Plastics and their sustainable alternatives on the marine environment: biological and social considerations

• Autor(a) principal: Coelho, Roxanne João
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/40883
• topic: Marine litter; Plastics; Bioplastics; Effects; Public perception; Environmental education

The Earth has been facing a series of environmental problems of anthropogenic origin, including marine litter. Marine litter, essentially made up of plastics, has negative impacts at a biological and socioeconomic level. In recent years, the number of studies evaluating the impact of plastics and the notion that measures are necessary to reduce the presence of this material in the environment has increased. One of the proposed approaches involves the use of alternative materials, which are less persistent in the environment and have less impact on organisms. One of the several alternatives to plastics are bioplastics, materials with physical-chemical properties like traditional plastics, originating from biological raw materials and/or easily biodegradable. Despite the potential of these materials, there are different aspects that require rigorous scientific evaluation, such as biodegradability under environmental conditions and biocompatibility with biological systems. In addition to studies on the impacts of plastics and bioplastics on the marine environment, it is necessary to study public perception on these topics, with a view to creating environmental education programs to increase environmental awareness and take pro-environmental attitudes, leading to mitigating plastic pollution and building a more sustainable society. There is a lack of studies on the public perception of plastics and bioplastics, particularly in the Portuguese context. As such, in this study the Portuguese population's perceptions of environmental problems, marine litter, plastics, bioplastics, waste management and recycling were obtained through an online questionnaire. Thus, the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents, including age, gender, level of education, distance from the sea and political orientation were also evaluated with the aim of obtaining data that allow testing the hypothesis that sociodemographic characteristics influence the perception the impact of plastics on the environment. A total of 304 people responded to the questionnaire voluntarily and anonymously. The results show that people are concerned about the impact of plastic pollution, but few take any action to mitigate the problem. It was also found that despite presenting knowledge about plastics, there is a lack of knowledge about microplastics and bioplastics. Despite little knowledge about bioplastics, people were interested in finding out more about the topic. Sociodemographic characteristics proved to be vectors for building environmental awareness, finding that women, older people, people with a higher level of education, people who live close to the sea and people on the left political spectrum have a greater environmental awareness and are more likely to have pro-environmental attitudes. The results presented support the idea that environmental education needs to be reinforced, especially on microplastics and bioplastics, adapting to different audiences.