Abstract
Marine litter is a significant and growing pollutant in the oceans. In recent years, the number of studies and initiatives trying to assess and tackle the global threat of marine litter has grown exponentially. Most of these studies, when considering macro-litter, focus on floating or stranded litter, whereas there is less information available about marine litter on the seabed. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the current state-of-the-art methods to address the issue of seafloor macro-litter pollution. The overview includes the following topics: the monitoring of macro-litter on the seafloor; the identification of possible litter accumulation hot spots on the seafloor through numerical models; seafloor litter management approaches (from removal protocols to recycling processes). The paper briefly analyzes the different approaches to involve stakeholders, since the marine litter topic is strongly related to the societal engagement. Finally, attempting to answer to all the critical aspects highlighted in the overview, the paper highlights the need of innovative multi-level solutions to induce a change towards sustainable practices, transforming a problem into a real circular economy opportunity.
Highlights
Marine debris is a growing problem with plastics making up 60–80% of marine litter worldwide (Derraik, 2002)
Marine litter can be found throughout the marine environment, i.e., the beach, sea surface, water column, seafloor as well as on and in marine biota
Within the Mediterranean Sea, Angiolillo et al (2015) reported that, in the deep seafloor of 26 areas off the coast of three Italian regions in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the dominant type of debris (89%) was represented by fishing gears
Summary
Marine debris is a growing problem with plastics making up 60–80% of marine litter worldwide (Derraik, 2002). Not directly related to the management of ship-generated or fishing waste or to marine litter, the Directive offers a modernized framework and establishes a five-step waste hierarchy approach where prevention is the best option, followed by re-use, recycling and other forms of recovery, with disposal such as landfill as the last option.
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