The incessant and growing delivery of litter to our oceans represents one of the most significant forms of marine pollution and has become critical to global sustainability as it affects marine ecosystems and human health. Litter enters the marine environment from land areas, rivers, and sea-based sources, and the coastal and ocean circulation turns it into a transboundary issue that demands collaborative work and coordination, which are at the core of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) implementation.
Being aware of the challenges and complexities of marine litter, over the last 15 years, several EU research funding programmes have addressed marine litter from different perspectives but with complementary approaches, resulting in a relevant universe of projects and associated results. This important legacy has led to new knowledge and guidance in the form of scientific publications and technical reports, online information products, interfaces and apps for data management, monitoring and modeling tools, protocols and technologies, case studies, and awareness materials.
In this context, within the frame of Pillar IV of the Atlantic Action Plan and linked to the Interreg Atlantic Area project Free LitterAT, a collaborative framework was launched to engage key EU projects addressing marine litter that have delivered or plan to deliver tangible and applicable outcomes to help coastal communities and actors to prevent and/or reduce marine litter and achieve the vision of litter-free coastal communities. The first product of this collaborative initiative is a Toolkit intended to make them visible and facilitate access to key projects and associated resources while also fostering networking and result clustering activities.
Copyright: CETMAR
Free LitterAT PROJECT
Strongly aligned with Atlantic Pillar IV objectives, the Free LitterAT project, titled ‘Advancing towards litter-free Atlantic coastal communities by preventing and reducing macro and micro litter,’ is a European project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme 2021-2027. The broader goal of the project is to achieve litter-free coastal communities by combining knowledge, tools, and technology development with implementation through pilot actions and multi-stakeholder engagement.
The project is coordinated by Centro Tecnológico del Mar (CETMAR) and will run from November 2023 to October 2026. The consortium is integrated by 14 partners and 9 associated partners with complementary capacities and experience that cover diverse areas of work necessary to tackle marine litter.
The main objectives of the project are:
- Preventing marine litter (based on circular economy principles) by improving waste management and recycling and facilitating the implementation of Single Use Plastic (SUP) and Port Reception Facilities (PRF) Directives.
- Understanding the origin and location of litter accumulation by identifying major sources, pathways, and hotspots of marine litter (through monitoring and modeling).
- Reducing and removing marine litter and associated risks.
- Promoting litter-free local communities by developing pilot actions and awareness-raising activities.
Free LitterAT is giving special attention and dedicating efforts to communication and capitalization activities crucial to deliver and transfer applicable knowledge and resources to a wide community of end-users beyond the partnership and in other territories. Among these activities, the project directly contributes to Pillar IV of the Atlantic Action Plan, as most actions are aligned with this Pillar Goal 7 'The fight against marine pollution'.
THE TOOLKIT
The Toolkit includes references and facilitates access to selected projects and associated resources that may become, in the short- or mid-term, solutions to achieve litter-free coastal communities.
To produce this online resource, European project repositories, databases, and related literature were consulted, and a selection of key European projects dealing with marine litter was performed. These projects were further approached to join the initiative and to support the identification and extraction of their results and outputs.
- The following criteria were applied for selecting projects:
- Projects with a result-oriented approach
- Projects producing applicable knowledge and tangible outputs applicable to tackle marine litter
- Ongoing and recently finalized projects
- Results published in English
- Publicly available information
With the collaboration of project coordinators, a factsheet for each project was produced, including basic information such as title, objectives, funding programme, coordinator, project website, and the list of outputs and resources identified for each of them.
The criteria for selecting resources were: 1) tangible results published in English that can be implemented or put into exploitation by end-users: i.e., guidelines and methodologies, good practices, manuals, procedures, prototype technology, lifecycle studies, ready-to-work tools and technologies, software, apps, training and communication materials, 2) scientific publications containing applicable knowledge, and 3) relevance for the following thematic areas:
Copyright: CETMAR
- Waste management and recycling
- Prevention of litter entrance from sources (e.g., rivers)
- Applicable detection, monitoring, and modeling approaches
- Marine litter removal and collection (ALDFG, Fishing for Litter, coast and beach clean-up)
Awareness raising
For finalized projects, a link is provided to facilitate direct access to the resources. For ongoing projects, the state of development of the resources and a link to the project website are included, allowing Toolkit users to follow their progress and access resources once they become available. The Toolkit does not intend to be comprehensive in terms of capturing the huge universe of projects dealing with marine litter but to showcase a significant sample of key projects that can contribute with their outcomes to achieving litter-free coastal communities.
You can find more details in CINEA's website: here