Context:

• least 8m tons of plastic end up in our oceans every year
• 9% of plastic ever produced has been recycled, 12% incinerated
• 79% go to landfill, dumps, and the natural environment
• plastic is on shorelines of all the continents, found more often near popular tourist destinations and densely populated areas

Summary:

• plastic pollution is having a negative impact on our oceans and wildlife health
• ACs generate more plastic waste per person
• management of plastic waste that determines the risk of plastic entering the ocean, Acs have effective waste management systems
• improvement of waste management systems across the world critical to reducing plastic pollution
• 20% all plastic waste in the oceans comes from marine sources
• more than 1/2 plastics in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch come from fishing nets, ropes and lines
• plastic is a unique material with many benefits: it’s cheap, versatile, lightweight, and resistant; valuable material for many functions
• environmental benefits: critical role in maintaining food quality, safety and reducing food waste
• trade-offs between plastics and substitutes (or complete bans) are therefore complex and could create negative knock-on impacts on the environment

• every year motor oil contributes 240m gallons of oil to the oceans
• amount of motor oil entering oceans is 8x greater than the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
• natural oil seeps account for 50% of oil pollutants in the ocean
• around 450,000 marine birds killed each year by flushing, loading and discharges from oil tankers

• the main sources of radiation in the oceans is from nuclear accidents and sunken nuclear submarines
  

Key info:

• over 90% of world trade is carried across the world's oceans by some 90,000 marine vessels
• shipping relies on burning fossil fuels: releasing emissions & particulates
• largest vessels produce 5,000 tonnes of sulphur/year
• air pollution is up to 3x higher near ports, affecting human health
• growth of cruise ship industry has raised traffic and pollution in areas such as steep sided fjords of Norway & Alaska

Annually sea transport contributes:

• 3% of global CO2
• 13% of global SOx (sulphur oxide)
• 18-30% of global NOx (nitrogen oxide)

Shipping routes:

• 3 choke points of Strait of Gibraltar, Strait of Hormuz and Strait of Malacca
• Norway, Spain and Italy all have high NOX as they are popular cruise ship locations

Agriculture = nitrogen and phosphorus in animal manure and chemical fertilizers, necessary to grow crops, but can be lost from the farm fields and negatively impact air and downstream water quality

Stormwater = precipitation falls on our cities and towns & runs across hard surfaces, carries pollutants, including nitrogen and phosphorus, into local waterways

Wastewater = sewer and septic systems are responsible for treating large quantities of waste, systems do not always operate properly or remove enough nitrogen and phosphorus before discharging into waterways

Fossil fuels = electric power generation, industry, transportation, and agriculture have increased the amount of nitrogen in the air through use of fossil fuels

Other domestic = fertilizers, yard and pet waste and certain soaps and detergents contain nitrogen and phosphorus and can contribute to nutrient pollution if not properly used or disposed; hard surfaces and type of landscaping can also increase the runoff during wet weather.

How cruise ships destroy the world:

• worse than all cars combined (4.6 billion metric tons / year) (cruise ships can be 1 million times more)
• sulphur fuel, worse than diesel or petrol
• respiratory diseases & cancer
• dumping of sewage in international waters
• destruction of marine ecosystems
  

Main European port cities:

• cruise ships in ports emit 2-5x more cancerous gases than the entire car fleet in the same city
• Southampton, over 6X more Sox emissions from cruise ships than cars (3,189kg vs 19,734kg)

Nuclear waste processing:

• nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague, France, directly on the coast and "legally discharges 33m litres of radioactive liquid into the sea each year"
• recent years, La Hague several incidents involving increased radioactivity levels
• dumping of nuclear waste in drums was banned in 1993 by the London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution
• discharging liquid contaminated with radiation into the ocean is still permitted internationally

Nuclear weapons testing:

• 1946, US first country to test atomic bomb in a marine area, over Pacific Bikini Atoll
• next few decades, >250 nuclear weapons tests were carried out on the high seas, 193 of the conducted by France in French Polynesia, US 42 mainly in Marshall Islands and the Central Pacific

Relevant radionuclides:

• radionuclides of the elements iodine and caesium, particularly relevant in terms of the radioactive contamination of the environment & humans
• radioactive iodine (half-life 8 days) released in a reactor accident disappears from the environment after about 3 months
• contamination with radioactive caesium (half-life 30 years) remains in the environment for a long time, responsible for radiation still in Fukushima (Ceasium-137 has moved across ocean to USA overtime)