The MARLISCO Guide for Reducing Marine Litter: Get Inspired and Become Innovative Through Best Practices.

Abstract

This guide does not aim to reinvent the wheel! It is based on a collection of best practices for the reduction of marine litter recorded from across Europe within the project MARLISCO (www.marlisco.eu). This document is meant to give an overview of the types of activities that different stakeholders could implement to reduce marine litter. Due to the specificities of different areas it would not be wise to attempt to produce a step-by-step guide on how to implement certain practices. Nor would it be possible to identify and describe practices that would be suitable for implementation across Europe. By providing an outline of the main types of practices, as well as indicating further sources of information and details, this Guide acts as the starting point for anyone interested in taking action against marine litter. Before you implement any practice to reduce marine litter think of the effect it is likely to have on your target audience’s behaviour. For any action to be effective in the long term, it must cause a shift in behaviour that will be sustained even after the end of your audience’s direct involvement. This is not always easy to achieve. It requires effective awareness- raising in tandem to any other practice that you are implementing. This Guide provides some examples of practices that specifically aim to raise awareness and promote social responsibility and you can use them to get ideas on how to ap- proach and influence your target audience. There are many other such practices being implemented around Europe, and you can find some of them on the complete MARLISCO Web-Database and The Berlin Conference Practices. Of course, education is at the core of behaviour change and the MARLISCO project has developed a number of educational tools that can be used for this purpose. This Guide does not include a dedicated section on monitoring of marine litter. This should not be taken as an indication that monitoring is not important. On the contrary, marine litter monitoring is the only way to get a clear idea of the sources of marine litter as well as to assess whether the actions taken to mitigate the problem are effective. The importance of monitoring is reflected in the fact that, according to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive requirements, each Member State must develop and implement marine litter monitoring protocols. It is strongly recommended that, where practices that could have an effect on marine litter are implemented, they are accompanied by a well-designed monitoring programme, which will record the amounts and types of marine litter before and after the implementation of the practice to assess any changes and thus the effectiveness of the practice.