Legislation Measures

Introduce a tax on less environmentally friendly aquaculture equipment, ideally at EU level, to create incentives for avoiding SUP items. Organise awareness campaigns to gain public understanding and support. All tax money collected has to be used to invest in the aquaculture sector, for example to stimulate innovation to invent new materials/gear and reducing the price of sustainable materials. To avoid a lack of understanding or even resistance, appropriate information campaigns or e.g. informal consultation should be offered by the government to explain the reason for taxing. Introducing a tax provides financial incentives to sellers of SUP items used in the sector to switch to reusable items in order to avoid price increases associated with the taxed cords, clips or boxes. Farmers might not be willing to pay increased prices for single-use items and hence might reduce their consumption of them. This could also send signals up the supply chain to producers of plastic items to design and produce them differently, Introducing tax at point of sale means that all domestically produced as well as all imported single-use plastic items used for aquaculture would be taxed. Tax reductions could be granted to sellers of SUP items when they use single-use cords etc. that prove a certain recycled plastic content.While still being single-use these items could foster the secondary plastic/polymers market. Tax money could be also spent to subsidice sustainable gear or gear made of recycled materials as they are and will be more expensive and will have problems to find their place on the market. Measures such as product bans or design requirements are best established at EU level while for reduction targets for aquaculture products it is better to give Member States some choice on the measures, including the use of economic instruments. Reduction targets (e.g. 30% by 2025, 50% by 2030 for cords) would set legally binding reductions in consumption from a base year. Data related to the consumption of relevant items should be reported to the national governments. Incentives: Member States have to establish EPR schemes as soon as possible (much before 2024), and ensure they are set in a proper way, including with eco-modulation fees, taking into account the durability, reparability, re-usability and recyclability, hereby taking a life-cycle approach. Incentives for producers are needed to shift towards a pro-active search for these new alternatives. Modulation of fees is essential to incentivise better product design and better use of materials, as well as the reduction and elimination of hazardous substances in plastics. This approach also shares the burden with especially small ports and fishing operators who might be disproportionality affected by the development of new port reception facilities (PRF) and could benefit form less material and/or better re-usable material. Cooperations between ports / fishermen and recycling companies who take back the material and pay small incentives like a fee or discount. Install a mass-balance system in which the farmers are paying for what they leave offshore, and/or are rewarded for additional litter they bring on land. Assure clarity and legal certainty for businesses to enable the development of new markets and alternative materials. Incorporate the European Directive 2019/904 on the reduction of the impact of certain plastic products on the environment into all Member State's regulation. Top-down (legal) approaches are necessary to forbid easy to lose single-use plastic items, such as gloves, plastic cable ties, etc. These have to be replaced by biodegradable material.