The first thing to do is of course to improve waste management on the land, to prevent as much plastics to reach the waterways. This implies a strong commitment, a strategy, a budget, coordination and therefore centralisation, appropriate regulations, low enforcement, equipments, training and education. Then fight against plastic waste must be addressed at the source with innovation, initiatives that allow mitigation like alternatives to fossil plastics. We support 100% preventive measures that will ultimately lead us to achieve a zero plastic leakage to rivers and oceans but … this will take time … unfortunately probably a very long time beacause most of the measures will have only little impact, at least for the first years. They are medium and long term measures.
Then the truth is we are not capable of catching micro platics in rivers and in the oceans, and we will probably never will. This means we will have to leave with the micro plastics already there and the ones that will be leaked until we reach our zero plastic to waters objective for the next 500 years, probably much more. With the consequence on climate change, ecosystems, food chain, waster cycle, etc.