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Disentangling marine plastic impacts in Life Cycle Assessment: Spatially explicit Characterization Factors for
Marthe A Høiberg1, Konstantin Stadler1, Francesca Verones1
1Industrial Ecology Programme, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
The Science of the Total Environment
|July 26, 2024
Summary
Plastic pollution threatens marine life, but current sustainability assessments (Life Cycle Assessment) exclude its impacts. This study introduces new methods to quantify plastic entanglement risks for marine animals globally, aiding better environmental management.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Science
- Marine Biology
- Life Cycle Assessment
Background:
- Persistent plastic items entering marine environments pose a significant, long-term threat to marine fauna and ecosystem health.
- Current Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) frameworks often omit the environmental impacts of plastic leakage and pollution.
- There is a need to develop inventories and impact assessment methods to incorporate plastic pollution into sustainability evaluations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose spatially explicit Characterization Factors (CF) for quantifying the impacts of plastic entanglement on marine megafauna on a global scale.
- To integrate plastic pollution impacts into Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) by providing country-specific estimates.
- To facilitate informed decision-making for more sustainable marine resource management.
Main Methods:
- Utilized Lagrangian particle tracking and a Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD) model.
- Incorporated species susceptibility records to estimate entanglement impacts from lost fishing gear.
- Simulated plastic losses from fishing hotspots within all Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) to generate country-specific impact estimates.
Main Results:
- Developed global, spatially explicit Characterization Factors (CF) for quantifying plastic entanglement impacts on marine megafauna.
- Estimated potential entanglement impacts stemming from lost plastic-based fishing gear.
- Found median CF for Oceania to be higher than for Europe, Africa, and Asia, indicating regional variations in impact, though susceptible species are globally distributed.
Conclusions:
- The proposed CFs enable the quantification of plastic entanglement impacts on marine megafauna within LCA frameworks.
- Findings highlight the global distribution of susceptible species and the transboundary nature of plastic pollution.
- Further research on degradation rates, beaching, and population-level effects is needed for comprehensive assessment of macroplastic pollution in marine environments.
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