Unfolding the science behind policy initiatives targeting plastic pollution.

The intensive global plastic production, use and associated plastic pollution have caused concern for the potential risks to human health and the environment. This has led to the adoption of numerous regulatory initiatives aiming to combat plastic pollution. Despite the considerable regulatory activity in the field of plastic, it appears that there is still debate about the actual risks of plastic to humans and the environment. This raises the question of to what extent the current plastic regulation is evidence-based, a declared ambition in the European Union. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate to what extent key policy initiatives targeting plastic pollution are based on scientific evidence. Selection of initiatives was based on expert elicitation accounting for the opinions of persons involved in the development of the policy initiatives, and a thorough assessment of the historical development of plastic pollution regulation, with focus on their importance both with respect to regulation of plastics as well as their historical importance as drivers for societal actions on plastic pollution. We find that scientific evidence appears to be generally present in the scientific foundation for the policy initiatives analysed in this study. All the initiatives are supported by scientific articles and reports about among others plastic sources, ecological impacts of plastic production and consumption patterns. Marine litter monitoring data was found to contribute to the evidence base for 4 out of the 6 policy initiatives and thereby appears to be one of the central scientific drivers behind the societal actions on plastic pollution. Other scientific tools applied when shaping the policy initiatives include risk assessment, impact assessment and life cycle assessment. Despite the prevalent consideration and application of scientific evidence, there seems to be a broad recognition in the preparatory work of the initiatives that there is still a lot of uncertainty related to determining the harm of plastic pollution. In these cases, taking precautionary actions seems however to be justified, recalling not least the precautionary principle. As the issue of plastic pollution is complex and still subject to uncertainty, it seems important both that policy initiatives allow for flexibility and continuing adjustment to the on-going knowledge generation and that the scientific community provides the needed research to continue the science-informed policy development.

Particles as carriers of matter in the aquatic environment: Challenges and ways ahead for transdisciplinary research.

A diverse array of natural and anthropogenic particles found in the aquatic environment, can act as carriers of co-transported matter (CTM), such as nutrients, genetic material and contaminants. Thus, understanding carrier particle transport will increase our understanding of local and global fluxes of exogenous CTM (affiliated with the particle) and endogenous CTM (an inherent part of the particle). In the present contribution, researchers from multiple disciplines collaborated to provide perspectives on the interactions between carrier particles and CTM, and the fundamentals of transport of particles found in the aquatic environment and the generic spherical smooth particles, often used to make predictions about particle behavior in suspension. Evidently, the particles in the aquatic environment show a great variety of characteristics and vary greatly from each other as well as from the generic particle. However, in spite of these differences, many fundamental concepts apply to particles in general. We emphasize the importance of understanding the basic concepts of transport of particle-associated CTM, and the main assumptions in the generic-founded models, which are challenged by the diverging characteristics of particles found in the aquatic environment, as paramount moving forward. Additionally, we identified the need for a conceptual and semantic link between different scientific fields of particle research and initiated the formation of a consistent terminology. Disciplinary and organizational (academic and funding) barriers need to be overcome to enable individual researchers to move beyond their knowledge sphere, to stimulate future interdisciplinary collaborations and to avoid research silos. Hereby, we can foster faster and better progress of evolving research fields on new and emerging anthropogenic carrier particles, and stimulate the development of solutions to the technological and environmental challenges.

How can we test plastic pollution perceptions and behavior? A feasibility study with Danish children participating in "the Mass Experiment".

Research suggests that behavior change programs can be fast and cost-effective solutions to plastic pollution alongside traditional environmental policy-making. Furthermore, encouraging change in perception and behavior can be a tool to change consumption and waste handling towards increased circularity, which is of high concern in the EU. Beyond knowledge, predictors of pro-environmental behavior include concern, social norms, nature-connectedness, identity and self-efficacy. Citizen Science (CS) as a way to raise awareness and potentially change behavior show promise within plastic litter monitoring. We tested the feasibility of evaluating a nation-wide citizen science intervention, 'the Mass Experiment' (ME), with school students (age 7-16) in Denmark. With more than 57,000 students signed up for ME, this is to our knowledge one of the largest CS activity on plastic debris targeting young people. As an addition to the core CS activity we developed a voluntary and anonymous questionnaire to study the perceptions and behaviors of the students. We hypothesized that the intervention would increase risk perception, self-efficacy and empowerment as well as self-reported actions. Through 931 pre-surveys and 838 post-surveys aggregated at the team level (n = 48), we found that the intervention had no significant overall effect on team, risk-perception, pro-environmental behaviors, nor self-efficacy or empowerment. However, unexpected patterns emerged for age effects, potentially advising some caution over the design of such CS activities particularly for younger children. We discuss methodological limitations, the high baseline for nearly all variables, the Danish context and the intervention itself and make recommendations for studying future CS interventions.

A nationwide assessment of plastic pollution in the Danish realm using citizen science.

Plastic pollution is considered one of today's major environmental problems. Current land-based monitoring programs typically rely on beach litter data and seldom include plastic pollution further inland. We initiated a citizen science project known as the Mass Experiment inviting schools throughout The Danish Realm (Denmark, Greenland and the Faeroe Islands) to collect litter samples of and document plastic pollution in 8 different nature types. In total approximately 57,000 students (6-19 years) collected 374,082 plastic items in 94 out of 98 Danish municipalities over three weeks during fall 2019. The Mass Experiment was the first scientific survey of plastic litter to cover an entire country. Here we show how citizen science, conducted by students, can be used to fill important knowledge gaps in plastic pollution research, increase public awareness, establish large scale clean-up activities and subsequently provide information to political decision-makers aiming for a more sustainable future.

Stakeholder analysis with regard to a recent European restriction proposal on microplastics.

Stakeholder involvement is pivotal EU governance. In this paper, we complete a stakeholder analysis of the European Chemicals Agency's recent Annex XV restriction proposal process on intentionally added microplastics. The aim of this study is to map the interests, influence and importance of active stakeholders in order to understand the arguments being put forward by different stakeholders and provide recommendations to policy-makers on how to ensure a balanced consideration of all stakeholder perspectives. Stakeholders were identified through niche media analysis and by scrutinising comments from the public consultation on the restriction proposal. Their importance and influence were mapped using three approaches: "scale from low to high", "psychometric scale" and "qualitative ranking". We identified 205 different stakeholders out of which 77 were industry and trade associations, 25 were large companies and only four were small and medium-sized enterprises. National authorities and researchers did not comment on the restriction proposal, whilst large companies were very active providing comments. Industry trade associations and sports-related non-governmental organizations articulated anxiety about the costs associated with the implementation of the restriction proposal. Among environmental non-governmental organizations, there was consensus that plastics should be handled like other substances under EU's chemical regulation. Primary stakeholders identified exhibited high importance, but varying degrees of influence, while the opposite applied to the major European institutions. Based on our analysis, we recommend that: The European Chemicals Agency implement measures to include "silent" stakeholders and invite guest experts to participate in their committees on Risk Assessment and Socio-Economic Analysis; Researchers should be more active in the public consultation; and that special emphasis should be put on helping small and medium-sized enterprises. With regards to stakeholder consultation, we find that media analysis is a good supplement to stakeholder analysis and that a more objective top-down measure of stakeholder importance and influence is needed.