About 8 million tons of plastic litter enters the ocean every year, threatening marine wildlife and ecosystems, and indirectly the human health, and the sea based economies. Plastic pollution represents a transboundary problem and thus it requires global coordination and long-term multiple approaches to develop shared solutions. Mediterranean Sea is strongly impacted by marine litter of different size found along the coastlines, floating both on the surface and on the water column down to the seafloor. Currently, Mediterranean is now one of the seas more affected by plastic pollution at world scale, with record levels of microplastics.  With only 1% of the World’s waters, Mediterranean Sea concentrates 7% of all global microplastics, earning the “plastic trap” appellative.

It has been largely demonstrated that marine litter directly affect living organisms, especially due to macro-plastics presence and micro-plastics ingestion, threatening marine species and consequently human health. Thus, Mediterranean plastic pollution represents today a serious risk for the local environment and human health, but also for the key economic sectors that rely on sea resources and heath as for Fisheries and Tourism.