Responsibility measures

Implement the new EPR provisions related to fishing and aquaculture gear according to Art. 8 of the SUPD into national law for prevention and better design/and expand individual responsibilities, by including indirect costs like littering or climate change for single-use products. This could be also achieved by the general fee of 20 cent for all typical single-use plastic packages used in the aquaculture sector.

Shared responsibility Shared responsibility

Image: corpseed Image: corpseed

Relevant type of aquaculture:

Fish Shellfish Seaweed

Relevant sea basin:

Baltic

Relevant stage:

Prevention and reduction

Related Barriers:

  • No higher taxes on small and cheap disposable plastic gear items are raised, lowering the motivation of farmers to keep and recover them or use alternative materials.

  • The externalities of litter in the environment are not internalised into the costs of single use plastic items used in aquaculture facilities. This is one of the reasons why there is limited economic incentive to develop or choose items with a better environmental footprint.

  • Lack of incentives to avoid complex gear products or mixed-plastic formats for better recyclability.

  • Top-down (legal) approaches are absent to forbid easy to lose single-use plastic items.

  • Designers of aquaculture equipment are not sufficiently encouraged by manufacturers to be innovative and seek other alternatives such as collecting and recycling services, in order to reduce the impact of their products on the natural environment.

Related Good Practice:

P&R GP9.1

Use compensation schemes

Within the framework of marine environmental law there are compensation schemes (i.e. Civil liability and Fund Conventions regulating compensation for oil pollution damage caused by tankers). These schemes also include subsidiary or 'top-up' liability for cases where the actual polluter is not known (such as the oil industry's IOPC Funds, 2018).