Date

2021-7-8

Author

Aydın, Mustafa

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Marine litter is a global issue affecting all the world's oceans, posing environmental, economic, health and aesthetic problems. Linear economies create the problem, and inadequate solid waste management practices and lack of wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure -which enable the collection of microplastics- cause the plastic material flows to rivers and the oceans. Plastics are the primary driver of marine litter. The resistance of the plastics sector to shift through a lesser plastic dependant future and low-level public awareness on the consequences of user habits and littering are the main reasons for the marine litter problem. Developing the technology to clean up our oceans is one option; however, this will never be an efficient method against marine litter as big plastics flow through the seas will continue if we do not curb the problem at its source. Besides, applying the circular economy model for the solution will be vastly cheaper. vi Marine litter is one of the indicators for evaluating the inefficient management of material resources. The loss of valuable materials in the economic loop causes pollution in beaches and seas, damaging our environment and harming human and biota health, instead of being reused as an input for the economy. A circular economy approach is necessary for the solution to the marine litter problem. The European Union is trying to tackle the problem by integrating the marine litter problem into its waste legislation, Plastic Strategy, environmental protection legislation, and monitoring their measures’ success. In Turkey, however, the acknowledgement of the problem is in the early stages. Besides a few scientific field studies and legislative actions, there is no holistic approach to the marine litter problem. In this study, a legislative analysis of the European Union on marine litter will be performed. Implementation of the Union acquis and Turkish legislation will be evaluated, and a “source to sea core set of marine litter indicators” proposal for the EU and Turkish monitoring system, which aims to establish stronger scientific links with the sources and the sink of marine litter will be submitted

Subject Keywords

Marine litter indicators, European Union, waste management, plastic pollution, circular economy

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/91602

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis