wilcox et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2015

    Microplastic debris floating at the ocean surface can harm marine life. Understanding the severity of this harm requires knowledge of plastic abundance and distributions. Dozens of expeditions measuring microplastics have been carried out since the 1970s, but they have primarily focused on theNorth Atlantic and North Pacific accumulation zones, with much sparser coverage elsewhere. Here, we use the largest dataset of microplastic measurements ass…

  • Plastic Pollution in the World's Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea

    Open AccessMarcus Eriksen, Laurent Lebreton et al.ARTICLEPLoS ONE2014

    Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. Here we report an estimate of the total number of plastic particles and their weight floating in the world's oceans from 24 expeditions (2007-2013) across all five sub-tropical gyres, costal Australia, Bay of Bengal and the Mediterra…