To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-23231 by Mairi McAllan on 11 December 2023, how much more data it anticipates it will gather before being able to establish a baseline or trends.
The Scottish Government microplastics monitoring programme began in 2013, and has undertaken annual surveys since that time. The Scottish Government has conducted an initial assessment for microplastics in surface water, which was published in Scotland’s Marine Assessment 2020, using data from 2013-14 to 2019-20. This assessment can be viewed at https://marine.gov.scot/sma/assessment/microplastics-surface-water
There is currently no internationally agreed baseline for microplastics in surface water, which is mainly due to very few countries conducting this sampling. The sampling of microplastics in surface water generates highly variable data. Due to this variable nature, the data Scottish Government currently holds is not sufficient to produce trends, and several more years of sampling would be needed for a scientifically robust analysis to be conducted and support future assessments.
Our microplastic sampling compliments our wider marine litter monitoring programme and outputs from this have been used to inform the action plan of our revised Marine Litter Strategy published in 2022. All of these actions help address microplastic pollution as they target macro litter which can break down into microplastics, such as fishing gear and wet-wipes containing plastic, as well as microplastics directly in the form of plastic pellets. Plastic pellets are the second largest source of primary microplastic pollution globally. Our work on pellets has been ground breaking and used to inform multiple outputs: the first internationally applicable Publicly Available Specification which is a form of standard published by the British Standards Institution and sets best handling practice requirements for businesses, an internationally adopted recommendation for pellet handling and certification schemes through the Oslo Paris Convention, and our work has also supported the development of a European certification scheme to prevent pellet loss. This follows a previous action on microplastics in the form of legislation to ban microbeads from rinse-off personal care products in 2018.