Sita Ram Sahni
(seated), 70, and his
nephew Vinod Sahni,
50, pose in front of
their home on the
Ganges’s north bank
in Bihar. The Sahni
family has fished the
river for more than
50 years. Their nets,
once made of cotton,
are now made of blue
nylon, a kind of plastic.OPPOSITE
Nylon nets are
commonly used—and
frequently replaced—
on the Ganges, one
of the world’s largest
inland fisheries. When
lost or discarded
in the river, the
nets can entangle
turtles, otters, and
endangered river
dolphins. Over time,
they break down
into microplastics.know what it is,” said Jenna Jambeck, a Uni-
versity of Georgia environmental engineering
professor who was one of the leaders of the
expedition. It was her groundbreaking research
in 2015, including her calculation that an aver-
age of 8.8 million tons of plastic end up in the
oceans every year, that captured the world’s
attention and helped transform marine plastics
into a top environmental concern. Like most
experts, Jambeck believes the solution lies not
in cleaning up the oceans but in reducing and
containing plastic waste on land, where most
of it originates.
On a balmy November afternoon, I met Jam-
beck in the ancient Indian city of Patna, which
sprawls along the south bank of the Ganges,
some 500 miles inland from the mouth of theespecially rivers in Asia, are major arteries.
In 2019 the National Geographic Society spon-
sored a research expedition to one of those rivers:
the Ganges, which flows across northern India
and Bangladesh, through one of the largest and
most heavily populated river basins in the world.
A team of 40 scientists, engineers, and support
staff from India, Bangladesh, the United States,
and the United Kingdom traveled the full length
of the river twice, before and after the monsoon
rains that dramatically swell it. Sampling the
river and the land and air around it, and inter-
viewing more than 1,400 residents, the team
sought to find out where, why, and what kind of
plastic was getting into the Ganges—and from
there into the Indian Ocean.
“The problem can’t be solved if you don’t
92 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC