Α systematic meta-review analysis of review papers in the marine plastic pollution literature

• Published in: Marine pollution bulletin Vol. 161; no. Pt A; p. 111690
• Main Authors: Aretoulaki, Eleni, Ponis, Stavros, Plakas, George, Agalianos, Konstantinos
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01-12-2020; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Ecosystem; Environmental Monitoring; Environmental Pollution; International organizations; Marine ecosystems; Marine litter; Marine pollution; Meta-review; Plastic debris; Plastic pollution; Plastics; Pollution; Reviews; Statistical analysis; Statistical methods; Waste Products - analysis; Water Pollutants, Chemical - analysis; Plastic debris; Marine pollution; Marine litter; Meta-review
• ISSN: 0025-326X; 1879-3363
• DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2020.111690

The omnipresence of plastic particles in marine ecosystems, a.k.a. Marine Plastic Pollution (MPP) constitutes a major environmental and socioeconomic threat. In the last decade, the realization of the severity of the MPP problem by international organizations, governments and policy makers worldwide, has triggered the publication of a large number of review papers studying the current state of the art of MPP, from a plethora of different perspectives. This study attempts to classify the existing review efforts, by conducting a systematic analysis of review papers on MPP, published from 2000 to 2019. A sample of 114 review studies, retrieved from the SCOPUS database, are classified based on a number of carefully selected coding criteria and processed in order to produce a set of meaningful descriptive statistics and visualizations. Ultimately, the objective of this paper is to synthesize the different perspectives on MPP, assess the research progress and highlight future research directions.
•There has been an explosion of scientific interest in MPP since 2018.•The most popular subjects are microplastics and environmental impacts of MPP.•The majority of reviews are qualitative.•There is a lack of meta-analyses and systematic reviews.•Total citations have roughly tripled from 2010 to 2019.