In recent years, public awareness of the marine litter problem has increased significantly. From experience, when talking to people about plastic in the oceans, I often hear, “Isn’t there a great big island of plastic in the middle of the Pacific?” Known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, this conjures up images of a huge floating island of plastic; but this is simply not the case. More often than not, this is quickly followed by the mention of a project they’ve read about that involves cleaning up this garbage patch.
The project they have in mind is led by Boyan Slat, a Dutch entrepreneur who has been very successful in attracting interest and funding, to move his vision – the Ocean Cleanup – from concept towards reality. However, even if this scheme works as intended, it will be addressing, quite literally, a drop in the ocean.
Disconnect
Eunomia’s research on behalf of both the European Commission and concerned businesses has repeatedly found a disconnect between what we might expect to find floating on the ocean’s surface and what is actually there.
Whilst a recent and much published estimate by Jambeck et al[1] suggests that up to 12.7 million tonnes a year of plastic is flowing into the ocean globally, surveys compiled by Eriksen et al[2] have found that only 250, 000 tonnes are currently floating in the oceans’ surface. This represents a fraction of a per cent of the plastic that is believed to be residing in the marine environment. Much of this is therefore either laying at the bottom of the ocean or washed up on beaches.
Despite best efforts, so far no-one has designed a mass produced product made from plastic that has been taken directly from the oceans (at least not one that is profitable). This material is degraded, bio-fouled and difficult to identify — not an ideal feedstock for recycling. Even plastics taken from beaches, whilst being more accessible, are difficult and costly to collect and sort. A handful of niche products such as skateboards[3] and clothing[4] products have been developed, but mostly increase public awareness of the issue rather than present a long-term solution.
Microbeads
At present millions of tonnes of plastic is flowing into the oceans from multiple sources; from microbeads in cosmetic products to absent minded littering and poor waste management and we don’t have a viable and worthwhile method of removing it, nor is it likely that we will do in the near future. Even if we had a removal method, the process could be likened to using a thimble to remove water from a bath whilst the tap is still running.
This leads us towards a focus on preventative measures (i.e. turning off the tap), but what does this mean for the UK and in particular the UK recycling industry? We should of course focus on keeping valuable material such as plastic within our technosphere as part of a circular economy.
Tackling single use plastic items such as bottles, drinking straws and cotton bud sticks is vital. The last two of these examples may be a surprise, but by item count, they are some of the most commonly found items on the UK’s beaches.[5]
Bottles
Whilst banning is often argued as a solution for some items, plastic bottles, on the other hand are not going to be banned or replaced any time soon so how do we tackle these?
The key is to make them valuable and one such way is through deposit refund schemes (DRS) where the consumer pays a deposit on purchase and receives it back when disposed of correctly.
This has already reduced the amount of litter and delivers high levels of recycling in countries such as Sweden[6] and Germany.[7] It’s a double win for recyclers as the overall tonnage of feedstock is increased and, given the segregated manner in which it is collected, means that quality is high.
Value
Whilst this is not a remedy for all plastic marine pollution, schemes like this should change the way the public think. At the very least it will mean that used bottles will stop being items that need to be got rid of at the first opportunity into objects that have a value.
Marine litter is a clear manifestation of what is wrong with our current linear economy. If the recycling industry supports the move towards a circular economy and we collectively move up the waste hierarchy, preventing waste in the first place, resources won’t be lost along the way.
To read more about Eunomia’s research in this area, read the Study to Quantify Pellet Emissions in the UK and Study to Support the Development of Measures to Combat a Range of Marine Litter Sources.
References
[1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768
[2] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111913
[3] http://bureo.co/
[4] http://rawfortheoceans.g-star.com/
[5]https://www.mcsuk.org/what_we_do/Clean%20seas%20and%20beaches/Reports%20and%20downloads/Beachwatch%20results%202015
[6] http://www.bottlebill.org/legislation/world/sweden.htm
[7] http://www.zerowasteeurope.eu/tag/germany-deposit-refund-system/
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