What are microplastics?

In the recent past, plastics have become an industrial product, used in many areas of life, and discarded after use. This has created large piles of plastic waste in many places, especially in metropolitan areas, causing large-scale environmental problems to terrestrial and marine ecosystems. While some plastics remained in large pieces in marine environments, some turned into smaller pieces due to various factors. Even though there is no consensus on this, these fragments, usually under 5 mm in size, consists of 92% of the total amount of plastic in marine, and are called microplastics.

Plastic garbage is divided into 5 main groups according to their size.

• Mega plastics (>10 cm)
• Macro plastics (2 – 10 cm)
• Meso plastics (2 cm – 5 mm)
• Micro plastics (5 mm – 1 nm)
• Nano plastics (<1 nm)