By Tosca Ballerini
The latest Marine Litter Watch – Europe’s Beach Litter Assessment by the European Environment Agency and the European Topic Centre Biodiversity and Ecosystems (ETC BE) came out on 3 July. Comparison with the results of the Citizen Science project ‘Anthropic Profiles – Plastic as a measure of our time’ during which beach litter was monitored on three beaches in Tuscany shows many similarities.
The problem
Pollution by plastic and other chemical pollutants is outside the safe operating space of planetary boundaries for mankind. Waste, particularly plastic, accumulates in aquatic systems, especially on coastlines. Every year, 11 million tonnes of plastic end up in the oceans, making up 80% of marine litter.
The European Strategy on Plastics (COM/2018/028final) set a 30% reduction target for marine litter and the Single Use Plastics Directive (SUPD, 2019/904/EU) set a target for EU Member States to reduce the impact of certain single use plastics (SUP) products in the environment by reducing or banning their use. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD, 2008/56/EC) aims to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) of EU marine waters. To this end, and with regard to beach litter, the Marine Strategy has set a threshold value of 20 litter/100 m of beach, estimating that this value can reduce the damage of beach litter to a sufficiently precautionary level.
Europe’s most abundant beach litter
The European Environment Agency’s Marine Litter Watch (MLW) initiative involves citizens in the collection of litter and data on European beaches. Building on previous findings, this report analyses 2022 data in the context of EU efforts to tackle plastic pollution.
The MLW database provides essential information on the state of beach litter pollution in Europe. It complements the monitoring programmes of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and supports the assessment of EU policies, such as the Zero Pollution Action Plan and the Single Use Plastics (UPR) Directive. It includes contributions from more than 60 communities and organisations, which have recorded nearly 1.5 million litterings from European beaches over the past decade.
The analysis presented in the latest report Marine Litter Watch – Europe’s Beach Litter Assessment reveals that at a European level 86% of the registered objects are plastic and that single-use plastic products (SUP) account for 52% of the total waste. Cigarette butts are a significant problem, accounting for 23% of litter. Fishing-related items are less common, but significant in the North-East Atlantic. The Black Sea is the most polluted, followed by the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea. Approximately 90% of the sites surveyed exceed the threshold set by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive for good environmental status GHG for beached litter.
The most abundant beach litter on three Tuscan beaches
As part of the ‘Anthropic Profiles’ project, between November 2022 and July 2023 11,237 litter was collected and classified on three beaches in Tuscany in the municipalities of Marina di Vecchiano, Livorno and Rosignano Marittimo. A sampling site was identified at each beach and three monitoring sessions were carried out at each site following the Marine Strategy Framework Directive protocol.
The analysis reveals that 88.39% of the waste to be found is plastic, while single-use plastic products represent (SUP items) 36.96% of the total waste. The most abundant wastes in this study are: cigarette butts (22.69%), plastic beverage bottles (4.38%, all sizes combined), plastic beverage caps/covers (2.89%), plastic cotton bud sticks (2.79%), crisp packets/candy wrappers (1.61%).
A median litter abundance of 1,266 objects/100 m of beach was found in the study. At all sites and during all monitoring, the Marine Strategy threshold for good environmental status GES was exceeded.
The solutions
Scientific evidence shows that upstream and downstream interventions, such as optimising waste management, removal technologies and improving circularity, are not sufficient to contain plastic pollution in the short, medium or long term. To tackle plastic pollution, it is urgent to implement upstream actions to reduce primary plastic production.
In parallel to actions at international and national level, municipalities can significantly limit single-use plastic pollution on their territory through the development of integrated strategies that include public procurement, exemplary practices and territorial animation.
As part of the Profili Antropici project, in addition to the monitoring of beach litter, we identified the environmental measures implemented by the three municipalities on the Tuscan coast to tackle single-use plastic (SUP) items and highlighted further possible environmental measures to reduce plastic pollution at local level.
The results of the study were presented at the Tenth International Symposium ‘Mediterranean Coastal Monitoring: Problems and Measurement Techniques’ held in Livorno from 11 to 13 June 2024 at the Mediterranean Museum of Natural History Museo di Storia Naturale del Mediterraneo – Provincia di Livorno and organised by the Institute of BioEconomy of the National Research Council (CNR-IBE) in collaboration with the Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology.
The full study by Tosca Ballerini, Yuri Galletti, Daniela Tacconi (2024) ‘Plastic pollution on the Tuscan coast: environmental measures municipalities can put in place to reduce it’ will be published in the coming months in the conference proceedings.
The Profili Antropici (Anthropic Profiles) project was conducted by Semi di Scienza in collaboration with Sons of the ocean and was funded by the 8 per mille of the Chiesa Valdese. Throughout the project there was an active and positive collaboration with the environmental councillors of the municipalities of Marina di vecchiano, Comune di Livorno, and Comune di Rosignano Marittimo.
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