Marine and coastal litter causes welfare harm through entanglement, ingestion, and habitat degradation affecting a wide range of coastal and marine wildlife.
Marine litter causes preventable welfare harm to coastal and marine wildlife at scale. Entanglement causes chronic injury and slow death from drowning, starvation, and exhaustion. Ingested plastic fills stomachs reducing hunger signals while providing no nutrition. Prevention through reducing plastic production and improving waste management has far greater impact than clean-up alone, but clean-up events directly remove hazards that would otherwise harm individual animals.