Litter

Two months after Athens Mayor Haris Doukas acknowledged a waste management crisis, residents and business owners continue to face overflowing trash bins and unsightly litter. Many say the city is dirtier than it has been in the last decade, with streets marred by dripping trash bags and full bins. 

On the third largest island of Greece, renowned for its extensive coastline, rich natural beauty, and historical and geological treasures, the inaugural event of the “Plastic Free Greece” campaign for 2024 unfolded.

An extensive clean-up operation targeting abandoned fish farms along the Western Greece coast has removed 2.7 tons of litter from two sites, one in Ithaca and one near Patra.

The ten-day intensive clean-up was implemented by Healthy Seas charity, in collaboration with Hyundai Motor Europe, as part of the Ghost Farm Project.

The municipality now has to keep the city clean for 7 million people

Illustration. BIRN/Igor Vujcic

Major players in global shipping, the Laskaridis brothers are known in Greece for their initiatives to clean the seas of rubbish and scrap single-use plastics.

Some 154 thousand tons of waste has been collected from the seas since 2019 and demolished within the scope the "Zero Waste Blue" project prepared by the Environment, Urbanization and the Climate Change Ministry.

A need for a contract under the U.N. Environment Program, similar to the Barcelona Convention, stands as an inevitable reality, while marine litter and especially single-use plastics threaten the future of seas and sea creatures, a senior Turkish official said.

The pandemic has been adding a new unwelcome element to sea pollution off Antalya, a resort city in Turkey's Mediterranean region.

A group of divers has reported a rise in the number of face masks and personal protective equipment shields being collected from the seabed.

The travelers around our lands probably feel as if they found themselves in a hospital room of a patient with depressive disorder: the bed is unmade, a musty bowl of yogurt by the window, flies buzzing around the chamber pot. Any doctor will tell you: one of the signs of depression is the loss of desire to keep things around you tidy.

Most marine litter was collected in the Black Sea province of Samsun in 2019, according to data from the Environment and Urban Planning Ministry.

Efforts focusing on collecting, parsing and storing waste stepped up after as much as 58,000 cubic meters of sea litter was retrieved in the city.