Clean Up The Med in Lebanon : no borders to fight against marine litter
Amwaj for Environment and Tyre Coast Nature Reserve joined Clean Up The Med in Lebanon under the Eu funded COMMON project for beach clean campaign from 25th to 27th September.
A cohesive Mediterranean in the fight against marine litter. From Algeria to France, from Greece to Malta, from Portugal to Palestine, hundreds of volunteers met on the beaches of the whole Mediterranean, armed with buckets, sacks, and gloves with a single goal: to clean them of waste for a cleaner sea.
Clean Up The Med, an awareness campaign on sustainable waste management and marine litter reduction, from 25th to 27th September, for a mobilization weekend that will involve public bodies, associations, universities, municipalities, schools and citizens.
A major
environmental volunteer initiative promoted by the COMMON project (COastal
Management and Monitoring Network for tackling marine litter in Mediterranean
sea), a European project funded by Eni CBC Med and involving Italy, Lebanon and
Tunisia with the aim of protecting the Mediterranean coasts from marine waste
through a sustainable management.
Clean Up
The Med is a
campaign born in 1995 from the Italian NGO Legambiente, which over the years
has involved 21 Mediterranean countries, over 1500 locations and thousands of
volunteers. The COMMON project will further expand the boundaries of the
campaign, involving Lebanon and Tunisia on the front lines. At the end of a
summer marked by a health emergency, more than 80 associations from 17 countries
have joined the initiative: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Croatia, North
Macedonia, Malta, Cyprus, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt,
Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon.
Associations, organizations, municipalities, scouts, professional divers, schools and NGOs, joined Amwaj and TCNR in the CUTM campaign on public beaches of their relative coasts concomitantly on the 27th of September, from Saida (Lebanon) southward to Kharayeb, Abbasiyeh, Tyre, Rasheedyeh, Al Mansouri, Qolayli and down to the Red Sea of Jordan’s Aqaba and the shores of the Dead Sea west of Amman.
In
addition to the physical removal of waste, the Clean Up The Med campaign aims
to raise awareness among the community, to restore cleaner beaches, coasts and
cliffs to the commons. Every year, beaches and seabed collect over 8 tons of waste, of which
more than 80% is plastic: from bottle caps to toys, from cotton buds to bags. Among
the main causes of stranded waste, human activities and poor waste management
on land.
Moreover,
COMMON project will allow the monitoring and collection of data, useful for
analysing the state of health of the Mediterranean. The amounts and types of
waste collected during each appointment will be processed and made available on
the www.commonproject.it platform, a portal created to collect data
on the problem of marine litter in the Mediterranean Sea and to enhance the
importance of protecting our sea and the biodiversity it preserves. Furthermore,
this year, the number of gloves, masks, and other objects related to the
health emergency, increasingly present on our beaches, will be surveyed.
The
nature of wastes and trash collected will be an indicator of the main source/s
of littering, which will help in later phases to better address the problem and
mitigate it.
The
Scheduled activities:
On Sunday,
the 27th of September at 7 a.m., the organizations mentioned above
will conduct the CUTM campaign in parallel on the beaches of: Saida southward
to Al Kharayeb, Abbasyeh, TCNR & Rasheedyeh – Tyre, Al Mansouri and Qolaili.
Some divers will collect wastes from the bottom of the sea in Tyre, Mansouri
and Saida. After the collection of wastes from all the mentioned shores, the
filled bags will be counted, weighed and generally categorized, and all resulted
data will be reported online on the CUTM’s webpage along with pictures from
each beach and group.
Among the
associations present:
- From Tyre: Municipality of Tyre; Union
of Tyre Municipalities; Al Afaaq Institute for Development – Vocational
Training division; Al Afaak institute; Tyre second public school; TCS school; Rotaract
Tyre – Europa; Thought and Human Association; UniVert Environmental
Association; Idea & Instinct initiative; Glimzi SAM group (group of
activists); Tadamon Organization; Conservation of the Environment NGO; Lebanon
Diving Center; Green Southerners; Youths of Qana; GreenArea; Elissar
Foundation; Patriotic Vision Association PVA; Environment Protection
Association; Al Risala Scouts and Scouts of Tyre; Independent activists; - From Saida: Sidon Diving Club;
Order of Divers; - From Kharayeb (North to Tyre):
Municipality of Kharayeb; Al Risala scouts; Imam Mahdi scouts; Manahel Ahl
Al-Bayt Cultural Forum; Al Fajr cultural club; Agricultural cooperative; - From Rasheedyeh Camp (in the
middle of TCNR): UNRWA – Rasheedyeh; Al Jaleel Organization; - From Al Masouri (South to Tyre):
Al Risala scouts; Orange House; - From Jordan: Human Development
& the Environment NGO, Aqaba & Dead Sea
West Bank – Amman
