Approximately 8 million metric tons of plastic waste washes off land into the ocean each year. Bottle caps, toothbrushes, tiny plastic fragments, filaments, pellets, film and resin float about in the water columns.

People living in Arctic areas can be more sensitive to pollutants due to their genetics , says researcher Arja Rautio at the Centre for Arctic Medicine in the University of Oulu , Finland.

Eco-symbiosis is en vogue. Indeed, this approach consists in using waste from one industry as raw material for another. It appears like an ideal solution for one of the most challenging type of pollution: oil spills .