European Comission’s Joint Research Center issued a report concerning the damages caused by marine litter, noting that is a major global problem alongside other key environmental issues of today. Marine litter is often transported by ocean currents over long distances and is found in all marine environments, even in remote regions.
The report highlights the multiple problems associated with marine litter, divided by MSFD TG ML, into three general categories:
- Social, for example reduction in aesthetic value and public safety
- Economic, such as cost to tourism, damage to vessels, fishing gear and facilities, losses to fishery operations, cleaning costs
- Ecological, including mortality or sublethal effects on plants and animals through entanglement, capture and entanglement from ghost nets, physical damage, smothering and ingestion including uptake of micro-particles (mainly microplastics) and the influence from chemicals as well as creation of transfer pathways, facilitating the invasion of alien species, altering benthic community structure.
The main conclusions of the report may be summarized in the following:
- Harm to biota, which is related to:
- animal ingestion
- animal entaglement
- litter chemical transfer
- modifying assemblages of species
- levels of biological organization affected
- Socioeconomic harm
- From evidence available, it becomes clear that marine litter has negative social and economic impacts including significant costs to the sectors affected, reducing the ecosystem services and compromising perceived benefits.
- While there are data gaps, it is expected that the costs of action are generally significantly less than the costs of inaction.
- Designing products to ensure they are compatible with recycling, followed by appropriate collection and recycling will simultaneously reduce the quantity of waste in managed systems and in the environment.
- Moving toward a more circular economy will reduce waste, including litter, and simultaneously increase resource efficacy.
- Marine litter including nets and ropes, pieces of glass, metal fragments and discarded medical waste may be harmful to humans.
- Marine litter can act as a vehicle for the transport of pathogens but the relative importance of this pathway from a human health perspective is uncertain.
- Microplastics are present in commercially important species of fish and shellfish. However it is not certain if there is any risk associated with human consumption.
- A range of potentially harmful chemical additives are used in some plastic items. However, it is not clear whether the presence of these items as marine litter presents a human exposure pathway.
It is underlined that risk assessment can help to identify priority actions with a view to the complex sources, pathways and consequences of marine litter and that understanding the risks and uncertainties with regard to the harm is closely associated with the precautionary principle.
Further information may be found in the following report:
Source: EU JRC
