Plastic Litter Detection using YOLOv8 Algorithm

One of the most concerning environmental issues is water pollution, which is mostly brought on by plastic waste that is dumped into the aquatic region from land. These plastics pose a threat to the marine ecosystem’s equilibrium, the coastal communities, economic health, and their animals. This would unavoidably have an impact on aquatic and human life. Even if they work well, most widely used techniques have several drawbacks when it comes to identifying and measuring plastics. As a result, it is important to implement alternative techniques that will make it simple to recognize plastics and facilitate their removal using latest technologies. This research study utilizes the You Only Look Once (YOLO) v8 Deep Learning (DL) algorithm for object detection and identifying plastics in the surface of water bodies and gives the count of the plastics that are detected as a result.