28/06/2021
Study with ICRA participation reflects Europe's contribution to marine litter with real measures
Europe's rivers are a key element in the transfer of poorly managed waste that ends up in the sea, according to the study Floating macrolitter leaked from Europe into the ocean, led by Daniel González and Andrés Cózar, from the University of Cádiz (Spain), with the European University of the Seas (SEA-EU) and DG Joint Research Centre of European Commission (DG JRC); and published this June in the journal Nature Sustainaibility. It has the participation of 22 institutions from 12 countries, including the Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA) with its director Damià Barceló, one of the most solvent references in the analysis of Iberian rivers.
The new study published reveals that high-income countries are among those that contribute the most to dumping floating macro-waste into the sea. Most of these are plastic objects arriving from small rivers, streams and coastal runoff. Monitoring in 42 rivers in 11 European countries provides the largest existing database on waste inputs into the ocean, which states that Europe sends more than 600 million floating macro-waste objects (objects > 2.5 cm) into the sea in a single year. 8 out of 10 objects, more than 82%, are plastic, including disposable plastics, bottles, packaging (such as food wrapping) and bags. Nearly 40% of floating waste is plastic pieces (fragments of other larger objects), and this means that many plastics start to fragment in river basins, before reaching the ocean.
Damià Barceló, director of the ICRA and research professor at IDAEA-CSIC, recalls that the ICRA team examined the Llobregat and Besòs, every week from September 2016 to October 2017, with about 45 minutes of observation to see what kind of waste was floating down the river. Bottles and plastic bags were the most abundant. The contributions of both rivers to the Mediterranean Sea represent 0.4 to 0.6 tonnes of plastic per year. The Llobregat always contributes more. Related press release: A study reveals that the Llobregat and Besòs rivers discharge approximately half a tonne of plastic into the sea every year].
Barceló adds that "another novelty is that most of the studies carried out until now used models or estimates. This one, on the other hand, has been carried out on the basis of measurements taken from each river. This is undoubtedly the most relevant and real value of the study initiated in 2017. However, if it were done now, due to the massive use of plastic by Covid-19, the data would be at least 30% higher".
CONSIDERATIONS
This work focuses on the European continent, one of the areas with the highest economic status and highest levels of waste management in the world. Estimates of European waste dumped at sea each year range from 307 million to 925 million items of waste. This estimate should be regarded as conservative, because neither inputs below the ocean surface nor short bursts of emissions, linked to heavy rainfall and sudden events, have been taken into account.
The distribution of the MLF (macro-waste frequency) within Europe is notable for the contribution from small coastal catchments (around 100 km²), which was larger than expected in previous analyses. The fact that the large macro-waste load filters down from the higher income countries, and supposedly with the best waste management rates, indicates that current efforts to control marine litter pollution continue to be insufficient.
In addition to improvements in waste management infrastructure and services, measures to reduce plastic consumption and waste avoidance are needed to control plastic pollution at the coast and in marine environments. It is also important to consider that a notable fraction of the plastic waste generated and recovered by higher income countries is shipped to emerging and developing countries to reduce pressure on their management systems, while compromising the health of ecosystems and people in the recipient countries.
The results demonstrate the importance of regulating the unsustainable growth of plastic production and use, in particular of plastic products with a low recycling value.
As waste streams continue to grow at a rapid pace and neither recovery nor treatment systems in both high and low income countries are working, stricter international regulation, with the objective of waste prevention and recovery, must be recommended to effectively bridge the significant gaps in the short term. In other words, the inability of countries with highly developed recycling systems to control the discharge of waste into the environment also reinforces the need to regulate the production and use of plastics on a global scale.
In conclusion, the filtering of macro-waste from Europe into the sea is an issue that goes beyond large rivers and high-income countries.
Monitoring used on a large scale, across a wide range of river basins and countries, has demonstrated the ability to provide baseline values to assess the success of future prevention and mitigation measures in Europe, which could be particularly useful for the development of European legislation, such as the MSFD26 , the WFD27 , the European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy or within the Directive on Disposable Plastics.
This study, led by Daniel González and Andrés Cózar, is made up of 22 institutions from 12 countries. In addition to the University of Cadiz (Spain), it involves the European University of the Seas (SEA-EU); DG Joint Research Centre of European Commission (DG JRC); Agricultural University of Tirana from Albania; IDAEA-CSIC / ICRA and Paisaje Limpio Association from Spain; Águas de Gaia, OIKOS, University of Coimbra and University of Porto from Portugal; Surfrider Foundation Europe, University of Toulon and University of Perpignan Via Domitia from France; Biophysics Institute - CNR, Institute of Marine Sciences - CNR and ISPRA from Italy; Middle East Technical University from Turkey; Tbilisi State University from Georgia; State Oceanographic Institute from Russia; Ukrainian Scientific Center of Ecology of the Sea from Ukraine; Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg from Germany; Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences from Poland and University of Aegean from Greece.
Apart from the co-authors, the researchers present here are: Georg Hanke, Josué Viejo, Carmen Morales-Caselles, Rigers Bakiu, Damià Barceló, Filipa Bessa, Antoine Bruge, María Cabrera, Javier Castro-Jiménez, Mel Constant, Roberto Crosti, Yuri Galletti, Ahmet E. Kideys, Nino Machitadze, Joana Pereira de Brito, Maria Pogojeva, Nuno Ratola, Júlia Rigueira, Elisa Rojo-Nieto, Oksana Savenko, Rosanna I. Schöneich-Argent, Grzegorz Siedlewicz, Giuseppe Suaria and Myrto Tourgeli.
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Spatial distribution of floating macro-waste load from Europe to the ocean according to average model estimates.
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The study is the cover story of the June issue of Nature Sustainability. |