Social and Behavioural Sciences Perspectives

3.1 INTRODUCTION

The social and behavioural sciences are vital to understanding the societal perceptions and social dynamics that impact on plastic pollution in order to develop effective and acceptable solutions.

Chapter 3 highlights how insights from media and communication studies, sociology, psychology, organisational studies, risk perception and attitude and behaviour research have an important role to play in understanding the interplay between natural science insights and societal responses. These disciplines in turn help in the design of successful policies and interventions and in societal engagement in reducing macro- and microplastic pollution.

Figure 3 depicts how plastic moves from the economy to the environment. The many steps in this picture are areas where human decisions and behaviours occur and have an effect. These same steps are areas where altered actions and behaviours could alter the effect of how plastic enters the environment. Plastic litter, like other waste and pollution problems, is linked to the market, to producer offer as well as consumer demand and behaviour. As Grid/Arendal report, the price of plastic products does not reflect the true cost of disposal and the cost of recycling and disposal are not borne by the producer or consumer directly, but by society (Newman, Watkins, Farmer, Brink, &

Schweitzer, 2015). This flaw in our system allows for the production and consumption of large amounts of plastic at very low prices. Waste management is done ‘out of sight’

of the consumer, hindering awareness of the actual cost of a product throughout its life. We will discuss some of these points in further detail in the following sections, starting with the media.

The social/behavioural literature on nano- and microplastic specifically is in its infancy.

We report this where we can (and discuss nano- and microplastics together as ‘NMPs’, as in the preceding chapter). But we also draw on other evidence and principles from the broader literature where these are likely to affect societal dynamics and responses to NMPs. We use research on plastic pollution more broadly because large items of plastic litter fragment into secondary microplastics, and we also draw on the relevant wider literature on media communications, risk perception and communication, and

Figure 3: How plastic moves from the economy into the environment and where opportunities for changed awareness, decisions and behaviour might exist. From

3.2 MICROPLASTICS IN A CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE

The media play a vital role in communicating global threats and environmental crises constituting public issues, by shaping discourses, public awareness, political action and public responses (Cottle, 2009; Hansen, 2018; van der Wurff, 2012).

High profile media attention has arguably propelled the issue of plastics pollution and microplastics up the public and policy agenda (Kramm, Volker, & Wagner, 2018; Völker et al., 2017) building on decades of activism by environmental non-governmental organisations and communities. In 2017, David Attenborough’s BBC documentary series ‘Blue Planet II’ highlighted the quantity of plastic waste in the ocean. This was described by the Head of the UN Environment Programme at the time, Erik Solheim, as having “helped spur a wave of action” internationally. The so-called ’Blue Planet effect’ was associated with announcements calling for legislation to reduce single use plastics (e.g. by UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Michael Gove). As just one example, there has been a lot of debate recently about plastic straws and initiatives to reduce or ban them (e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/plastic-straws).

While many of the risks to the environment, organisms and human health from microplastics remain unknown (see Section 2.6), the issue of microplastics is being depicted in public discourse as urgent and pressing. News reports, social media campaigns and popular media, including films and documentaries, communicate and frame the issue in a certain way for the public and policy-makers. There is evidence that scientific and media reporting of microplastics has increased rapidly over recent years (GESAMP, 2015; see also Figures 4 and 5 and Annex 6). Thus, it clearly is an issue that the public have been exposed to and that receives increasing attention. While it is difficult to know exactly how these media reports translate into public perception and action, it is reasonable to assume a link to an emerging social norm, critical of plastics use; and bottom-up as well as top-down calls for policy, for example to phase out microbeads in cosmetics. Further media analysis of microplastics is missing in the published literature, but, in the remaining sections of this report, we can build on a rich literature concerning politically contested scientific issues from the past and ongoing, including climate change, genetically modified foods, BSE, and other ‘scares’.

In Figures 4 and 5, the news on microplastics were analysed using Europe Media Monitor (EMM) and the Tool for Innovation Monitoring (TIM), tools developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission based on data collection and text mining analysis. EMM daily collects news from the traditional and social media. TIM collects information related to scientific publications, patents and European projects from Scopus, PatStat and Cordis, respectively. Both tools perform text mining and analysis of their content.

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Figure 4: Scientific publications (including articles, reviews and conference proceedings) on the topic of microplastics generally (red bars) and microplastics in food (blue bars) have been increasing since 2011 (Scopus only).

JRC, personal communication and applying their Europe Media Monitor (EMM) and the Tool for Innovation Monitoring (TIM). For more, see also the graphs and report in Annex 6 from the literature search performed to support this project for an analysis of the number and type of scientific publications on NMPs found using a wider set of databases.

Microplastics found in bottled drinking water (published)

World Environment Day / WWF report

Microplastics found in human faeces (unpublished) and table sea salt

Figure 5: Monthly number of news items extracted from EMM between January 2017 and October 2018 (JRC, personal communication). News published in over 70 languages in