Water pollution

Bled/Radovljica – The peak of the tourist season at Lake Bled resulted in large quantities of malodorous waste being washed off into the only outlet from the lake, the local environmental organisation has warned, adding that the Sava Bohinjka river is also full of algae. This resulted in the nearby fish farm having to euthanise thousands of fish due to poisoning.

Pollution caused by microplastics on the coasts of the Mediterranean is posing a public health hazard threat ahead of the summer season, an academic has warned.

As efforts to prevent marine mucilage, a thick layer of glop that invaded the Marmara Sea last year, continue with the participation of authorized institutions, a detailed report prepared by a committee set up in the Turkish parliament was presented to Parliament Speaker Mustafa Şentop.

The annual amount of plastic waste produced in Turkey in 2021 is nearly 5.6 million tons, according to an academic publication, which underlines Turkey as the ninth country that produces the most plastic waste in the world.

According to a 2020 report by the Kosovo Democratic Institute, KDI, 90 per cent of wastewater in Kosovo is directly or indirectly discharged into rivers without proper filtration. In the three years up to June 2020, 32 million euros were earmarked for sewage filtration, but only 2.2 million euros was actually spent.

Turkey and its neighbors pledged on Dec. 10 to do a better job addressing the threats posed by pollution to people's health and the natural habitats of the Mediterranean Sea.

From plastic waste to slimy mucilage forming on their coasts, the ring of tourism-dependent Mediterranean countries have battled a steady stream of environmental problems.

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.

Ljubljana – To highlight the problem of plastic pollution, over 1400 students in 100 Slovenian schools joined forces with scientists within the EU’s Plastic Pirates project. Over the course of one year, young people helped scientists to sample microplastics in rivers, which contaminated more than three-quarters of the rivers analysed.

Some 280 Olympic pool volume of wastewater is being discharged from Ergene River in Turkey's northwest to the Marmara Sea every day, according to Greenpeace Mediterranean.

"Industrial wastes had made the Ergene River one of the most polluted streams in the world. Now, these wastes are carried to the depths of the Marmara Sea by pipes," the NGO said in a statement.

Lake Uluabat, one of the 14 wetlands in Turkey mentioned in the Ramsar Convention, is about to become a "dead pond" due to pollution from manure and industrial wastes.