Plastic Pollution in the Ocean

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Thursday 18th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of reducing plastic pollution in the ocean.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate on plastic pollution in the ocean, ahead of the United Nations global plastics treaty second round negotiations next week. I also thank the Chamber Engagement Team and constituents who have responded to its survey on this important issue.

As an island nation here in the UK, we see first hand the effect of our plastic pollution washing up along our coastline. While plastic has been one of the world’s most valuable inventions, inappropriate waste recycling has led to a global crisis where microplastics are present in our waterways and food chains. Nearly 460 megatonnes of plastic were produced in 2019. That is expected to reach 1,231 megatonnes by 2060—a 267% increase—and plastic waste is expected to see a 287% increase.

As a nation, we have reacted to our increased knowledge of the effects of plastic pollution via fantastic societal change. The use of reusable products, such as coffee cups and shopping bags, has really cut down the amount of waste washing up on our shores. The carrier bag charge, implemented in 2015, has reduced the use of single-use carrier bags in supermarkets by 95%, while the ban on straws, stirrers and cotton buds significantly reduced the number ending up in our oceans. Following the ban, the Great British Beach Clean said that cotton bud sticks had moved out of the UK’s top 10 most common beach litter items. The 2018 ban on microbeads has also limited difficult-to-clear plastics in our water. The Marine Conservation Society’s Beachwatch project also found 11% less litter on our beaches in 2022 compared with 2012.

There are also fantastic community efforts, such as Plastic Free North Devon, which work in the community to organise clean-ups, educate hospitality businesses on reducing plastic use and—especially important in tourist hotspots such as north Devon—offer wooden bodyboards in place of the traditional polystyrene ones. National bodies such as Keep Britain Tidy are launching projects such as their Ocean Recovery project, which is the only UK-based trawl net recycling scheme. Since being established last year, it has already recycled 100 tonnes of trawl net and rope. We are making great strides in reducing the amount of plastic we use, but we also need to make it easier to recycle the plastic—for instance, the estimated 4 billion plastic bottles that are not recycled each year.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for initiating the debate. She may be aware that the World Wildlife Fund argues that some 8 million tonnes of plastic get dumped every year. While she rightly describes the progress made in this country in particular—but also in others—does she share my view that for the future, we actually need to see discussion of how we can toughen up product standards to increase the amount of plastic that can be recycled, and give consumers more information about which plastics used in products can be recycled and which cannot?

[Selaine Saxby]

Yes, in many ways I agree. I will certainly come on to speak far more about the global implications of the situation. While we are doing so much on our own island, we need to do so much more. In particular, the upcoming deposit return scheme, confirmed in the environment improvement plan, will bring the UK in line with similar nations, and recycle 90% or more of relevant containers.

Alongside reducing use and recycling as much as possible, we also need to look at the hierarchy of waste and reusing plastic products where possible. I ask the Minister to look at setting a target for the reuse of packaging, alongside our work on recycling. By setting a target, we would incentivise businesses to invest in reuse schemes that reduce the amount of resources required in our packaging supply chains. A recent UN report on reducing plastic pollution found that proper reuse systems could reduce plastic pollution by 30% by 2040, compared with 20% for recycling. Investing in and facilitating a reuse system would also reduce the cost of waste management and increase jobs in the sector. Unfortunately, despite UK efforts, plastic has been entering the ocean for decades and continues to do so.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. Microplastics continue to threaten our marine ecosystems, with research showing that fishing net pollution is deadly for sharks, seabirds and seals. Does she agree that the solution to this must be found through balancing industry productivity while increasing necessary regulation?

[Selaine Saxby]

Of course, it is vital that we find a balance. Fishing materials continue to be an issue, which is why I think that some of the initiatives that are already under way to help the industry to recycle more are so vital.

As I was saying, plastics have been entering the ocean for decades and continue to do so. Between modern-day plastic and legacy plastic—the oldest piece of plastic that has been found is a buoy from 1966—there are trillions of pieces of plastic floating in our oceans. They affect our entire ocean’s ecosystem at every stage, from turtles getting trapped in nets to plastic breaking down into microplastics and slowly building up in our food chain.

Although we do not know as much about our seas as we should, we know that plastic has negatively affected almost 700 marine species. Microplastics also slowly sink down through our oceans to settle on the ocean floor, forming plastic deserts that kill wildlife and can stretch up to hundreds of kilometres. The largest floating patch is the great Pacific garbage patch, which contains more than 100 million kg of plastic over an area three times the size of France. It is the largest example of an ocean gyre where the currents draw flotsam to a point. As the convergence spot of the currents from the south Pacific and the Arctic, the zone is a plastic superhighway. It takes an average of only seven years for plastic floating in the ocean to reach the great Pacific garbage patch.

We know that the next generation care passionately about the planet, particularly their oceans and beaches. As a coastal MP, I know how engaged our schools are with this issue, and it often acts as an introduction to wider conservation work. Last year, I attended Greenpeace’s big plastic count, which almost a quarter of a million people took part in, including more than 9,500 school students. That shows just how seriously our youngest constituents take plastic pollution. Books such as “Ruby Rockpool”, which was written by the mermaid Hannah Pearl, suggest ways that youngsters can help. They bring the problems to life, but unfortunately solutions are not as simple as in Hannah’s excellent book, in which the ocean is healed with a sea star’s power.

