The National Institute of Marine Sciences and Technologies (French: INSTM) announced its participation in the Clean Up The Med campaign - one of the most widespread environmental clean-up campaign in the Mediterranean Basin - due on May 12-14.
The INSTM will conduct awareness campaigns, in collaboration with several civil society organisations in Ghar El Melh.
Launched by Italian NGO Legambiente in 1993, this initiative is designed to protect Mediterranean beaches against plastic pollution and raise awareness among local communities about the negative impact of human activities, particularly poor waste management, reads a press release.
This campaign is promoted this year by the European Plastic Busters CAP project. The project, with a budget of 1.1 million euros, is co-funded by the EU's Eni CBC Med programme and involves seven countries, namely Tunisia, Italy, Greece, Spain, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.
The project is intended to increase the transfer of knowledge, experiences and best pracyoce tools to ensure the sustainable management of marine litter in the Mediterranean.
The campaign brings together organisations, universities, municipalities, public agencies, schools and citizens.
Over the last three years, the campaign was conducted as part of the COMMON project which saw over 2,000 volunteers from 20 Mediterranean countries take part in beach clean-up activities.
They collected more than 10 tonnes of waste from almost 24,000 km of coastline.
Out of 90,000 objects collected on Mediterranean beaches, 17,000 (about 20%) were
cigarette butts and 6,000 (about 7%) cigarette butts, data provided under the COMMON project for the period spanning 2020-2022 show.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse