Tons and Types of Garbage from annual beach cleaning

Themes

Marine pollution

PSBR model type

State (S)

Corresponding targets

SDGs

14.1 By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution. 14.1.1 Index of coastal eutrophication and floating plastic debris density. 2020 Quantitative target: Taiwan Marine Debris Action Plan is tentatively scheduled for 2018–2022. Continue promoting the "On-going Action Plan" of Taiwan Marine Debris Action Plan and execute "Future Action" to effectively reduce debris and impact on the marine environment.

Aichi Biodiversity Targets

Target 8 By 2020, pollution, including from excess nutrients, has been brought to levels that are not detrimental to ecosystem function and biodiversity.

Background

Marine debris (or marine litter) is commonly defined as "any object that has been discarded, disposed of, or inadvertently abandoned, and enters the coast or marine environment." Marine debris may come from land and sea. The sources of terrestrial debris include landfills, river entrainment, sewage drainage system spills, industrial wastes, and coastal recreational activities, etc.; those from the sea include ship goods, cruise courses, discarded fishing gears from fishing vessels, discarded debris of warships and research vessels, offshore natural gas and petroleum exploitation facilities, aquaculture facilities, etc. Marine debris can be further subdivided, based on the distribution locations, into seafloor marine debris (SMD), floating marine debris (FMD), and beach debris (BMD). As humans inhabit intensively in coastal areas, coupled with the increasingly active maritime transport and fishing activities, the amount of marine debris has been accumulated over the years and has become increasingly huge. It even gathers at sea into island-like drifts, extending as long as 500 nautical miles, and is nicknamed "plastic soup". The harm of marine debris is increasing day by day, and it has become a problem that we should work hard to face.

Definition and Calculation

1. The tonnage of marine debris collected during beach cleaning at specific beaches and during sea cleaning every year or quarter will be recorded. The debris was classified using the International Coastal Cleanup (Icc) classification datasheet, and the proportion of plastic debris in total marine debris was calculated to provide standardized data.

2. The past status of the development of this indicator data is Iii, which means there is no data on this indicator to show the indicator trend. The current website of the Ocean Conservation Administration integrates the data of Coastal Clean-Up (coastal cleaning adoption system) of the Environmental Protection Administration, Executive Yuan, the results of the sea cleaning operations carried out by the county and city governments, and the historical beach cleaning records of the Society of Wilderness of Taiwan. The data can be used for this indicator; but the frequency of beach cleaning activities, the number of participants, and the number of hours put into cleaning, etc. are all different among data sources, resulting in the inability to standardize the data, which still needs improvement in the future.

Updates

According to the information on the website of the Ocean Conservation Administration, the total weight of debris cleaned in beach-cleaning activities in 2018 was 115,578.975 kg, and the number of beach-cleaning debris was 181,480 items.

Trends

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Data Management Authorities

Environmental Protection Administration, Executive Yuan, Society of Wilderness of Taiwan

Data Source / URL

Marine Debris Management page on the website of Marine Conservation Network by the Ocean Conservation Administration.