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Action not targets needed to stop plastics polluting the seas

An urgent ‘measures-led’ rethink is needed to address the growing marine plastic problem, and not more targets, a marine litter conference has heard.

Members of the European Parliament, non-governmental organisations and representatives of the plastics industry were all present at the event in Brussels, today (29 September), which highlighted the challenges caused in Europe by marine pollution and the need for alternative action.

The event, ‘Measures to Prevent Marine Plastics – A Call for Action’, was organised by Eunomia Research & Consulting, which earlier this year estimated that 12.2 million tonnes of plastic enter the marine environment globally every year, over 80 per cent of which comes from land-based sources.

In June this year, the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, in its proposed amendments to the EU’s Circular Economy Package, suggested that member states should aim to reduce marine litter by 50 per cent by 2030.

But delegates at today's event heard how rather than simply setting reduction targets, which would delay ‘real action’ and divert effort through imposing ‘difficult and expensive monitoring’ on each country, the quickest progress on addressing marine plastic would be to take a ‘measures-led’ approach based on ‘best available technique measures’.

Action not targets needed to stop plastics polluting the seas

Speaking at the event, Chris Sherrington, Principal Consultant at Eunomia, explained that targets are more suited to issues where monitoring is easier to carry out, and that litter, the primary cause for marine plastic pollution, is hard to measure when on land, let alone in the sea.

“Marine litter is inherently mobile,” he said, “and the amount found in a country’s waters may not reflect the amount of litter that country produces, or its success in reducing its emissions.

“A ‘best available technique’ approach has been used in the past to address industrial emissions. Adopting this approach to tackling marine plastics will allow effort and resources to be focused on measures that are very likely to reduce the problem instead of being diverted into simply assessing how much worse it is getting.”

What are the ‘best available techniques’ for stopping marine plastics?

Among the ‘best available techniques’ suggested by Eunomia are levies on disposable items that contain plastic, such as single-use takeaway cups and cutlery, the phasing out of plastic drink straws and stirrers, as well as plastic cotton bud sticks, which it says can easily be replaced with paper-based alternatives, and creating a levy on cigarettes to fund the cost of their cleanup and incentivise a reduction in littering.

Action, it suggests, can also be taken to put more responsibility on the producers of plastic packaging, making them bear the ‘full economic cost’ of collecting and treating them, including the costs of litter collection, and also producers of fishing nets, to incentivise better design and recovery processes for their management at the end of their lives.

Action not targets needed to stop plastics polluting the seas
Producers of fishing nets and land-based plastic products should be made to fund better collection and recovery of their products, Eunomia says.
Action is already being taken in some quarters to reduce the amount of litter entering the marine ecosystem, including in the UK, where the government this month began the process of imposing a ban on the use of microbeads in cosmetic and personal care products made and sold in the UK. 

According to the Eunomia estimates, microplastics (small fragments of plastic measuring less than 5 millimetres) make up 950,000 tonnes of the plastic entering the sea every year, of which 35,000 tonnes are the eminently controllable microbeads used as exfoliants in many bathroom products.

Microbeads have already been banned in the US and Canada, but Eunomia says that a comprehensive ban on their use is needed, with the potential to eventually extending it to other products that are sources of marine microplastics.

Anne-France Woestyn, Policy Officer at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries also provided an explanation of other initiatives currently in place to address the problem: “Major EU initiatives, both current and in prospect, aim to reduce marine plastics.

A UK ban on microbeads looks to be on the way after the government said it would consult on how best to impose one
“In particular there is the recent Circular Economy Package, the upcoming Plastic Strategy, the ongoing revision of the Port Reception Facilities Directive, an enhanced Global Ocean Governance, initiatives to remove lost gears and marine litter from the sea by fishermen, and support to research projects in the field.”

The proliferation of marine plastic is one of the growing sustainability issues around the world. The International Coastal Cleanup, a worldwide initiative that asks volunteers to litter pick at their local beach or coastline and record what they find reported that during a weekend of action around the world last year more than 8,000 tonnes of litter were recovered – the equivalent to the weight of more than 100 Boeing 737s. 

A study published earlier this year by researchers at Sweden’s Uppsala University concluded that perch larvae exposed to levels of microplastics consistent with those found in many coastal habitats prefer to eat plastics to their natural prey, stunting their growth and making them more prone to attacks by predators. Marine biologist Dr Oona Lönnstedt, noted: “If early life-history stages of other species are similarly affected by microplastics, and this translates to increased mortality rates, the effects on aquatic ecosystems could be profound.”

More information about research into how plastic pollution in our oceans is affecting food chains and the fish that ends up on our plates can be found in Resource’s feature article.

Eunomia's report into measures to reduce plastic pollution of the marine environment can be downloaded from the company's website.

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