TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Cities along the Mississippi River will take part in a global system to determine where plastic pollution comes from and how it ends up in waterways.
Officials said Wednesday the project is a first step toward solving one of the top environmental crises for the world’s oceans. The project enables “citizen scientists” using a mobile application to log types and locations of litter found along the river.
The Mississippi drains 40% of the continental U.S. and sends huge volumes of plastics into the Gulf of Mexico.