The German Round Table on Marine Litter was initiated to provide a platform for knowledge exchange and to operationalize the German national measures on marine litter in the framework of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). Around 150 experts from different sectors including fisheries, shipping, other industries (e.g. plastics producer, converter and recycler, cosmetics, tyres), retail, science, education, tourism, environmental associations, authorities, politics and arts are taking part.
The platform was launched in 2016 by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, the Ministry for the Environment, Energy, Construction and Climate Protection Lower Saxony and the German Environment Agency (UBA).
One of the measures for the MSFD Descriptor 10 on marine litter addresses the reduction of amounts of plastic litter through local provisions. To support implementation of this measure, a sub-working group on Municipal Requirements was established in the framework of the Round Table on Marine Litter and two workshops took place in 2017 – one with stakeholders for the Baltic Sea in Warnemünde (by invitation of the State Agency for Environment, Nature Conservation and Geology Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and the Coastal Union Germany (EUCC)), and a second one for the North Sea in Bremen (by invitation of the Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND)) in Bremen.
Within the further work of the Round Table and its sub-working group, the options of action and good practice examples, that were collected in the two workshops, were evaluated and concretized. Moreover, a collection of best practices for municipalities with regard to prevention and reduction of plastic litter was published in September 2019. A guide with respect to local regulatory options is currently under development.
The results of the two workshops and the two guides are of great relevance for the CAPonLITTER project and serve as a base for the Regional Stakeholder Workshops taking place in autumn 2020.
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