The growing amount of litter reaching our oceans is one of the most significant forms of marine pollution, posing threats to both marine ecosystems and human health.

As litter enters the marine environment from land and rivers, and gets to the sea basins of different countries, it turns into a transboundary issue. Therefore, to be addressed effectively, it requires a transnational action involving policy makers and local authorities, researchers, the industry, Non-Governmental Organisations, and civil society.

Being aware of the challenges of marine litter, in the last 15 years several EU funding programmes have addressed marine litter under different perspectives. The outcome is a wide range of EU research 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 modelling tools, protocols and technologies, case studies and awareness materials.

EU projects joining forces on marine litter

The Task Force on Healthy ocean and resilient coasts (Pillar IV) of the Atlantic Action Plan of the European Commission, and the Interreg Atlantic Area project Free LitterAT have launched a collaborative framework to address this issue.

The objective is to engage key EU projects that had delivered or plan to deliver tangible outcomes to help coastal communities and stakeholders to prevent and/or reduce marine litter for litter-free coastal communities.

The full list of projects that joined the initiative can be found at the end of the news.

Marine litter-free toolkit

As a first product of this collaborative initiative, they developed a Free Litter Toolkit to facilitate the access to key projects and associated resources, while also fostering networking and result clustering activities.

The toolkit includes references to selected projects and associated resources that are expected to become solutions to achieve litter-free coastal communities.

To produce the toolkit, European project repositories, databases and related literature were consulted. Selected projects were also approached to join the initiative and to support the identification of their results.

The resources selected cover tangible results such as guidelines and methodologies, good practices, manuals, procedures, prototype technology, lifecycle studies, ready-to-work tools and technologies, software, apps, training and communication materials. It also includes scientific publications in the following thematic areas:

• Waste management and recycling
• Prevention of litter entrance from sources (e.g. rivers)
• Applicable detection, monitoring and modelling approaches
• Marine litter removal and collection (abandoned, lost or other discarded fishing gear, Fishing for Litter schemes, coast and beach clean-up)
• Awareness raising

The Toolkit does not assume to be comprehensive in terms of capturing the huge universe of projects dealing with marine litter. However, it showcases a significant sample of key projects that can contribute to litter-free coastal communities with their outcomes.

Although the action is promoted in the framework of the Atlantic Action Plan, the scope of the collaboration is not limited to this geographical area. It has the vocation to be applicable to other sea basins too.

Free Litter Toolkit

Future actions

A wide dissemination plan for the toolkit will be implemented with the involvement of the participating EU projects and the support of the Atlantic Action Plan Pillar IV taskforce. The key goal is to reach as many potential end users involved in promoting litter free communities as possible.

The organisation of joint actions (workshops, pilot actions, training activities), and the possibility of clustering the results of the projects will be explored.

Background – PILLAR IV of the Atlantic Action Plan

The Atlantic Maritime Strategy, adopted by the European Commission in 2011, was created in response to calls from stakeholders for a more ambitious, open and effective cooperation in the Atlantic Ocean Area. The first Atlantic Action Plan (2013-2020) was updated by the Action Plan 2.0, released in 2020, and aims to unlock the potential of the blue economy in the Atlantic Area while preserving marine ecosystems and contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The implementation of the Atlantic Action Plan is supported by the Sea Basins Assistance Mechanism funded under the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund.

The Action Plan has the ambition to achieve seven goals under the four thematic pillars listed below through concrete actions mobilising all relevant Atlantic stakeholders.

• Pillar I: Ports as gateways and hubs for the blue economy
• Pillar II: Blue skills of the future and ocean literacy
• Pillar III: Marine renewable energy
• Pillar IV: Healthy ocean and resilient coasts

These pillars are interconnected and trans-regional by nature. They address key challenges and aim to foster sustainable blue growth and contribute to greater territorial cooperation in the EU Atlantic area. In practical terms, each Pillar is supported by a task force of representatives of the four Atlantic countries. Each taskforce is chaired by a Pillar Coordinator with every country being responsible for one pillar and nominating its coordinator.

