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Looking at those images I don’t know how anyone can even comment on this thread trying to divert attention from a huge problem. Comments such as “how do they know? Who counted them?” Are diversionary defensive tactics utilized to discredit its source rather than take issue with what is occurring. Even in the face of images that slaps anyone with sense across the face, ideology and dogma rule the day. Your images couldn’t be any more clear.

Ideology is dangerous and has no place in civil discourse or debate and is a sickness that should be squashed. Ideology in its purest form is what ended many lives in Jonestown.

You seem to have let your emotional response to trash on a remote beach overwhelm you. I presume you read the original paper, which is located here and know that nearly two thirds of the 414 million pieces of trash are "micro-debris" smaller than 5mm, and many 1mm in size. That is roughly the size of a grain of rice.

Those tiny bits of plastic, glass, metal, and wood have mostly been ground up due to the wave action on the beach, which is how the sand that forms the beach was itself created. The glass, metal, and plastic will join the sand as a part of the beach over time, and ultimately be buried in sediment. In that state the trash does not pose any particular risk to people, animals, or plants. The ground up glass, for example, ends up being the exact same thing as the sand.

So we are seeing nature turning trash into a beach and land.

I think we can all agree that wholesale dumping of trash into rivers and the ocean is a dumb idea. Hopefully the people who do that in India, China, and other Asian countries will learn to stop doing so. Something like 90% or more of the trash found in the ocean comes from a few rivers in Asia.

I doubt people commenting on this thread are trying to divert attention from the problem, since reading about things like this does nothing to change the situation anyway. If you want to do something about it, head for India or China, or the other countries where ocean trash originates and work on convincing the people there to stop putting trash in their rivers.

There are also weaknesses in the method used to estimate the amount of trash present, since the density of materials varies widely, and the researchers created their estimates based on a sampling methodology. The conclusions made by the authors may not be accurate, but without a careful analysis of their methodology for selecting sample locations it is difficult to know.