Читать книгу Plastic and Microplastic in the Environment - Группа авторов - Страница 37

Plastic delivers many benefits to society and is responsible for the promotion of a wide range of technological advances which have revolutionized our day‐to‐day lives. However, increasing awareness and available records of potential environmental impacts, at present mostly on the marine world (Thompson 2017), are forcing us to stress upon the potential negative impact on the economy and various industries, such as fishing and tourism. Very scattered and scarce data are available, mostly restricted to local impacts, yet these are indicative of widespread global socio‐economic effects due to plastic pollution. The fishing industry, in particular, is likely to suffer detrimental impacts of plastic pollution due to reducing amount and damaged catches (Thompson 2017); one such study surveyed fishing vessels in Scotland and revealed that 86% of the fishing vessels reported that plastic pollution in the sea resulted in a reduction in fish catches (Mouat et al. 2010). In addition, another serious problem is entanglement reported within marinas and harbors, with 70% of the marinas and harbors that were surveyed reported that they experience various problems due to plastic litter (Mouat et al. 2010).

Contaminated catches may also result in significant economic loss due to the high concentration of plastics in the fish stocks (Foekema et al. 2013; Lusher et al. 2013). Moreover, it may have a detrimental effect on the salability of commercial fishes due to the negative public perception of these contaminated supplies (GESAMP 2016). Another industry likely to be affected is tourism, as public perceptions of esthetically pleasing and clean sites are likely to influence people's choices of places to visit. Tourists visiting the coasts may not have positive feedback about the locations where they found litter, affecting the market value of the place as a tourist destination (Brouwer et al. 2017), and litter on beaches can cause physical injury (Werner et al. 2016). Thus, to boost the tourism sector and for environmental reasons, the local authorities execute cleanliness drives (Mouat et al. 2010). Plastic wastes are causing huge problems in tourist places, e.g. blockage in sewage drains and the combined costs of removing these plastics as well as the loss in tourists will have a negative effect on the tourism sector (Drinkwater & Moy 2017).