Context

Plastic pollution continues to accumulate in coastal and marine ecosystems, including remote and protected areas where waste management infrastructure is limited or absent. In North America and other priority marine ecosystems, certain sites act as natural accumulation zones, concentrating large volumes of debris that threaten biodiversity, degrade habitats, and impact local communities. Plastic continues to enter the ocean at massive scale, with Plastic Odyssey’s research report citing approximately 20 tons every minute¹, while less than 1% remains visible at the surface² and the vast majority fragments, disperses, accumulates along coastlines, or sinks below the surface.

These environments are often difficult and costly to access, which limits intervention despite their ecological importance. As a result, significant volumes of legacy plastic remain unaddressed. There is a need for targeted, field based operations capable of working in complex conditions to remove accumulated waste, document its impacts, and support long term environmental stewardship. This is the rationale behind Plastic Odyssey’s Impossible Cleanup^® approach³, designed for sites where ecological sensitivity, isolation, and logistical constraints make conventional cleanup operations unworkable.