Plastic bags, nets, bottle caps and tin cans, cigarettes, bottles, cotton buds, crockery. This is not a shopping list, but the shameful catalogue of rubbish found on our beaches every year, to say nothing of what is found out at sea, such as microplastics, or what settles on the seabed. Waste of every shape, kind, size and colour — the product of poor upstream management and deliberate littering — is one of the ills afflicting the Mediterranean Sea and its beaches. That very mare magnum, an extraordinary national environmental, cultural and historical heritage, is subject to constant threats and assaults: from marine litter (waste at sea and on beaches) to illegal fishing, from unlawful discharges to inadequate wastewater treatment. The worst risk it now faces is that of becoming a sea of plastic and rubbish, with serious consequences for the environment, biodiversity, public health, and key sectors such as tourism and fishing.

Beach litter 2017, the data

The data from the Beach litter 2017 survey, conducted by Legambiente in April and May as part of Spiagge e fondali puliti – Clean up the Med, once again confirm a critical situation on many Italian beaches: as can be seen from the interactive map, across 62 beaches monitored by our volunteers — covering a total of more than 200,000 square metres (equivalent to almost 170 Olympic swimming pools) — an average of 670 pieces of rubbish per 100 linear metres of beach was found. Plastic remains the most frequently found material (84 per cent), followed by glass and ceramics (4.4 per cent), metal (4 per cent), and paper and cardboard (3 per cent). Among the most commonly found items are mussel-farming nets (11 per cent), bottle caps and lids (9.6 per cent), plastic objects (9.3 per cent) smaller than 50 centimetres, cigarette butts (8.5 per cent), and plastic bags, shoppers and carriers, which represent the eleventh most common item on Italian beaches (2 per cent).

The state of health of beaches in other Mediterranean countries is also cause for concern, with cigarette butts and plastic bags proving particularly prevalent. Among the items of washed-up rubbish found during monitoring carried out between 2014 and 2017 on the 43 beaches surveyed by the Clean up the Med network, coordinated by Legambiente, are cigarette butts (20.7 per cent), bottle caps and lids (11 per cent), plastic bottles (9.5 per cent) and plastic bags (4.8 per cent). The latter are found in a far higher proportion than on Italian beaches (5 per cent compared to 2 per cent). These figures are quite alarming, which is why Legambiente is once again calling for a ban on non-biodegradable and non-compostable plastic bags with a thickness of less than 100 microns — already in force in Italy, France and Morocco — to be extended to all countries bordering the Mediterranean. This is an intervention that can no longer be postponed.

Marine litter costs the EU €476.8 million a year

But to resolve the problem of rubbish in the sea and on the coast it is also essential to put in place unified policies and concrete programmes across the entire Mediterranean and at a global level — a call we are also making to the heads of state and government gathered today and tomorrow in Taormina for the G7. A summit that opens in the aftermath of the Manchester attack in a tense and difficult climate. We ask the world's leaders to make environmental issues a priority topic for discussion during these two days, taking concrete decisions starting with the Paris Agreement on climate and defining unified policies for the Mediterranean. An emblem for centuries of coexistence between different cultures, the Mediterranean today is the arena for one of the most delicate and important contests concerning the question of migrants — in the waters of the Mediterranean, according to estimates by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, five thousand people died in 2016 during hope-filled crossings towards our shores — and the problem of marine litter, which, among other things, costs the European Union a full €476.8 million a year.

For this reason Legambiente calls for the walls of indifference and fear — which in recent years have tripled — to be torn down, by defining new welcoming policies for a more inclusive society and by initiating a change of pace in environmental policies in order to better address the problem of marine litter too. This is a topic our association has been tackling for several years through its campaigns such as Spiagge e fondali puliti, which will get under way this very weekend from 26 to 28 May across the entire Peninsula and throughout the Mediterranean, as well as through the monitoring carried out with the historic vessel Goletta verde.

Plastic in the sea and on beaches is a global emergency

Marine litter is a global emergency on a par with climate change, and it is a problem destined to grow if action is not taken as soon as possible. For this reason it is important to promote, across the entire national territory, prevention, awareness-raising and information campaigns that involve administrations, citizens and above all younger generations, encouraging proper waste management and active participation.

A message that has also been supported and amplified by the President of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini, who took part in the preview of Spiagge e fondali puliti organised last Monday at Capocotta, in the province of Rome. The Spiagge e fondali puliti campaign draws its very strength from the involvement of thousands of volunteers who every year collect scientific data on beach litter and mobilise to clean up beaches. An experience — that of Legambiente — unique at the international level, which the environmental association will bring to the Glass Palace in New York by participating in the United Nations conference on the oceans from 5 to 9 June, precisely to reiterate that the problem of marine litter concerns the entire planet and that resolving it truly requires a collective commitment.