Overview

CHAPTER 4

Blue Seas: Freeing the Seas from Plastics

OVERVIEW

Several of the Middle East and North Africa’s economies are among the world’s top polluters regarding plastics leaking into their seas— threatening marine and coastal ecosystems and resulting in large public health and economic costs. In this chapter, the next section reviews the current state of plastic pollution in the region, focusing on the Mediterranean Sea given its importance to the region’s local economies, whether urban or non-urban. It discusses the high amount of plastic debris already in these marine ecosystems.

Although the rate of plastic waste generation per resident of the region is often not much greater than in comparable countries, the amount of plastic debris per resident ending up in the seas of the Middle East and North Africa is the highest in the world. Thus, the region’s population growth and changing consumption patterns present a challenge for the near future—especially regarding the treatment of waste—and undermines the efforts to adopt green, resilient, and inclusive development (GRID), from which the region would benefit greatly (World Bank and IMF 2021). An alarmingly high level of waste is inadequately managed, particularly in the Maghreb and the Mashreq subregions, and often outsourced to the informal sector with its precarious working conditions for the poor. Throughout the region, recycling rates are low, hampering the sustainable treatment of plastic waste in a circular fashion (ensuring it is reused and recycled instead of simply discarded).

The chapter then discusses the severe adverse environmental, public health, and economic impacts of the flow and accumulation of plastics in

the Middle East and North Africa’s seas. These impacts necessitate swift and concrete action by the region’s governments to switch to a GRID growth path in this area.

The chapter’s discussion of policy options makes special note of the scant knowledge about the sources of the plastics flowing into the seas and the causes for its leakage there. To efficiently reduce the volume of this flow requires knowledge about where it is generated, who generates it, and which products end up as debris in the seas. Information about the hot spots of marine-plastic debris is sparse, and even less is known about the specific causes. Gathering information and identifying the sources of plastic waste and the reasons why it ends up in the seas is hence key for effective policy making, requiring more-detailed studies for proper identification of these sources and the causes of plastic leakage.

Policy options to tackle plastic pollution in the Middle East and North Africa’s seas revolve around the concept of a circular economy and adequate solid waste management (SWM). These options are discussed along the lines of the “3 R’s”: Reduce plastic consumption and production. Reuse plastic products. Recycle the plastic waste or dispose of it appropriately if neither reuse nor recycling are an option. Priority recommendations in this respect cover the following key areas:

• Solid waste management. Improving the weak SWM systems in many of the region’s economies is a critical step to deal appropriately with plastic waste. Doing so has cross-benefits for the issue of air pollution because inadequately managed waste is often burned in an uncontrolled manner (as discussed in chapter 3).

• Recycling. Making recycling markets financially more sustainable is essential to increase the share of plastics that does not leave the value chain after a single use.

• Public awareness. Accompanying the preceding two actions with information dissemination and public awareness programs is crucial to inform the public of the adverse effects of plastic pollution, change individual behavior, and increase demand for further policies.

• Plastic alternatives. Close cooperation with and support for the private sector is critical to support the development of suitable plastic alternatives.

• Pricing. The business environment for plastic alternatives must be enhanced by tackling the price discrepancies between those alternatives and products derived from virgin plastics. These differences often stem from artificially low prices of plastic products, resulting from large subsidies for fossil fuels that are feedstock and important energy