Focus / aim definition

The first two weeks of my thesis writing time are gone and I still cannot explain properly what my focus is when someone asks what I write about. So here comes a written clarification of the focus of my thesis.

To begin with, the whole picture of plastics in the ocean is to be visualised in a Sankey diagram, which will show the different flows including their proportions (how much of the total amount is part of which particular stream in percentage). The aim of this exploratory study is to collect and organise the growing knowledge about plastics in marine environments in order to review the flows and their related problems.

Then next, a comparison of approaches to environmental evaluation methods will be made, with an anthropocentric, a biocentric and an ordinary approach to be considered. Based on that, the question should be answered, how effective certain mitigation actions are. A specific part of the study is the environmental evaluation of an arctic clean-up operation as an example, which will be conducted in terms of a life cycle assessment (LCA). The study will be done in the context of Industrial Ecology, as it explores the impact of industrial systems (industries, human settlements) onto the ocean environment.

So the overall aim is to sum up the current level of knowledge about plastics in the ocean. However, the particular focus is on environmental evaluation methods, where a clean-up operation is to be assessed from an environmental point of view.

surfrider.org, rise above plastics