CleanSea, a large European research project, aims to provide instruments and tools to keep European seas clean, healthy and productive. For doing so, it is improving the knowledge and understanding of marine litter composition, distribution and impact in order to identify strategies and right mix of measures to abate this problem.
We create a lot of stuff – we create a lot of waste – and we create marine litter. Packaging, bottles and cans, fishing gear, industrial plastics, cigarette butts and all sort of waste populate our oceans and seas impacting environment (e.g. through ingestion or entanglement), economy (e.g. fisheries and tourism) and society (e.g. human health by introduction through the food chain).