Marine Litter Clean-ups—An Exercise in Futility or an Underrated Tool Against Plastic Pollution?

Beach clean-ups are the perfect solution, said no one ever.

Marine litter clean-ups will not solve the plastic pollution crisis of today. In and of themselves, they are just as effective as mopping the floor around an overflowing bathtub, while the tap is still on full blast.

To successfully tackle the plastic problem, both in the Arctic and elsewhere, we must first and foremost bring about a systemic change. And everyone knows that this requires education and legislation, not clean-ups. Knowing what is required, however, is one thing, while knowing how to get it right is quite another.

There is no magic switch we could flip on both education and legislation to put them in order. To make sure they address the pollution crisis adequately and facilitate the necessary change, they must be carefully reviewed and adapted. Decisions must be made to rectify errors in existing policies, fill knowledge gaps, close loopholes and mould public perceptions.

To better avoid potential pitfalls, the decisions must be grounded in a thorough understanding of what pollution really is and what it means to all involved, an understanding which can only be gained through painstaking, broad-ranging research.

This brings us back to marine litter clean-ups, which enable not only litter collection, but also the collection of empirical litter data – a necessary starting point for change.

The best of both worlds

Typically, litter-strewn coastlines trigger two types of action: clean-ups or research. The former tend to be community-led events in which volunteers produce instant, if only short-term, positive environmental impacts by collecting trash off local beaches. And while they do at times also collect litter data, their main goal is to do something tangible for the ecosystem rather than scrutinize the ins and outs of the pollution problem.

Research projects usually take the opposite approach. In order to find answers to pollution-related questions or test out scientific hypotheses, researchers collect comprehensive litter data, but often fail to collect the litter itself, as this involves a different mindset, a different kind of effort and different logistics.

While both clean-ups and research have their merits, it is arguably by blending the two approaches that we can magnify the benefits they each bring to the table. The work carried out by the forScience Foundation as part of project ICEBERG is an attempt to do exactly that.

ICEBERG data-focused beach clean-up

During the first round of ICEBERG fieldwork, the forScience team removed and analysed marine litter washed ashore along 36 consecutive kilometres of the Arctic coast. The clean-up and the subsequent analysis were carried out with no community involvement, because the task’s target area, located in south-western Spitsbergen, Svalbard, is completely uninhabited, hard to access and subject to numerous restrictions.

To find out more about the reasons for choosing this exact area, the challenges involved in working there and previous litter work that is being continued and elaborated on under ICEBERG, check out this ICEBERG blog post.

It wasn’t just the composition of the field team and the character of the site that made the effort unique. It was also the scale of the clean-up and the scientific scope of the study.

Combining systematic litter collection with systematic collection of litter data, allows interesting insights, especially if you repeat the process at fairly regular intervals. It makes it possible, for example, to draw conclusions about marine litter accumulation rate in the studied area and the ways in which it is affected by coast topography and orientation.

This, in turn, makes it possible to more accurately anticipate marine pollution levels and more effectively plan future clean-ups, both in the target area and in other, similar regions of the Arctic, too remote to scout out in advance. It also makes it quite clear that in remote parts of the Arctic, where plastic pollution levels are the result of decades of marine litter accumulation, the positive effects of beach clean-ups remain visible for a long time.

Lessons learnt from litter

Litter items take about two years to reach Svalbard from western Europe, less if they start on their journey further north. So, with the previous forScience clean-up completed in the area three years before, the litter we picked up gave us a chance to look three to five years into the past at the effectiveness of pollution-related regulations as well as human attitudes and behaviours, including the disregard for the regulations.

This was essential, because to tackle a problem we must first understand its causes and the sole cause of marine pollution is human activity.

In search for useful insights, we performed an item-by-item analysis of almost 4500 litter items, recording everything about them, from weight and item category, through degradation level, to brand names and expiry dates, throwing in a picture of each item or set of items for good measure.

And while the collected data is still being processed, we can already say with a fair degree of certainty that although, like elsewhere in the world, the majority of stranded marine litter is broadly-understood plastic, the most common items and item categories found in the European Arctic differ significantly from those found further south, and this means both different causes and different impacts.

Arctic-specific research into marine litter is therefore necessary in order to work out solutions that will work for the Arctic and as data-focused beach clean-ups provide crucial insights regarding the scale, scope and sources of marine litter pollution, it might be worthwhile to include them in the research toolbox.

Data-focused beach clean-ups lift some of the pressure from the environment while work is in progress on systemic solutions and, at the same time, contribute to the body of knowledge the solutions will draw upon. This way, they help achieve both immediate ecological goals and long-term sustainability objectives, which makes them a powerful tool in the struggle against plastic pollution, both in the Arctic and in other parts of the world.

Barbara Jóźwiak, forScience Foundation

Copyrights of the post image: Photo courtesy of Anita Horowska, forScience Foundation.

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If you’re curious about the marine litter work done by the forScience Foundation prior to project ICEBERG and about the evolution of their approach, here’s a webinar you may find interesting.