During the session, the working group summarised its work to date which has been largely focused on the identification of sea-based sources of marine litter and members shared the results of of their research to date on fishing, shipping, dumping and other sources.
Future appoaches to address TOR 3 (analysis on quantities of plastics produced and used in the shipping industry and on variations by region of exiting waste management streams) were identified. The group also decided to abstain from conducting quantitative comparisons on the issue due to the insufficient scientific literature available across all sources and decided to produce qualititative descriptions of impacts of different types of marine litter.
The group agreed on its collective understanding of the remainder of the TORs and discussed the future planning of its work.
Future outputs
An interim report will become available early January by the Group and two more meetings have been agreed to take place in 2020 in order to progress the group's work.