Best practices to phase out single-use plastics in Europe

The ocean is the ‘blue lung’ of our planet, producing half of the oxygen we breathe. It absorbs more greenhouse gas emissions than forests. The ocean’s warm and cold currents help regulate the Earth’s climate, ensuring that our planet remains habitable. The ocean gives us rain, food and jobs. It is essential to our own survival and the survival of all life on Earth.

Over the past decades, plastic pollution has become a major threat to the environment, including marine life. This is a growing concern for citizens and public authorities throughout the world. An appalling 8 billion tons of plastic waste enters the ocean every year, killing an estimated one million marine birds and 100,000 marine mammals world-wide due to plastic ingestion.

Plastic pollution in the ocean contaminates water and threatens marine ecosystems for centuries, before it eventually – if at all – degrades.

Thank you to the NGOs from across Europe who provided us with invaluable input in the collection of effective best practices to reduce and phase out single-use plastics, and who are committed to a true circular economy and a plastic pollution free world.

Seas At Risk is the largest umbrella organisation of marine conservation NGOs in Europe, promoting ambitious policies at European and international level. Seas At Risk’s goal is to make seas and ocean abundant in marine life, diverse, climate resilient, and not threatened by human pressures. Seas At Risk is a member of Break Free From Plastic.

Break Free From Plastic is a global movement envisioning a future free from plastic pollution. Since its launch in September 2016, over 2,500 organisations from across the world have joined the movement to demand massive reductions in single-use plastics and to push for lasting solutions to the plastic pollution crisis. These organisations share the common values of environmental protection and social justice, which guide their work at community level and represent a global, unified vision.

Check it out CATALOGUE OF BEST PRACTICES of the countries in Europe:

Austria . Belgium . Bulgaria . Croatia . Cyprus . Denmark . Estonia . Finland . France . Germany . Greece . Hungary . Ireland . Italy . Lativa . Lithuania . Luxembourg . Netherlands . Norway . Poland . Portugal . Romania . Slovenia . Spain . Sweden . Switzerland . United Kingdom

(Source: Seas At Risk)