The Core

I think the one thing that would help clear up a lot of the plastic is to start trash collection/ recycling systems in poor countries.  When I was in Peru, the river was "the thing that took the trash away." 

People dumped EVERYTHING (raw sewage included) into the river to get rid of it.

This looks to be from 2016 (no date)

Adidas created the running shoe using a combination of 95% plastics recovered from the Indian Ocean near the Maldives and 5% recycled polyester.

Each pair of shoes recycles the equivalent of eleven plastic bottles and the shoe laces and lining are also produced using recycled materials.

Adidas has created 7,000 pairs and has plans in 2017 to create one million more, and in the process recycling at least eleven million plastic bottles into performance footwear.

https://blueocean.net/running-shoes-made-recycled-ocean-plastics/

Fast forward three years...

With consumers clamoring for these environmentally-friendly sneakers, Adidas is prepared to ramp up production in 2019. “With Adidas products made from recycled plastic, we offer our consumers real added value beyond the look, functionality, and quality of the product, because every shoe is a small contribution to the preservation of our oceans,” said Eric Liedtke, Adidas Executive Board Member. “After one million pairs of shoes produced in 2017, five million in 2018, we plan to produce eleven million pairs of shoes containing recycled ocean plastic in 2019.”

That's not the product I bought... but I can't remember what it was.

Great idea.  Should be easier than open waters.  That said, IIRC, the majority if the ocean plastic seems to be debris & flotsam from the ^ocean? fishing industry, so the impact might not be much.  On the flip side, though, all of us have seen pix of those Asian rivers overflowing with plastic bottles. So it'd definitely help there.

I suspect he's being disingenuous.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Bigger and Mostly Made of Fishing Gear
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment/


"At least half of [...ocean plastic waste] is not consumer plastics, which are central to much of the current debate, but fishing gear.”

George Leonard, chief scientist at the Ocean Conservancy.

https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/latest-news/marine-debris-plastic-fishing-gear/

"Approximately 46% of the 79 thousand tons of ocean plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of fishing nets, some as large as football fields, according to the study published in March 2018 in Scientific Reports, which shocked the researchers themselves who expected the percentage to be closer to 20%.^{Aug 22, 2019}"

Kids these days... ;-)

I keep seeing assertions completely across the board on what the sources of plastic pollution in the ocean are.

I'm settling in on the 70-80% is land-based, 20-30% is ocean-based and almost all of the ocean-based plastic (up to 90% "in some areas" but globally probably around half) is from commercial fishing. So roughly speaking, fishing accounts for about 10% of the total.

This seems to be a pretty balanced look:
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#how-much-of-ocean-plastics-come-from-land-and-marine-sources