istd booklet

THE MARINE LITTER
ISSUE
MCS BEACHWATCH
SURVEY. 2012
40.4% from the public
4.5% Sewage related
Debris
13.9% fishing litter
0.7% fly tipping
3.9% shipping
0.2% medical waste
36.3% non-sourced
Marine litter is made
up of discarded
objects that do not
occur naturally in the
marine and coastal
environment. Alarmingly,
over the past 15
years the amount of
marine litter washing
up on UK beaches has
almost doubled. Typical
examples of marine
litter include waste
from beach users,
sewage-related debris,
medical waste, shipping
debris and fishing
waste.
The vast majority of
marine litter is plastic,
which never truly
breaks down. Experts
suggest plastic left in
the environment will
be with us in some
microscopic form many
thousands of years.
When in the sea,
plastics can also adsorb
toxic chemicals,
becoming increasingly
harmful over time, and
often entering the food
chain when mistaken
for food items by
fish, seabirds, marine
mammals and other organisms.
Over 100,000
marine mammals and
over 1 million seabirds
die every year from
ingestion of and entanglement
in marine
litter.
Plastic debris can be
found littering coastlines
all across the
world’s oceans, even
on the most far-flung
and inaccessible of
beaches.
Plastic is not
biodegradable and will
degrade slower in the
marine environment
than on land. A normal
plastic bottle may persist
for more than 450
years if left on a beach.
Beach users have to
be wary of injury from
broken glass, rusting
metal or discarded
medical waste. Marine
litter strewn all over a
beach can also have a
detrimental effect on
tourism with visitors
put off from using it for
recreation.
FRED-
“Every event we throw,
we do for them and then
give them whatever we
make off of it. We are
all surfers and we all
love the sea. The sea
isn’t in a good place at
the moment so anything
we can do to help, we
do. We try and do beach
cleans when we can. I
did one at the Bristol
Gorge a few months ago
and it was awful. It’s
disgusting. It is quite a
big thing on our agenda,
that we try and help as
much as possible. At
the end of the day, the
environment is going to
help our business so we
try and help it as much
as we can.”
page number 29