Tourism primarily chargeable for marine litter on Mediterranean seashores

PICTURE: Marine litter accumulates on the beaches of the Mediterranean islands
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Credit ICTA-UAB

Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) warn of the impact of the current tourism model in the Mediterranean islands on the production of marine litter on beaches and recommend taking advantage of the situation created by the Covid19 pandemic to to rethink a new, more sustainable model. The study, recently published in Scientific Reports magazine, shows that recreational use of the Mediterranean island’s beaches is responsible for up to 80% of the marine litter accumulated on these beaches during the summer, and the fragmentation of larger beaches creates large amounts of microplastic in plastic.

The international study, carried out by ICTA-UAB researchers, analyzed the impact of waste generated by tourism on eight Mediterranean islands over the past four years. Marine litter, including microplastics, can be defined as persistent, manufactured or processed solid material that is disposed of, disposed of or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment. It results from human activity and can be found in all oceans and seas. “This environmental problem threatens the health of marine ecosystems and can lead to biodiversity loss. It can also have a huge economic impact on coastal communities that depend on ecosystem services by increasing spending on beach cleaning, public health or waste disposal.” says Dr. Michaël Grelaud, ICTA-UAB researcher and author of the article.

The Mediterranean region welcomes around a third of world tourism every year and is particularly affected by pollution in this sector. Because of their attractiveness, Mediterranean islands multiply their population by up to 20 during the high season. This presents a challenge for coastal communities that are dependent on the sector but have to adapt to and cope with the increase in waste caused by the seasonal influx of tourists also arise on the beaches. Indeed, coastal tourism is likely to be a major land-based source of marine litter.

The amount and type of waste collected was characterized during 147 marine litter surveys carried out on 24 beaches on 8 different Mediterranean islands during both the 2017 low and high tourism seasons. The results show that the vast majority of items collected are made of plastic, as they account for more than 94% of marine litter.

In summer, an average of 330 articles per 1000 m2 of beach accumulate per day on the popular tourist beaches, 5.7 times more than in the off-season. This corresponds to one item every three steps. The number of items visitors are most likely to leave on the beaches, such as cigarette butts, straws or soda cans, accounts for more than 65% of the amount of marine litter that accumulates on the beaches that are most popular with tourists. This can increase up to 80% if the large microplastics are included, as can be seen from the results: during the summer, plastic objects left on the beach are fragmented under the combined effects of sunlight and friction with the sand, which is accelerated by the high volume of Visitors. Extrapolated to all islands in the Mediterranean, the results show that during the high tourist peak in July and August, visitors could be responsible for the accumulation of more than 40 million articles per day.

In 2019 and after running citizen awareness campaigns, the results showed a decrease of more than 50% in the items associated with visitors.

“These very encouraging results are likely to benefit from the growing public awareness of plastic pollution in the oceans, or of the European Commission’s actions to reduce marine litter, such as the Single-Use Plastic Directive,” said Dr. Patrizia Ziveri, ICREA Research Professor at ICTA-UAB.

In addition, they recall that “the restriction caused by COVID19 and the associated temporary drastic reduction in tourism offer an opportunity to rethink the fundamental importance of sustainable tourism in order to ensure a healthy future for the environment and therefore also for people “, Dr. Patrizia Ziveri closes.

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