Of course, no matter what we do domestically, this is ultimately a global issue requiring a global solution. The UK is responsible for almost 7 million sq km of the world’s oceans, and one of our overseas territories in the south Pacific demonstrates the challenge. Henderson island in the Pitcairn Islands is both uninhabited and thousands of miles from the nearest population centre. Despite that, an estimated 40 million pieces of plastic rubbish have landed on its shores. The island is home to the endangered Henderson petrel and the flightless Henderson crake, and is an important breeding ground for many other large seabirds. As we saw in Sir David Attenborough’s excellent “Blue Planet II”, the impact of plastic in the ocean extends to seabirds and can lead to parents feeding their offspring plastic instead of fish.

To limit the continuing impact of plastic on our oceans and food chain, we need not only to reduce how much plastic waste irresponsibly reaches our environment, but work to remove it. Fortunately, there are innovative start-ups such as the Ocean Cleanup, which undertakes the only efforts to remove legacy plastics from our oceans. It aims to remove 90% of floating plastic from the ocean by 2040.

[Margaret Ferrier]

As we know, tiny microfibres are entering the sea due to us washing our clothes. The company CLEANR is now turning to 3D printing technology to create microplastic filters for washing machines. Does the hon. Member agree that we must continue to use new technologies available to develop innovative solutions to this environmental crisis?

[Selaine Saxby]

Indeed, I sponsored the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) on that topic. Although there is much work to do on microfibres, the plastics I will talk about are significantly more dramatic, in terms of their magnitude and the skills that are needed to clean them up.

To remove the waste from the gyres, the Ocean Cleanup is using a combination of computer modelling, artificial intelligence and space-borne plastic detection to identify the densest areas of plastic to optimise clean-up. It has created a trawler-type solution that pulls a semi-circular 4 metre-high net system very slowly—half walking speed— through the garbage patch into a funnel called a retention zone, which takes the plastic on to ships to be taken back to shore. It sounds very simple, but it is in fact highly complex to work in the open seas of the Pacific and protect wildlife—it has several active systems to prevent bycatch—as it removes different types and sizes of plastic pieces. As it scales up the system, it is reducing the cost, and it aims to reach €10 per kilo of plastic waste.

As 80% of marine plastics are estimated to have come from land-based sources—the remaining 20% are from fishing and other marine sources—the Ocean Cleanup is also focused on preventing waste from reaching the ocean in the first place, predominantly from rivers. It has identified that 1% of the world’s rivers are responsible for transmitting 80% of those land-based plastics to the ocean. To prevent that plastic from entering the oceans, it has developed the Interceptor system, which is currently focused on the most polluting rivers. Its Trashfence system is used in the Rio Motagua in Guatemala, which currently emits approximately 20,000 megatonnes of plastic into the Caribbean each year, or 2% of all the plastic emitted into the world’s oceans annually. That is a key scheme for the Ocean Cleanup to be working on.

For the Ocean Cleanup to achieve its aims, it needs long-term, dependable funding. So far, it has raised more than $250 million from private donations. It is asking the UK to become the first Government to support it financially. At present, it needs $37 million to fund one of its new systems per year.

As a founding member of the High Ambition Coalition to end plastic pollution, which called for a target in the UN global plastics treaty to stop plastics entering our oceans by 2040, the UK Government are leading the way in a global effort to clean up our oceans. They could signal a greater dedication to cleaning up the great Pacific garbage patch ahead of a legal obligation. They could also help with mapping the problems around the world, such as in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, where the UK has permanent naval bases.

The UK has an excellent capability in oceanographic research, and could work with the Ocean Cleanup to help it with the vital mapping of the gyres so that we know where to find the plastic, how much is there, what it likely consists of, where it is coming from and so on. The Ocean Cleanup has proven know-how, as it was the first to fully map the great Pacific garbage patch.

Although plastics have a significant impact on our wildlife, they also affect island nations smaller than our own. The Pacific island nations are not just on the frontline of rising sea levels; they are among those most affected by the increase in plastic in our oceans. China is working hard to court them and extend its influence and power projection, but the UK still has significant interests in the region. China is one of the world’s largest polluters, and the UK can strengthen its ties in the region by supporting measures to limit plastic pollution and help clean up other island nations’ waters.

The UN global plastic treaty second round negotiations next week are another opportunity for the UK to push for positive changes to our environment as a global leader. At COP26, we secured the Glasgow climate pact, and at COP15 in Montreal, we pushed for global protections of biodiversity and nature. We need to add our voice to negotiations to secure limits to virgin plastic production and unnecessary plastic use. With the fifth largest marine estate in the world, and a population dedicated to protecting our environment and wildlife, we are well placed not only to cut down on our own plastic waste but to lead global efforts in cleaning up our oceans.

