News Marine Litter

27.02.2023

As part of the programme "Marine Debris Framework – Regional hubs around the globe" (Marine:DeFRAG), the German Federal Environment Agency (BMUV) is to fund for the third time projects that actively contribute to sustainable production, marketing and utilisation of plastic products and thus to preventing the discharge of waste into the seas. For this, the Ministry will provide 25 million euros a year.

27.02.2023

In 2019, the Global Nature Fund (GNF), together with the Lake Constance Foundation and several Italian partners, launched the project "BLUE LAKES" to prevent the discharge of microplastic into freshwater ecosystems. Funded by the European Union's LIFE program, the project partners are working at several levels to reduce microplastic discharges into German and Italian lakes. As a central instrument, a “lakes paper” was developed in cooperation with the affected districts with a voluntary commitment to protect the waters from the input of microplastics. This lake charter is also to serve as a template for water protection worldwide.

27.02.2023

Udo Gattenlöhner is an agricultural scientist and managing director of the Global Nature Fund (GNF), a non-profit foundation for the environment and nature founded in 1998 with its head office in Radolfzell on Lake Constance. The foundation coordinates among other things the international network Living Lakes, which has 135 member lakes, and operates worldwide for the protection of lakes and waterways. The Global Nature Fund, together with the Lake Constance Foundation and several Italian partners, founded the project "BLUE LAKES", which is actively supported among others by the plastics producers at Plastics Europe. The project is focused on the avoidance and reduction of the discharge of microplastics into lakes (see the report "Project "LIFE BLUE LAKES" fights microplastic in lakes").

27.02.2023

American researchers from the University of Princeton working in aerospace technology have produced from egg protein a lightweight, highly porous aerogel, that is said to be suitable for removing microplastic from seawater. For this, the protein is freeze-dried and heated in an environment without oxygen to 900 °C until the desired aerogel structure is formed. According to the scientists, the resulting material removes microplastic from the water with an efficiency of more than 99 percent.

27.02.2023

In its "Close-up" series, Deutsche Welle portrayed in a thirty-minute film the work of the "pioneer of microplastics research", Professor Dr. Christian Laforsch, and the team from the Collaborative Research Centre at the University of Bayreuth. As the film shows, some of the basic research on microplastics there involves the use of measuring equipment that was specially developed and built at the university. In the interdisciplinary team, scientists are also working together with the plastics industry on alternatives to conventional plastics that would not end up as microplastics in the environment.

05.12.2022

Every two years since 1994, the BKV, in collaboration with what are now fifteen associations and institutions in the plastics and recycling industry and the IGBCE trade union, has published a comprehensive collection of data and facts on the production, processing and recycling of plastics in Germany. The study is now entitled "Material flow analysis of plastics in Germany" and also provides information on the production and use of recycled materials. As a result, the figures, which are highly regarded and cited in business and politics, are also seen as an indicator of the status of plastics recycling in Germany.

05.12.2022

A large proportion of the litter that has accumulated in the subtropical vortex of the North Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii in the so-called "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" (GPGP) originates, according to a recent study, directly at sea and is caused by very few countries. According to the study, which has been published in “Scientific Reports” by a research group from the Dutch non-profit organisation “The Ocean Cleanup”, the garbage vortex contains mostly fishing nets, ropes and other waste from industrial fishing.

05.12.2022

According to the scientific findings of a group of researchers led by fisheries ecologist Jörn Scharsack from the Thünen Institute in Bremerhaven, the quantities of microplastics ingested by fish in the North Sea and Baltic Sea do not lead to adverse effects on fish health. According to the scientists, eating fish from the two seas also does not pose a health risk to humans in this respect

05.12.2022

The larvae of a beetle species native to Central and South America can apparently survive with the plastic polystyrene as their only food source and even gain weight by ingesting it. This was the finding of a new study by the Australian University of Queensland, published in the journal Microbial Genomics. The researchers were able to demonstrate that the larvae of the species Zophobas morio (large black beetle), known as "superworms," are able to digest polystyrene (PS) thanks to the microbes in their intestines.

05.12.2022

Since 2012, Ms. Bergmann has been working intensively on the pollution of the oceans with plastics, has published extensively on this topic, among others, the book "Marine Anthropogenic Litter". Furthermore, she is a member of several expert groups - including the German delegation for negotiating the UN Plastics Treaty - and coordinates the international MICRO symposia on microplastics. At AWI, she is involved in the development of new methods for measuring plastic litter and microplastics in the seas, and also works on studies about the effects of plastic residues on organisms. Against this professional background, we asked Ms. Bergmann for her assessment of the results of the study by the Thünen Institute for Fisheries Ecology (see the report "Microplastics not harmful to fish").