About me
After 1,5 years at the university of Gothenburg filled with different
courses, the last semester is there with my thesis in front of me. I read about
climate change, resource efficiency, environmental management systems,
sustainable development and environmental economics.
Starting the project…
My thesis topic now is plastics in the ocean, which is a very up-to-date
topic with lots of research going on. But then it is also a very broad and
diverse issue, so to find a focus will be one of my first tasks after some
general reading. Thanks to an external lecturer at a methodology course, I got
a supervisor at Environmental Systems Analysis at Chalmers. Henrikke, my
supervisor, already did quite some research about plastics in marine
environments, so we will work together on this synthesis project.
Probably everyone has seen one of these typical albatross pictures as shown
below before. But nowadays the amount of plastic litter in the oceans is so
pronounced that numberless species are affected and research interest grew
strongly. I choose this topic for my thesis because it is one of the big global
environmental problems humanity has to solve and because of its resulting
crucial importance to all of us.
 |
| Remains of an albatross, by Chris Jordan |
Background overview
- Sources
of plastic debris in the ocean:
- Dumping
from fishing boats (gear, nets)
- Littering
of beaches, tidal and flooded areas
- Blowing-off
from landfills & industrial areas / cities
- Waste
load carried from inland by rivers & fall out from sewage systems
- Microbeats
from industry & cosmetics (scrubbers)
- Threats
to the marine fauna from the plastics:
- Ingestion
– including attached hydrophobic contaminants (PCB etc)
- Entanglement
– mostly fatal / lethal
- Accumulation
on sea floor hinders gas exchange (à anaerobic milieu)
- Spread
of alien species encrusted to floating particles
- Problem
mitigation possibilities
- Demand
national & international legislation for measures stopping the
release of more plastic into the ocean & cleaning up what is already
there
- Educational
campaigns for awareness raising
- Enhance
financial incentives to reduce plastic packaging
- Better
informed conservation management
- Introduce
& increase the use of biodegradable substitutes
Aim and/or hypothesis – research questions
· What effects does plastic debris in the ocean have on
marine ecosystems?
· Environmental evaluation: How effective are which
mitigation actions?
· LCA aim: Environmental evaluation of a clean-up operation
· Synthesis aim: collect & organise the growing
knowledge about plastics in marine environments
Preliminary table of contents
- Plastics
in general – raw materials, production, use, properties &
contaminants, recycling / incineration (necessary?)
- Marine
plastic debris – sources, flows / transport routes, impacts & toxics,
decomposition & deposition, lifetime
- Comparison
of approaches to environmental evaluation methods
- Anthropocentric:
ecosystem services
- Biocentric:
framework from IUCN evaluating effectiveness
- Ordinary
LCA
- Environmental
evaluation of a clean-up operation: tourist trip to Svalbad – ecobalance
(negative & positive impacts)
- Discussion:
Ecological compensation & off-setting realistic or misleading? Does
ecotourism change people´s behaviour (educational effect)?
- Conclusions
- Outlook:
mitigation actions recommended for different groups (decision makers,
NGOs, companies, private persons)
