What is marine plastic pollution costing us? The impacts of marine plastic on the Blue Economy

Editor’s note: The deluge of popular articles and reports on marine plastic continues, but here at The Skimmer, we became curious about one important area where we weren’t seeing as much information – how marine plastic pollution is affecting ocean users and the Blue Economy. We know that marine plastic is pretty much everywhere in the ocean and can have horrific effects on individual marine organisms – think whales and seabirds with bellies full of plastic – but that the research is just not there to fully assess the severity of marine ecosystem-level impacts.

But aside from the unpleasant views of trash-strewn beaches and coastal waters, how are people, cities, and countries affected? One important reason to dig into this area and have this information readily available is that money talks. If the harm to marine life doesn’t convince decision makers to make difficult changes to address marine plastic pollution, maybe understanding the economic and social impacts can.

So big picture, what is marine plastic pollution costing us?

• Before we dive into numbers, it is important to understand that two fundamental mismatches are at the heart of marine plastic pollution problem:
   
  1. When we use plastic, we are using an incredibly durable material for a lot of very short-term uses. Plastic items can take decades and centuries to degrade in the ocean (and then break up into even smaller plastic pieces). Our major use of plastics (36% of plastic use) is for packaging, however, which has an average useful life of 6 months or less.
      
  2. Marine plastic pollution is the result of a failure in economic markets. Specifically, the price of making and using things made out of plastic does not reflect the full cost of disposing of that plastic. Instead, that cost is passed on to other entities, often coastal municipalities and ocean users.
      
• So what does marine plastic pollution cost society? By one estimate, at least US$13 billion a year. This estimate was derived by estimating what it would cost companies that produce consumer goods to “internalize” the costs associated with their current practices (e.g., pay for cleanup of plastic waste). $13 billion a year is likely to be a significant underestimate too because there is so little information on the impacts of plastic waste (e.g., for microplastics) and it doesn’t include costs such as the transport of invasive marine species attached to plastics in the ocean.
   
• Moreover, this US$13 billion for marine plastic pollution is just a fraction of the overall cost to society of the production of plastic consumer goods (which is estimated to be at least US$75 billion a year). Other major costs to society from producing plastics include the costs associated with air pollution from incinerating plastic, and greenhouse gas emissions from extracting and processing raw materials. [To put this in perspective, estimates of the value of the global plastics market range from ~ US$650 billion to US$1.2 trillion.]
   
• Another effort to value the social and economic impacts of marine plastic pollution looks at how it affects marine ecosystem services. Researchers found that marine plastic has a negative impact on most ecosystem services, including fisheries, aquaculture, climate regulation, pest and disease control, heritage values, and recreation. Their back-of-the-envelope calculation is that marine plastic pollution has reduced marine ecosystem service delivery by at least 1-5%, for an annual loss of US$500-2500 billion to society. (This amounts to somewhere between US$3300 and $33,000 per ton of marine plastic pollution.) This estimate does not even include the social and economic costs to tourism, fisheries, shipping, and human health that we discuss below.
   

Okay, so that’s the big picture. What about various sectors? How are they affected?

• As we dig into the impacts of marine plastic pollution on different sectors of the Blue Economy, it is important to make it clear that we are really only beginning to understand the costs associated with marine plastic pollution. There is more research on the impacts to coastal communities, tourism, and fisheries than other sectors, but even in these areas, there are still big gaps in our understanding.
   
• It is also important to understand that there are different types of costs, and we are much farther along at quantifying some than others. Three types of costs include:
   
  • Actual expenditures that people or groups in a sector need to make to prevent or recover from damage, e.g., the costs of cleaning up beaches, the costs of fixing vessels, the costs repairing fishing gear damaged by plastic marine debris, and the costs of medical care for marine-debris related accidents or illnesses. These costs are typically the easiest to quantify.
     
  • Losses of output or revenue due to interactions with marine plastic pollution, e.g., the revenue from fish that couldn’t be caught because a net was full of debris or the spending of potential beachgoers who decided not to go to the beach because of litter.
     
  • Welfare costs that include human health impacts and loss of ecosystem services such as aesthetics or recreation. These costs are typically the hardest to quantify.
     
• So let’s dive in by looking at the costs of marine plastic pollution to coastal communities, which typically bear the brunt of the expense of cleaning up coastlines and disposing of waste.
   
  • In the UK, coastal municipalities spend ~ US$24 million a year to remove beach litter, with most of this in labor costs.[1]
     
  • The Netherlands and Belgium spend over US$13 million annually to remove beach litter.
     
  • Communities along the West Coast of the US spend ~ US$13 a year per resident on beach and waterway cleanup, street sweeping, installation of storm-water capture devices, storm drain cleaning and maintenance, manual cleanup of litter, and public anti-littering campaigns to clean up and prevent marine plastic pollution.
     
  • A province in Sweden with a population of ~ 300,000 spends over US$1.5 million a year on cleaning its beaches.
     
  • A district in Peru with ~ 250,000 residents estimates that it would have to spend more than twice its annual budget for cleaning all public areas (~ US$200,000) to clean its coastline.
     
• In addition to the costs of cleanup, plastic waste presents a host of other problems for coastal (and inland) communities. For starters, plastic waste clogs storm drains, causing flooding. For instance, Bangkok removes ~ 2,000 tons of waste – much of it plastic bags – out of its drainage channels daily to prevent flooding. And similar problems plague cities the world over, from Bangladesh to Boston. In addition, plastic waste holds water and creates habitat for mosquitos; incineration of plastic waste creates air pollution; and massive garbage dumps – created in large part and then made unstable by plastic waste – are prone to collapse, killing nearby residents.
• One of the reasons that coastal communities go to the trouble of cleaning up marine litter (in addition to not wanting their storm drains clogged and not liking mosquitos) is that tourists and recreational users of coastlines dislike litter and will avoid areas that are littered or that they anticipate will be littered. For instance, a study conducted in Cape Town, South Africa, found that 2 large pieces of marine debris per meter of beach would keep 85% of tourists from going to a beach. In Brazil, more than 85% of beachgoers said that they would avoid a beach if there were more than 15 pieces of litter per square meter.
   
• A variety of studies have estimated the potential financial impact of reduced tourism due to marine litter.
   
  • One study estimated that marine litter may reduce tourism in Brazil by 39%, representing losses of up to US$ 8.5 million a year.
     
  • Another study estimated that marine litter has cost the US states of New York and New Jersey billions of dollars in lost tourism revenue and decreased the value of waterfront homes.
     
  • Litter along the Skagerrak coast of Sweden is estimated to have reduced tourism between 1 and 5%, leading to an estimated annual loss of ~ US$22.5 million.
     
  • In 2011, heavy rains washed a lot of marine litter onto the beaches of Goeje Island, South Korea, a popular tourist destination. This led to 500,000 fewer visitors in 2011 than in 2010 and led to a loss if revenue of ~ US$30 million.
     
  • Framing this in the positive, a study of beachgoers in Orange County, California, estimated that a 50% reduction in marine litter could generate US$67 million in benefits to residents over a three-month period. They rated the cleanliness of beaches (i.e., lack of litter) as important as good water quality and even more important than scenic beauty, parking convenience and expense, proximity to home, sandiness, and level of crowding.
     
• The iconic tropical tourist destination of Bali has become an unfortunate poster child for the problems that marine plastic pollution can cause. In Bali, hundreds of workers clean tons of marine debris off beaches daily, with some hotels resorting to burying the trash in the sand to keep it out of view. A stretch of beach on the island’s western coast has been declared an emergency zone due to the amount of plastic washing up there, and the island recently banned single-use plastics to help deal with the problem.

Wow, that all sounds pretty unfortunate. What other industries are affected?

• Fishing is another industry that is experiencing significant impacts from marine plastic pollution. Fishers have to repair or replace nets and other gear damaged by marine plastic, and they have to fix boats with fouled propellers and rudders and blocked engine intake pipes. In addition, the time it takes fishers to fix their boats and gear and deal with catches contaminated with marine litter means less time fishing. Some quantifications of these impacts include:
   
  • Marine litter is estimated to cost individual Scottish fishing vessels an average of ~ US$24,000 per year due to lost earnings from time spent cleaning nets, costs of repairs to nets and other gear, the value of dumped catch, and the cost of fouling incidents. Extrapolating this to the industry as a whole, marine litter could cost the Scottish fishing industry between US$15.5 million and $17.2 million a year, and reduce the fleets’ total annual revenue by ~ 5%.
     
  • One fisher from an inshore Scottish fishery estimated his costs for replacing gear lost or damaged by interactions with marine litter and his losses in earnings from reduced fishing time due to marine litter at US$21,000 and US$38,000 worth respectively.
     
  • An extrapolation of the impacts experienced by Scottish fishers to the whole EU fishing fleet would suggest a loss of US$82 million a year, ~ 1% of total revenues in 2010.
     
  • A survey of fishers in the Shetlands found that more than 92% have recurring problems with debris in their nets. Individual vessels are estimated to lose between US$10,500 and $53,300 a year as a result, and the total cost to the local industry could be over US$4 million.
     
  • In an interview, a traditional fisher from India’s southwestern coast describes how he often catches more plastic than fish. The plastic makes it harder to get his net out of the water, and separating the catch from the garbage requires hours of his time.
     
  • A study of traditional fishers in Indonesia found that problems such as propeller entanglement, fouling of gill nets and hooks, damage to fishing gear, and injuries from marine debris (most commonly plastic bags) led fishers to avoid some fishing areas and types of gear. More than half of their gill net fishing trips experienced marine debris fouling their nets.
     
• And this does not even include reductions in fishable stocks due to marine litter. Ironically, fisheries themselves are the source of much of the plastic that causes them the most harm. Modern fishing nets are generally made of nylon and other nonbiodegradable plastics, and discarded, lost, and abandoned fishing gear continues to catch both target and non-target species, a phenomenon known as “ghost fishing”. By one estimate, 640,000 metric tons of fishing gear (around 10% of global marine litter) are lost at sea every year.
   
  • To give an idea of the damage they can do, 870 ghost nets recovered off the coast of Washington State in the US between 2002 and 2010 trapped more than 32,000 marine organisms including over 1,500 fish, birds, and mammals. Since many of the organisms trapped by the nets would have fallen out or disintegrated, a rough estimate of the full impact of the 870 nets is that they could have killed as many as 12,000 fish, 12,000 marine birds, and 400 marine mammals.
     
  • The cost of at-sea retrieval programs to recover discarded, lost, and abandoned gear vary dramatically due to local labor costs and conditions (e.g., water depth where removal is occurring), but one comparison found that they can range between US$65 and US$25,000 per ton.
     
• The aquaculture industry is also a source and a victim of marine plastic pollution. Marine litter is estimated to cost the Scottish aquaculture industry US$206,000 a year, primarily due to unfouling tangled propellers and repairing vessels. Aquaculture facilities also have to spend time removing marine debris from facilities, including intake pipes.
   
• Likewise, commercial shipping and recreational boating are also subject to the costs associated with fouled propellers, rudders, and anchors and blocked engine intake pipes. It is estimated that removing litter from UK ports and harbors costs a total of ~ US$2.7 million a year. In 2008, 286 rescue operations for vessels with tangled propellers in UK waters cost between US$1.1 million and US$2.9 million.
   

And what about the Blue Economy’s most valuable resource – its people?

• Without a doubt, the full lifecycle of producing, using, and disposing of plastics has negative health impacts for people. The extraction and transport of fossil fuels, the production of plastic resins and additives, and the incineration and gasification of waste plastics release toxic substances into the air, water, and soil. Microplastics and their additives also enter the human body through contact, ingestion, and inhalation and are associated with a panoply of health concerns including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and autoimmune conditions.
   
• Plastics may form an even bigger threat to coastal populations, particularly in developing countries, than the general public. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and other contaminants accumulate on microplastics in the marine environment, leading to toxin concentrations several orders of magnitude higher than in the surrounding seawater. These microplastics are ingested by marine organisms, leading to high levels of pollutants in fish and shellfish. Coastal populations, particularly in developing countries, are often heavily reliant on fish and seafood in their diets, putting them at risk of increased consumption of both microplastics and associated toxins. In addition, coastal populations in areas with poor waste disposal systems may also have increased contact with marine plastics and their associated contaminants, including bacteria, viruses, and invasive species.
  
• And none of this is to mention injuries and loss of life related to encounters with plastic marine debris. In 1993, a passenger ferry off the coast of Korea capsized and sank with the loss of 292 passengers after its propeller and propeller shaft became entangled in nylon rope. And from 1996 to 1998, there were over 2000 navigational incidents involving ships and marine debris in Korean waters, 22 of which involved the loss of the vessel and/or human life. In 2005, a Russian submarine got tangled up in derelict fishing nets below the surface and was trapped on the seabed for 4 days before it was rescued. And human encounters with marine debris frequently occur outside the range of emergency services – often leading to dangerous self-rescues and/or loss of life.
   

Anything else?

• There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that removal of marine litter from cooling water intake screens and additional pump maintenance due to marine litter can cost power stations as much as US$65,000.
   
• Without a doubt, the longevity (and buoyancy) of plastic in the ocean is increasing the potential for species to disperse far and wide and increasing the risk of marine species invasions. By one estimate, marine plastic has doubled organisms’ opportunities for dispersing in the tropics. Plastic objects with non-native species aboard are still washing up on the US West Coast from the 2011 Japanese tsunami, although whether these species will become established in US West Coast ecosystems remains to be seen.
   
• And, finally, while not a big problem to date, eventually the perception of contamination by plastic and the chemicals associated with plastic may decrease the value of fisheries and aquaculture products.