Environmental Leader

I am one of the co-authors of the UNEP report on marine litter and have been working with the UNEP/Regional Seas Programme the marine litter initiative for the past several years. The call for a ban on plastic bags, which is one strategy that could be employed, was not among the primary recommendations proposed from the reports from the 12 participating Regional Seas. In fact, another recent report by UNEP cautions that bans can have unintended consequences. See page 9: http://www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/publications/docs/Economic_Instruments_and_Marine_Litter.pdf.

There are fundamental issues related to adequate and integrated solid waste management capacities that must addressed globally; the effective implementation of existing regulations and policies for litter prevention; conducting further research and monitoring to document the impacts of marine litter and use that information for developing local programmes and interventions; expanding education and outreach campaigns to engage key stakeholders and user groups in behavioral changes to support litter prevention and proper waste management; develop and expand partnerships with industry, government and civil society to work effectively on this issue; and directing funds to support these efforts are needed to effectively combat this global problem.

There is more to reducing the presence and impacts of marine litter than banning various products — people and how they handle their solid wastes is the foundation of this issue in the first place. Getting the public to recognize their contributions to this problem is essential to developing any long-term, lasting solutions. Marine litter would not exist if solid wastes were not improperly handled by people in the first place.

Seba Sheavly | June 11th, 2009

This seems like a good idea i heard something about this on the radio yesterday, probably tough to implement though.

CR12 | June 11th, 2009

I agree that behaviour change around our attitudes towards waste is what is required. However, the impetus for behaviour change often comes when there is a regulation to follow or a higher financial cost involved. Education and regulation go hand in hand and both are required for effective sustainable change. We have been working in our city to raise awareness with limited success. However when some of the big grocery stores started charging 5c for the plastic shopping bag there was an immediate drop in usage. The plastic bag issue is a symbol of our throw away convenience driven society – a society where we feel entitled to gobble up all of the resources with no regard for the long term consequences to the planet. In addition to a litter issue this is also about unnecessary wasteful consumption of non renewable resources. Marine litter would be drastically reduced if we didn’t have the plastic bags in the first place.

Maryanne MacDonald | June 16th, 2009