Having the noble intention of cleaning up the mess we have made is just the start. The scale of that task is monumental. Aside from all the plastic floating around in the oceans and on the sea floor, spotting the waste that does turn up on beaches among pebbles and sand isn't easy. In an interview with DJI, The Plastic Tide outlined how they have been using a combination of drones and machine learning to identify and measure the amount of plastic waste on beaches. Eventually, the technology could develop into an automated aerial system, capable of guiding cleanup efforts and tracking their progress. Penning an article for DJI, founder Peter Kohler explains how he started using drones as part of his ambition to explain and understand the spread of plastic waste across our oceans. The main challenge was surveying beaches and collecting data in a way that was fast, cheap and effective.

That plastic cup you've got sitting on your desk looks pretty harmless on its own. However, add it to the rest of the plastic that humanity throws away on a daily basis and you have the makings of the estimated 5 to 13 million metric tons of plastic trash which reportedly wind up in the world's oceans every year. U.K.-based Plastic Tide founder Peter Kohler got a glimpse of the scale of this problem a decade ago -- and it changed the course of his life. "About ten years ago, I went out to the South Pacific," he told Digital Trends. "I've always been fascinated by oceans, and this was pure paradise. But it was a paradise under siege. One of the most visible ways this paradise was being besieged was with litter. It was everywhere, although we were miles from anyone. When you're sailing in the middle of nowhere, it really gets you wondering where this litter comes from and how it gets here. I came back to England and spent the next few years puzzling over how best to answer that question."

Training the algorithm requires a lot of photos of beaches and a lot of human eyes to tag the plastic in those photos. The Plastic Tide has uploaded all the photos they've collected to Zooniverse, a citizen science portal, so anyone can go online and tag plastic. This past March, during British Science Week, the effort got a boost when students across the United Kingdom identified more than 1.5 million plastic fragments in photos. The photos were taken by 72-year-old Morris Enyeart, who has contributed more than 7,000 images to The Plastic Tide. Enyeart could have retired a couple years ago, when he sold his web design company.

Scientists are recruiting members of the public to help clean up the shores of Great Britain. Plastic waste is scattered across the beaches of the UK and a computer programme is being developed to help spot the litter. The charity campaign needs human volunteers to help train an artificial intelligence algorithm that will automatically spot plastic in pictures taken by drones. Plastic Tide, the charity behind the project, hopes to harness cutting edge drone and algorithm technology to create an open source map of the plastic pollution problem. Peter Kohler, founder and director of The Plastic Tide, said: 'Marine creatures die each year through starvation due to eating plastic that stays in their stomach, making them feel full.

It is a tide that never recedes. Day by day, year on year it grows. Estimates are currently at trillions of pieces and counting, with over 60% of the oceans being heavily contaminated with plastics. With each piece of plastic taking over 400 years to degrade, our oceans, all marine life, and even our own health and livelihoods are in real danger of drowning. We see evidence of the plastic tide on all our beaches and coastlines by ever growing amounts, with small plastic pieces increasing 2.5 fold in the last decade.