Tourism behind 40% rise in marine litter in Mediterranean region

04 / 02 / 2020

By Marwa Nassar - -

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) cautioned that tourism is behind increasing marine litter in the Mediterranean region by up to 40 percent.

Alongside the 8 million tons of plastic that enter the ocean every year, 300 million tons of new plastic is created annually, utilizing non-renewable resources such as oil, gas and coal, and contributing to climate change.

If growth in plastic production and incineration continue, cumulative emissions by 2050 will make up between 10 and 13 per cent of the total remaining global carbon budget. As a result, the implications of plastic overconsumption extend even further than the litter that is visible in the ocean.

Many stakeholders in the tourism industry have been taking action against plastic pollution—moving away from single-use plastics, reducing consumption of unnecessary plastics, and moving towards circularity through better recycling and reusing schemes. However, in order to tackle the enormity of the plastic problem, equally enormous action is needed, across the entire tourism value chain.

Global Tourism Plastic Initiative:

The Global Tourism Plastics Initiative is meant to bring the tourism sector together under a common vision to transition to a circular plastic economy and sustainability in the sector.

The initiative has been developed by the Sustainable Tourism Program of the One Planet Network, a multi-stakeholder partnership to implement Sustainable Development Goal 12 on sustainable consumption and production, and is led by the UNEP and the World Tourism Organization in collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

This initiative is the tourism sector interface of the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, which currently has over 450 signatories from businesses, governments, and other organizations, with the common objective of reducing plastic pollution through ambitious targets.

The Global Tourism Plastics Initiative requires tourism organizations to make a set of concrete commitments by 2025. These commitments include eliminating problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging and items by 2025 as well as taking action to move from single-use to re-use models or reusable alternative by 2025 and engaging the value chain to move towards 100 percent of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable.

The tourism organizations should also take action to increase the amount of recycled content across all plastic packaging and items used; commit to collaborate and invest to increase the recycling and composting rates for plastics; and report publicly and annually on progress made towards these targets.

“Plastic pollution is one of the major environmental challenges of our time, and tourism has an important role to play in contributing to the solution,” said UNEP’s Economy Division Director, Ligia Noronha.

“The Global Tourism Plastics Initiative supports tourism companies and destinations to innovate, eliminate and circulate the way they use plastics, to help achieve circularity in the use of plastics and reduce plastic pollution globally.”

According to Heidi Savelli, who works for UNEP on issues related to marine litter, “As we enter 2020, it is crunch-time for the planet. We need to act now if we are to have any chance of protecting our biodiversity. Our attitude towards single-use and disposable plastics is a good place to start. Every year, we are producing and consuming more and more plastic, but we are not stepping up efforts to manage it.”

Savelli spelled out some eco-friendly attitudes that should be adopted by travelers to turn the tide on plastic pollution.

Eco-friendly attitudes of travelers:

These eco-friendly attitudes include quitting cigarettes. Every day, 18 billion cigarettes are bought around the world, each containing plastic filters and toxic chemicals. These eventually end up polluting and damaging the environment through landfill sites and threaten the life of all marine species. Consistently, for over 25 years, cigarettes butts have been the top item collected during the International Coastal Cleanup.

People should also reduce plastic waste by only buying the food that they need, choosing food with no plastic packaging, carrying a reusable bag while shopping and buying locally produced food products. This will lead to reducing the amount of microplastics that enter the ocean and end up in the food you eat.

In addition, abandoned fishing equipment—also called ghost gear—haunts the world’s oceans, endangering marine life and livelihoods for more than 600 species. People buying seafood should check the label to ensure that it has been sustainably sourced.

People should also invest in sustainable, ocean-friendly daily products such as reusable coffee mugs, water bottles and food wraps and consider options like well as menstrual cups, bamboo toothbrushes and shampoo bars. These choices will help save money as people won’t have to keep buying disposable products that end up in the trash. By going zero-waste, people will save the ocean from unnecessarily being polluted with plastic and microplastics.

Travelers should also refuse miniature personal care bottles in hotel rooms and take their own reusable drinking bottle and use reef-safe sunscreen which doesn’t contain microplastics.

Tourism should go sustainable to save the planet from the killing plastic pollution.