Why is it important to carry out these collections?
Waste collection in the island’s natural environment pursues 3 objectives:
1► Remove waste abandoned in nature, thus preventing plastic pollution in the environment.
2► Raise awareness and explain plastic pollution to participants in the collections.
3► Analyse the waste collected to understand the island’s situation regarding plastic pollution (origin, type, magnitude, etc.).
2► Observe and explain to raise awareness about plastic pollution
The impact of a field trip on the perception of plastic pollution is a very effective environmental awareness tool on the island. Unlike other environmental problems, such as climate change, plastic pollution can be seen, touched, and even felt.
It is estimated that the island releases around 78 tonnes of waste into the sea each year, although its more than 200 km of coastline also receive marine litter from other territories.
The high presence of waste, especially along the coast, allows us to make visible and explain this serious environmental problem through field trips.
1► Remove waste to prevent plastic pollution
Plastics do not disappear; they break down into smaller and smaller pieces until they become invisible to the eye, but remain in the environment.
A WWF study points out that, even if all sources of plastic pollution were stopped today, the amount of microplastics in the oceans would double before 2050. Some scenarios project that this level could be 50 times higher than today by 2100. Another study by the same NGO indicates that, although the Mediterranean Sea contains only 1% of the planet’s water, it holds 7% of the world’s microplastics.
For this reason, removing abandoned waste from the island’s environment is a key action to prevent plastic pollution.
3► Analyse and understand plastic pollution
The final step of waste collection outings is to analyse all the items found. First, they are collected and weighed together, but later a detailed study of each one is carried out, following the characterisation methodology of PlasticBusters MPAs marine litter monitoring and recording other data such as the condition of the waste, its estimated origin (sea or land), and, if possible, its provenance (country or region according to the language on the item).
All this information is added to our own database and also to other national and European monitoring projects (Biomedia, MedPellets, Marnoba), and analysed within the framework of the work of our “Plastic Observatory”.
