Plastic in our seas ends up on our plates

This is meant to focus on one particular aspect of plastic – the plastic litter pollution in our oceans.

The Mediterranean is not only no exception but even more so one of the most problematic areas and seas.

Various surveys conducted internationally have shown that year after year plastics make up the majority of debris found on beaches as well as in the seas. This also applies to remote island beaches.

With the prevalent ‘throw away’ consumer culture that tends to flagrantly defy the awareness and education campaigns that various bodies conduct in a number of countries, this tends to betray the flagrant indifference towards something that is after all a threat to ourselves and to wildlife.

UNEP, the UN Environment Programme, is not taking this issue lightly.

In a recent study it estimated that there were some 48,000 pieces of plastic litter per square mile.

What makes it worse when it comes to plastic litter pollution at sea is that floating debris can be easily transported considerable distances by both wind and currents.

This has actually led to the deposition of such items literally from many different countries.

The simple explanation is that litter can travel thousands of miles around the world’s oceans.

The EU itself takes marine litter seriously since not only does it consider it to be of global concern but also in the sense that the tons of litter that end up in the oceans worldwide, actually turn them into the world’s biggest landfill and thus pose environmental, economic, health and even aesthetic problems.

There is no room for mincing of words.

The persistence of marine litter in general is the result of poor practices of solid waste management, lack of infrastructure and a lack of awareness of the public about the consequences of their actions. Accepting the status quo is definitely not an option in this regard either.

The problem with plastic litter is that plastic never biodegrades but with the sunlight it splits into smaller and even smaller pieces – bits that at day’s end are still plastic.

What worries me most is that the pieces get so small, that in the end they end up ingested by over 180 known marine species, being mistaken for food, and thus enter the food chain and even end up on our plate.

The University of Plymouth is well known for its research in this particular subject – plastic debris, even though its studies have a decidedly North Atlantic orientation.

Another worrying aspect is that through its oil base, plastic litter when particularly fragmented tends to attract other floating chemicals in the ocean like persistent organic pollutants.

The EU found that when it comes to plastic on beaches it breaks into ever smaller pieces, with the consequence that not only does it break into smaller and ever smaller pieces, but these microscopic bits of plastic not only litter the beach but actually become part of the beach.

Literally like fine bits of sand.

The quick fix solution that comes to mind is that of cleaning up the oceans but in practical terms this has been dismissed as not the most efficient method in removing and preventing marine litter since in doing so one could compare it to seaming the sand in the desert.

Once this lacks practicality and is evidently something that no country can afford it leaves us with one solution.

The need to tackle the problem at source.

The EU has long aimed to be at the forefront of efforts to reduce marine litter.

Since last year it has been exploring options to set an EU wide quantitative reduction headline target for marine litter.  Among the options that it listed were avoidance of the use of single use plastic bags and plastic bottles, awareness raising, clean up actions, and the setting of reduction targets at both a national or local level.

While one tends to think of maritime policy as something strictly and solely economy-linked and trade-oriented, in actual fact the environment is a key component of the Integrated Maritime Policy and also the Marine Strategy Framework Directive adopted in 2008.

The main goal of the Directive is to achieve Good Environmental Status – GES – of all marine waters of the EU by 2020.

One of the earliest EU Commission workshops on the subjects took place in late 2010 following parliamentary questions tabled. Pilot projects were also commissioned by the EU itself.

But it is evident that the whole issue and topic are fast rising higher and higher on the environmental agenda.

These had focused on the largest loopholes within the flow of packaging material, case studies on the plastic cycle and its loopholes in the four European regional sea areas, as well as feasibility studies of introducing instruments to prevent such littering.

It is also studying the actual removal of marine litter from Europe’s four regional areas.

This project should run till the end of this year.

Jonathan Copley, a senior lecturer in marine ecology recently commented wryly but in a very spot-on manner when he stated that research confirms what most of us who work in the deep ocean have noticed for quite some time – that human rubbish has got there before us.

It is ironic to note that as our – and by our I mean our European – deep sea floor is being explored, litter is being revealed as far more widespread than previously thought.

This statistic should suffice to shake off any complacency – primarily that litter disposal and accumulation in the marine environment is one of the fastest growing threats to the health of the world’s oceans, with an estimated 6.4m tonnes of litter entering the oceans each year – with plastics themselves being by far the most abundant material, introducing toxic chemicals that can be lethal to marine fauna and break down into micro plastics that have become the most abundant form of solid waste pollution on earth.