Nicola Sturgeon: Resuable sanitary products key to protecting marine environment

Scotland is leading the way in tackling marine litter, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told international delegates attending Scotland’s International Marine Conference today in Glasgow.

The First Minister announced a £175,200 campaign promoting the use of re-usable sanitary products to reduce the more than 100 billion pieces of sanitary waste disposed of every year.

In the coming weeks the Scottish Government will also publish proposals to make it an offence to throw litter overboard from all Scottish fishing vessels while at sea.

The £175,200 funding is made up of Scottish Government funding and Zero Waste Scotland’s Resource Efficient Circular Economy Accelerator Programme which is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The First Minister said: “Scotland continues to lead the way in protecting our marine environments and the size of Scotland’s marine protected area is testament to our commitment to protecting important habitats and species.

“This new campaign to promote re-usable sanitary products expands our existing efforts to tackle the problem of single use plastic.

“Following the successful introduction of legislation to ban plastic micro-beads in rinse-off personal care products, we are the first in the UK to commit to a ban on plastic stemmed cotton buds.

“It is also important we tackle the smaller, but not insignificant, proportion of litter which comes from our marine industries.

“Our paper on the future of fisheries management will seek views on how we can ensure the fishing sector play their part in protecting the marine environment.

FM @NicolaSturgeon opened the International Marine Conference in Glasgow and set out how Scotland is leading the way in tackling marine litter: https://t.co/tkMbTM9Q9a #SeasTheFuture pic.twitter.com/tcc58exKm0

— First Minister (@ScotGovFM) February 20, 2019

She said that across the UK, more than four million sanitary products are flushed down the toilet every day and the campaign will have a “significant and important” impact.

The two-day conference, organised by the Scottish Government, is taking place at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish Government is consulting on several new marine protected areas and will also consult on creating two historic marine protected areas at Lerwick and Scapa Flow.

The Scottish Government is also looking into creating a marine reserve in the North East Atlantic where the waters are more than 800m deep, which would cover almost 150,000sq km – nearly twice the size of Scotland’s land mass.

This would almost double the overall size of Scotland’s marine protected areas, from covering 22% of territorial waters to 42%.

Ms Sturgeon said regardless of Brexit, Scotland would continue to work with other countries to protect the marine environment.

She said: “By taking strong and determined action here at home, Scotland is trying to demonstrate international leadership.

“We’re very clear that despite Brexit we are in Scotland going to continue to maintain EU environmental standards.

“We will also comply with international arrangements and we will of course continue to learn from and work with partners across the globe.”