Action 48: Environmental harm from common marine litter items
Action Title: Evaluate the potential harm caused to the marine environment by items such as cigarette filters/butts, balloons, shotgun wads, cotton buds and bio-film support media used in sewage plants. Based on this evaluation, proposals can be made on the elimination, change or adaptation requirements for these other potentially problematic items.
Lead Party(ies): France, with participation from Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Ireland
What is the issue?
Once in the marine environment macro plastic particles degrade into microplastics. There are a range of impacts from macro and micro-litter including entanglement, injury and ingestion of litter by wildlife; the colonisation of floating debris by invasive species as well as toxicological effects of hazardous chemicals released by degrading plastics. There are also serious socio-economic implications from the loss of litter via waste management sources, including loss of tourism revenue, increased clean-up costs, particularly for municipalities along the coast and increased navigation hazards at sea.
What has OSPAR Done?
A portion of the action was supported by the EU Interreg project Clean Atlantic, that undertook studies on potential harm relating to Cigarette buts and cotton buds. For the remaining specified items, a scoping study was developed, based on a questionnaire gathering information on studies that have been carried out across the OSPAR Contracting Parties. An action briefing note was developed to summarise the outcomes of these efforts.
Final outputs and published reports
COMPLETED IN 2022
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OSPAR is on the Advisory Board of the EU INTERREG funded CleanAtlantic project which will contribute to the development of this action.
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The CleanAtlantic project kicked off in 2017 and will run until 2020.
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