Project Libera, created by SEO/BirdLife in collaboration with Ecoembes, made a call to the public about the consequences. dumping of waste in particularly sensitive areas The boulevards cross paths like floods and streams and encourage citizens to collect all this ‘garbage’ before the predictable ‘cold fall’ arrives, which is so common in late August and September, especially in the eastern part of our country. The new campaign will take place on: 16 September.
Many of these areas, described as large ‘black dots’, represent a high concentration of substance. The ‘garbage’ that finally fell into the sea. This result is due to the fact that with the rains the water collects everything that is thrown into these areas.
“In recent years, it has been determined that one of the most common wastes in these areas is packaging in case of flood; tires, especially in valleys; and agricultural plastics in the case of boulevards,” Project Libera said in a statement.
That’s why the Libera Project has published a report to detail the types of waste that creates ‘garbage’ both in Spain and around the world. new report Under the heading ‘The impact of garbage on the seas and oceans’.
According to the said research; Between 4.8 and 12.7 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year. This means the existence of more than one entity 100 million macroplastic particles and 51 trillion microplastic particles float on the surface of the oceans. Similarly, it is estimated that 5% to 10% of microplastics found in the seas and oceans are small particles produced by the friction of tires. on the roads.
“We throw 230 thousand tons of plastic into the Mediterranean every year”. 27 tons per hour of this material. That means we dump the weight of 1.3 million water bottles, five million plastic bags, or 130 million cigarette butts every hour on just a tiny fraction of our planet’s sea surface,” said Miguel Muñoz, SEO/BirdLife Libera Project coordinator.
Participation is open to all groups and registrations can be made on the proyectolibera.org website until the 10th of the month.
Sara Güemes, coordinator of this initiative at Ecoembes emphasized: “We analyzed the water of 18 beaches in Libera in 2021 and 2022 in different parts of Spain with a total of 62 samples and Microplastics found in more than 95% of samples. These are alarming numbers, so we believe that the unity, education and determination of all groups is necessary to end the dumping of waste.”
Call for new citizens for the 16th year
The Libera Project has been running different campaigns for years inviting citizens to “join the big network”. saviors and saviors fighting against garbage”.
Next 16 September The ‘1m2 for Beaches and Seas’ campaign, which includes the collection and analysis of wastes left in these natural areas, has been carried out for the seventh year in a row, in order to gain in-depth information about this serious problem that threatens biodiversity.
This year’s event coincides with International Beach Cleaning Day (World Cleanup Day) and participation is open to any organisation, group, association or organization. Online registration before September 10 proyectolibera.org.
In this sense, precise information about the type of waste found during beach cleanings carried out by various groups is collected from the Vertidos Cero Association and thanks to the MARNOBA mobile application. Since 2013, 4,586 beach collections have been made and a total of 1,453,861 objects have been found. Approximately 74.8% is plastic, followed by 6.2% metals.
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Contact address of the environment department: [email protected]