A misleading claim that 95 percent of the plastic debris in the world's oceans comes from only 10 rivers has been shared thousands of times on Facebook in Canada, in a meme and in videos. That figure, an incorrect interpretation of a 2017 study, has also been cited in numerous online publicationsincluding Sky News, The Express and The Guardian, in the past two years. But the study actually states 10 rivers are the source of 88 to 95 percent of the total plastic waste transported by rivers into oceans — not the global amount of plastic present in the oceans.