We need to remove legacy plastics while they are retrievable. If we wait too long, they will break down into microplastics and we will have a far harder job of removing plastic from our environment. I hope the Government will not only continue to implement their environment improvement plan, but will lead support for projects such as the Ocean Cleanup.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patricia Gibson]

Yes. The hon. Lady tempts me, because I will say more about that in a moment.

Recycle Track Systems says:

“There are numerous initiatives to curb ocean plastic pollution at any one time, including everything from grassroots beach clean-ups to international agreements. One of the recent changes is the United Nations Environment Assembly’s agreement in March 2022 to develop a legally binding treaty to bring plastic pollution to an end. It will still be years in the making but is a considerable step forward according to many. What’s more, many organizations, such as Ocean Conservancy, are now calling for more dramatic changes to stop ocean plastic pollution, such as the reduction in production and consumption as well as outright bans on single-use plastics”—

as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) mentioned— “Many are calling for a shift to a zero-waste circular economy as the only solution to a plastic problem that we can’t recycle away.”

The Scottish Government aim to make Scotland a zero-waste society with a circular economy. They have a target of recycling 70% of waste by 2025, exceeding even EU targets, and they are matching the EU target for plastic packaging to be economically recyclable or reusable by 2030. The Scottish Government are also a signatory to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s new plastics economy global commitment, which will ban specified items of single-use plastics in EU member states. They have signed up to the agreement, even though there is no compulsion for Scotland to do so, as it is no longer a member of the EU, sadly. I hope the UK Government will follow the example of Scotland and the EU in that regard.

Scotland’s deposit return scheme works on the basis of the polluter pays, a principle that incentivises recycling, reduces litter and tackles climate change by reducing the amount of plastic going to landfill or ending up in our oceans. The scheme has been delayed because the First Minister is very keen to work with business to get this right. It is in all our interests, even if it is sometimes tempting to make cheap political points about this issue. The reality is that it is a fine and noble principle, and we should all work to make sure that it can do what it says on the tin. We all need to think about how we use, reuse and dispose of our plastic, because that is the problem that oceans face today.

[Selaine Saxby]

Would the hon. Lady agree that, while the deposit return scheme systems that are being looked at across the UK are vital, is it not better—as we are talking about international efforts—that we all work together to ensure that the scheme runs across the whole country, rather than having different schemes in different parts of our own islands, making it more complex for everyone involved?

[Patricia Gibson]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady, but the point is that we cannot all move at the speed of the slowest caravan. We have to be bold and ambitious in what we seek our deposit returns scheme to achieve. What she proposes would be a better way forward, but the UK Government are slower and less ambitious. That is a pity, but we cannot be held back by that.

The scale of the plastic pollution in our oceans is catastrophic, and it is deeply damaging and deadly to marine life and habitats. It is difficult to know how many marine animals are killed each year due to plastic pollution. Many will go completely unrecorded. That said, some estimate that over 1 million animals, including many sea turtles, die each year due to plastic pollution in the ocean. The majority of animals that die are seabirds. Mammals are often more visible in the media and the public imagination, but they actually count for only around 100,000 deaths. That is still a huge number, but it does not tell the whole story. Those are just the marine animals that die as a result of plastic debris in the ocean. The toll would be much higher if other polluting factors, such as emissions from plastic production, were taken into account.

On a different tack, animals carry microplastics in their bodies, so when those animals are eaten those microplastics are also ingested. The process is called trophic transfer of microplastics. Since one animal eats another, microplastics can move through the food chain, ultimately reaching the human food chain. Some scientists have estimated that the average person might eat 5 grams of microplastics in a week, which is about the weight of a credit card. Another study breaks that down to being up to 52,000 particles annually from various food sources. According to the UN, there are over 50 trillion microplastics in the ocean, more than the number of stars in the Milky Way—that is astonishing. Due to the sheer quantity of microplastics in the ocean, it is difficult to find any marine animal without plastic particles in its gut or tissue. It is poisoning their food supply.

Whether or not microplastics impact human health is a relatively new field of study, but what we know so far is troubling, according to experts. Plastics and microplastics contain many harmful additives and tend to collect additional contaminants from their surroundings. Microplastic ingestion has been correlated with irritable bowel syndrome, while plastic-associated chemicals, such as bisphenol A, show correlations with chronic illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. We are talking about serious contamination. Action on plastic waste in our oceans requires us to reflect very carefully on the price we pay for plastic pollution—and the price our oceans pay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Selaine Saxby]

Again, it has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank all hon. Members, and particularly the Minister, for participating. The Minister’s extensive speech demonstrated the volume of work that the Government have undertaken and continue to undertake to clean up our vital oceans.

I particularly thank the Ocean Cleanup team—João Ribeiro-Bidaoui is in the Public Gallery. The video of the work that it is undertaking in the Pacific—I understand that the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) has seen it—is very compelling. I urge Members and anyone else who cares to do so to join us on 13 September in the Churchill Room. There will be a live transmission by the founder of the Ocean Cleanup, Boyan Slat, from the Pacific as he works on the ships cleaning up the ocean.

We have a real opportunity to do more on the global stage. Great Britain really could rule the waves on this one.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of reducing plastic pollution in the ocean.