Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson, umhverfis- og auðlindaráðherra flutti eftirfarandi ávarp á ráðstefnu um plast í hafi sem haldin var í Hörpu 24. september 2014.

“Lengi tekur sjórinn við” is a saying in Icelandic that indicates that the custom of throwing waste in the ocean is a way to get rid of it.  Today we know better, and we do not get rid of things that we throw into the ocean.  They may even return to us and end on our own dish with the fish we eat. 

Worldwide, there is a growing knowledge and concern of how plastic waste is negatively influencing our life, our environment, our beaches, the life in the sea, our fishing industry and our economy. 

Plastic is a useful thing that most of us use every day to ease our life but the environmental impacts of the way we use it cannot be ignored.  Reducing, reusing and recycling can however bring us great green economy benefits. We can all make simple changes in our lifestyle and reduce use of plastic. Changing from plastic bags to multiple use grocery bags and to use degradable waste bags are simple acts that can, if we all take part, make big changes. 

Local initiatives as we have seen in two municipalities Stykkishólmur and Árborg where locals are exploring the possibilities of plastic bag free communities and less plastic use are very important. 

Such initiative, with the aim of reduced plastic in everyday life can reduce the amount of plastic that enters into the ocean and to the environment and is the key the success from my point of view. 

To act upon the problem we have had several initiatives in the recent years. The United Nations are supporting a Global Framework for prevention and management of marine debris, the OSPAR convention recently adopted a Regional Action Plan on marine litter that applies for the North east Atlantic ocean, we have several Nordic cooperation projects  and we have numerous national and local projects. All this work is with the aim of handling the problem better and more effectively and to understand it in more depth.  

In spite of that holistic quantification of waste that ends in the ocean are not available today it is obvious that the magnitude of waste in the ocean is huge. It enters into the sea by various means; by littering, from poorly managed landfills and waste sites, from tourist activities and sea based activities.  

Parts of this litter sinks to the ocean floor, while other floats and waste can travel long distances on ocean currents, polluting shorelines, accumulating in massive ocean icelands and spreading invasive species. 

The environmental damage and the economic burden of cleaning up the litter have been confirmed in many reports. 
It can cause mortality or illnesses when sea creatures ingest the litter, entanglement of animals and it can cause damage to important habitats such as corals.  A growing concern is then over the chemical contamination that can occur when plastic deteriorates and enters into the ecosystem chain and affects our life. The key issue is therefore to prevent the litter entering into our waters and ecosystems.

Marine litter is a complex problem and it is good to have here at this venue, lectures and participants from so many countries and organizations that will shed light on the issue and help us to understand it better.  As it is a complex problem caused by various factors it has to be tackled from many angles. 

Therefor I am content to see how this conference has been structured; that is to address the problem from many sides and very importantly, aiming at solutions.

The Nordic countries have had an extensive and successful cooperation on environmental issues for more than forty years. Healthy marine environment and ecosystems are of great importance to life and welfare for all the Nordic countries and worldwide. Iceland has the chairmanship of the Nordic Council of Ministers this year. In our chairmanship programme we put a special focus on the bioeconomy in the Nordic countries. Clean and healthy oceans play a significant role in the bioeconomy and to underline this we have arranged this conference as a part of our chairmanship programme.

The agenda we have in front of us is exciting and the results will hopefully give us some tools and create ways that we can use to fight plastic waste in our oceans. 

On the agenda we have a contribution from plastic producers, from the fishery sector and from the waste management sector. Importantly, all with the view on possible solutions.  The OSPAR Regional Action Plan on marine litter was adopted at the OSPAR commission meeting this summer, unanimously by all parties. This is a progressive plan and we will have a lecture on it today. This will be very interesting for us here in Iceland, as I am very interested to go along with that plan. 

We will have lectures from the German Federal Environmental Agency that will inform us on the results from conference on prevention and management of marine litter in European Seas and we surely can learn something from that. 
We will also learn about microplastics in the sea and microplastics from consumer goods that will be very interesting to know more about. 

Marine litter is not only about plastic but here today we are focusing on that part because of the excessive us of it in our daily life both by the industry and the general public.   Marine litter is however part of a bigger problem, that is the immense consumption of goods and resources in the modern world, especially here in the western world.   

Plastic being only one of the items that we are using excessively.  Reduce, reuse and recycling should therefore be the focus of all aspects of our daily life.   We have to live in harmony with nature and taking good care of our own waste is part of the responsibility we should all take. 

You have a heavy agenda in front of you and I hope that this will be a productive day.  I look forward to see the solutions that will result from this conference and I hope,   at the end of the day we have all learnt something that we can bring forward to our homes in order to make our oceans better.

Thank you