The ocean is home to coral reefs, the longest mountain chain in the world, ocean trenches and over 220,000 known species. It is also home to around 75 -199 million tons of plastic pollution.
By 2040, if changes aren’t urgently made, plastic pollution flowing into the ocean may increase from approximately 11 million metric tons a year to up to 37 million metric tons a year.
In October 2021, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released the From Pollution to Solution and Drowning in Plastics reports, both of which underscore the urgent need to address the severe threat of marine litter and plastic pollution.
The problem these reports outline is clear: marine litter and plastic pollution endanger human, wildlife and ecosystem health. Littering, mismanagement of waste streams and extreme events like floods, which are increasing due to climate change, increase the amount of plastic litter that ends up in the ocean. This also has economic ramifications, since the ocean generates US$2.5 trillion in goods and services a year and contributed to 31 million direct full-time jobs prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
UNEP’s programme of work tackles this pollution problem from source-to-sea, encompassing all systems – land, freshwater, riverine and estuarine, coastal, and open ocean. It also focuses on the design, production and consumption stages of waste management.
Clean Seas 2.0: From Source-to-Sea
Through the Clean Seas campaign, UNEP raises awareness and drives policy and legislative action on the issue of marine litter and plastic pollution. Launched in 2017, the campaign engages governments, the general public, civil society and the private sector to strengthen effective action plans on marine litter and plastic pollution. Currently, 63 countries are Clean Seas signatories.
Ahead of its fifth anniversary in February, the campaign is launching Clean Seas 2.0: From Source-to-Sea. Building on the campaign’s initial focus on single-use plastics and their elimination, 2.0 will focus on communicating the root causes associated with the production, use and disposal of unnecessary, avoidable and problematic plastics. Its topic areas will cover a range of products, including packaging, ghost fishing gear, tyres and textiles.
Through this lens, Clean Seas will take an evidence-based approach to identify marine plastic pollution’s key sources, pathways and hazards, in order to galvanize global momentum for urgency and action.
Of the 11 million tons of plastic pollution that enters the sea every year, 2.7 million tons come from rivers. The Clean Seas 2.0 roadmap emphasizes the source-to-sea approach by leveraging two key river-focused UNEP projects: CounterMEASURE and the Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative.
UNEP’s source-to-sea actions
The UNEP-implemented CounterMEASURE project uses cutting-edge technology to identify the source of plastic pollution in river systems in Asia – primarily the Ganges and Mekong. Through a combination of citizen science, drone imaging, machine learning and geographic analyses, the project collects data and identifies plastic waste hotspots. This data is shared with partner organizations and governments across the region, who integrate findings into campaigns, legislation, protocols and training sessions for civil servants and local authorities.
“While a lot of research has been undertaken on plastic debris in the ocean, less information exists on plastic pollution in rivers, particularly in Asia,” said Norwin Schafferer, Project Officer of the UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. “By gathering this information and providing it to policymakers, we are informing policies at local, regional and global levels.”
Citizen science is a critical aspect of the Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative also led by UNEP in partnership with the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative and the University of Georgia. Volunteers have catalogued over 100,000 litter items along the Mississippi River, the majority of which are plastics. The river, which provides hundreds of billions of gallons of water to key industries and drinking water to 20 million people, is also the drainage system for 40 per cent of the continental United States. Plastic waste travels through storm drains and smaller waterways into the river, ultimately making its way to the Gulf of Mexico and into the ocean.
“This data should help draw attention to plastic waste concentrations in specific areas,” said Barbara Hendrie, Director of the UNEP Regional Office for North America. “We hope that all stakeholders – from policymakers to businesses and citizens – can collectively use it to take action to address the plastic pollution crisis.”
UNEP and the Ellen McArthur Foundation also co-lead the Global Commitment, which has established a common vision of a circular economy for plastics. It has 500 signatories – including plastics producers, financial institutions and governments – who have committed to ambitious 2025 targets to reach circularity.
Through the Global Partnership on Marine Litter, UNEP is developing a Digital Platform to bring together and connect actors and information to catalyze action before plastic pollution ends up in the ocean.
“Marine litter and plastic pollution are actionable problems,” said Leticia Carvalho, Head of the UNEP Freshwater and Marine Branch. “By tackling from source-to-sea, UNEP encourages stronger government action and industry commitment across the whole life cycle of plastics, which is needed to solve this problem.”
The Clean Seas 2.0 campaign roadmap aligns with UNEP’s Medium-Term Strategy for 2022-2025 by applying cutting-edge scientific advances in data collection and working with global partners and stakeholders to strengthen effective action to prevent marine litter and plastic pollution.
CounterMEASURE is managed by the UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. It is funded through the support of the Government of Japan.
The Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative is co-led by the UNEP Regional Office for North America.
For more information, please contact Andrina Beaumond, Clean Seas Coordinator, at andrina.beaumond@un.org
