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Floating macrolitter leaked from Europe into the ocean

Nature Sustainability volume 4, pages 474–483 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Riverine systems act as converging pathways for discarded litter within drainage basins, becoming key elements in gauging the transfer of mismanaged waste into the ocean. However, riverine litter data are scarce and biased towards microplastics, generally lacking information about larger items. Based on the first ever database of riverine floating macrolitter across Europe, we have estimated that between 307 and 925 million litter items are released annually from Europe into the ocean. The plastic fraction represented 82% of the observed litter, mainly fragments and single-use items (that is, bottles, packaging and bags). Our modelled estimates show that a major portion of the total litter loading is routed through small-sized drainage basins (<100 km2), indicating the relevance of small rivers, streams and coastal run-off. Moreover, the major contribution of high-income countries to the macrolitter inputs suggests that reducing ocean pollution cannot be achieved only by improving waste management, but also requires changing consumption habits and behaviour to curb waste generation at source. The inability of countries with well-developed recovery systems to control the leakage of waste into the environment further supports the need to regulate the production and use of plastic on a global scale.

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Fig. 1: Top riverine FM litter items and materials in European rivers.
Fig. 2: Floating macrolitter flux and annual loading in 42 rivers from 11 countries.
Fig. 3: Litter transfer efficiency per river basin.
Fig. 4: Spatial distribution of FML from Europe into the ocean.
Fig. 5: Distribution of FML per country, ocean region and drainage basin categories.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available at https://marinelitterlab.eu/ and from the corresponding author upon request. Datasets include a GIS shapefile for the estimates of ‘annual floating macrolitter loading’ (FML) obtained in the modelling output.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the additional members (coordinators and observers) of RiLON, listed in Supplementary Data 5, for their support in the field data collection and feedback during the data quality control. D.G.-F. was supported by the JRC institutional exploratory project RIMMEL (272346), PLASTREND (BBVA Foundation) and the European Union (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018 846843 - LitRivus). J.V. and C.M.-C. were supported by the MIDaS project (Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, CTM2016-77106-R, AEI/FEDER/UE).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Javier Castro-Jiménez

    Present address: Laboratory of Biogeochemistry of Organic Contaminants, IFREMER, Nantes, France

  2. Elisa Rojo-Nieto

    Present address: Department of Ecological Chemistry, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

  3. Rosanna I. Schöneich-Argent

    Present address: Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland, Friends of the Earth Germany, Hannover, Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Biología, Instituto Universitario de Investigación Marina, University of Cádiz and European University of the Seas, Puerto Real, Spain

    Daniel González-Fernández, Andrés Cózar, Josué Viejo & Carmen Morales-Caselles

  2. Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Ispra, Italy

    Georg Hanke

  3. Department of Aquaculture and Fisheries, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, Agricultural University of Tirana, Tirane, Albania

    Rigers Bakiu

  4. Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA-CERCA), University of Girona, Girona, Spain

    Damià Barceló

  5. Water and Soil Research Group, Department of Environmental Chemistry, IDAEA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain

    Damià Barceló

  6. Department of Life Sciences, MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Filipa Bessa

  7. Surfrider Foundation Europe, Biarritz, France

    Antoine Bruge

  8. Paisaje Limpio Association, Majadahonda, Spain

    María Cabrera

  9. Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, Aix Marseille University, University of Toulon, CNRS, IRD, Marseille, France

    Javier Castro-Jiménez

  10. Centre de Formation et de Recherche sur les Environnements Méditerranéens, Université de Perpignan Via Domitia UMR CNRS 5110, Perpignan, France

    Mel Constant

  11. BIO-SOST, Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale, Rome, Italy

    Roberto Crosti

  12. Biophysics Institute, CNR, Pisa, Italy

    Yuri Galletti

  13. METU - Institute of Marine Sciences, Middle East Technical University, Mersin, Turkey

    Ahmet E. Kideys

  14. Department of Physicochemical Research, LEPL Alexandre Janelidze Institute of Geology, Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia

    Nino Machitadze

  15. Águas de Gaia EM, Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal

    Joana Pereira de Brito

  16. State Oceanographic Institute, Moscow, Russia

    Maria Pogojeva

  17. Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Nuno Ratola

  18. OIKOS – Associação de Defesa do Ambiente e do Património da Região de Leiria, Leiria, Portugal

    Júlia Rigueira

  19. Department of Environmental Technologies, International Campus of Excellence of the Sea, University of Cadiz, Puerto Real, Spain

    Elisa Rojo-Nieto

  20. Ukrainian Scientific Center of Ecology of the Sea, Odesa, Ukraine

    Oksana Savenko

  21. National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine

    Oksana Savenko

  22. Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Wilhelmshaven, Germany

    Rosanna I. Schöneich-Argent

  23. Department of Marine Chemistry and Biochemistry, Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences, Sopot, Poland

    Grzegorz Siedlewicz

  24. Institute of Marine Sciences, National Research Council, Lerici, Italy

    Giuseppe Suaria

  25. Department of Marine Science, University of Aegean, Lesbos, Greece

    Myrto Tourgeli

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  1. Daniel González-Fernández
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Contributions

D.G.-F., A.C. and G.H. conceived and drafted the present study; they contributed equally to the work. D.G.-F., A.C., J.V. and C.M.-C. analysed the data and prepared the results. The rest of the authors coordinated and participated in the field data collection and commented on the data quality assessment for the RIMMEL database. All authors read and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel González-Fernández.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Figs. 1–5 and Table 1.

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Supplementary Data

The file contains five spreadsheets (Supplementary Data 1–5) with the data used to produce the analyses and results presented in the main manuscript.

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González-Fernández, D., Cózar, A., Hanke, G. et al. Floating macrolitter leaked from Europe into the ocean. Nat Sustain 4, 474–483 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00722-6

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