Fig. 4

Plastics dispersal through Earth surface reservoirs from 1950 to the year 20,000 CE, following a halt on production and discard in 2025. This is the same model scenario that is shown in Fig. 3, and illustrates over what timescales discarded microplastic (P, > 5 mm), large microplastic (LMP) and small microplastic (SMP, < 0.3 mm) potentially disperse via rivers and air into oceans, remote terrestrial surfaces, and marine sediments. P and LMP disappear in all transitory reservoirs within 100 and 200 years due to fragmentation at an annual rate of 3%. The prolonged dispersal of SMP in all reservoirs is driven by cyclical marine emissions to air, deposition to terrestrial surfaces, runoff to surface oceans, and re-emission to air. Only a small fraction of SMP sinks to shelf sediments and to the deep ocean, followed by slow sedimentation to deep ocean sediments