The Pillar IV addresses the context of vulnerability of the European Atlantic Ocean and its coastal areas, which are exposed to several human activities.

The Pillar focuses on two specific goals (fig I): Goal 6 “Stronger coastal resilience” and Goal 7 “The fight against marine pollution”, the latter one including a set of concrete actions, most of them addressed to tackle marine litter.

Further information can be found in the Pillar IV infographic.

Projects involved in the toolkit

AQUA-LIT – ‘Preventing measures for averting the discarding of litter in the marine environment from the aquaculture industry’

https://aqua-lit.eu/

CAPonLITTER – ‘Capitalising good coastal practices and improving policies to prevent marine litter’

https://www.interregeurope.eu/caponlitter/

CIRCNETS – ‘Blue Circular Nets’

https://www.interreg-npa.eu/projects/circnets/home/

CleanAtlantic – ‘Tackling Marine Litter in the Atlantic Area’

http://www.cleanatlantic.eu

CRoCuS – ‘Cleaner Rivers – Cleaner Seas’

http://earthforever.org/en/p22.html

EUROqCHARM – ‘EUROpean quality Controlled Harmonization Assuring Reproducible Monitoring and assessment of plastic pollution’

https://www.euroqcharm.eu/en/

Free LitterAT – ‘Advancing towards litter-free Atlantic coastal communities by preventing and reducing macro and micro litter’

http://www.freelitterat.eu

GoJelly – ‘GoJelly – A gelatinous solution to plastic pollution’

https://gojelly.eu/

INdIGO – ‘Innovative fishing Gear for Ocean’

https://indigo-interregproject.eu/

INSPIRE – ‘Innovative Solutions for Plastic Free European Rivers’

https://inspire-europe.org/

INTEMARES Artes Perdidos – ‘INTEMARES – Lost Fishing Gear’

www.artesperdidos.es

INTEMARES Caladeros Limpios – ‘INTEMARES – Clean Fishing Grounds’

https://www.miteco.gob.es/eu/costas/temas/proteccion-medio-marino/basuras-marinas/basura-acciones.html

LIFE LEMA – ‘Intelligent marine litter removal and management for local authorities’

https://www.azti.es/proyectos/life-lema/

MAELSTROM – ‘Smart technology for Marine Litter Sustainable Removal and Management’

https://www.maelstrom-h2020.eu/

MARELITT Baltic – ‘Reducing the impact of marine litter in the form of Derelict Fishing Gear (DFG) on the Baltic Sea environment’

https://www.marelittbaltic.eu/

Mo.Ri.net – ‘Monitoring, census, removal and recycling of ghost nets: fishermen as key players in the safeguard of the sea’

https://www.isprambiente.gov.it/en/projects/sea/mo-ri-net-project

NETTAG – ‘NetTag – Preventing marine litter from fisheries’

https://nettag.ciimar.up.pt/

NETTAG+ – ‘Preventing, avoiding and mitigating environmental impacts of fishing gears and associated marine litter’

https://nettagplus.eu/

Oceanwise – ‘Wise reduction of EPS marine litter in the North-East Atlantic Ocean’

https://www.oceanwise-project.eu/

Plastic Pirates – ‘Upscaling the Plastic Pirates citizen science initiative across Europe’

https://www.plastic-pirates.eu/en

REMEDIES – ‘Co-creating strong uptake of REMEDIES for the future of our oceans through deploying plastic litter valorisation and prevention pathways’

https://remedies-for-ocean.eu/

SEACLEAR – ‘SEarch, identificAtion and Collection of marine Litter with Autonomous Robots’

https://seaclear-project.eu/

SEACLEAR 2.0 – ‘Scalable full-cycle marine litter remediation in the Mediterranean: Robotic and Participatory solutions’

https://www.seaclear2.eu/

SEARCULAR – ‘Circular solutions for fishing gears’

https://searcular.eu/

TREASURE – ‘Targeting the reduction of plastic outflow into the Sorth sea’

https://www.interregnorthsea.eu/treasure