Lady`s Mile beach in Limassol, on the southern coast of Cyprus, was recently cleaned up by members of NGO “Friends of the Earth Cyprus” and the crew from Greenpeace`s “Rainbow Warrior” in context of the initiative #BreakFreeFromPlastic.
“The goal of the event was to conduct a beach cleanup to highlight the role of corporations responsible for single-use plastics ending up in our ocean, beaches, and waterways and to emphasize that cleanups alone do not solve the problem,” the NGO says in a press release.
“To effectively address the problem, we need to work at the source using a holistic and ecological approach – which involves asking corporations to stop manufacturing and distributing their products in non-recyclable, one use packaging, as well as implementing zero waste programs and approaches in cities and communities,” it adds.
Volunteers that took part in the clean up collected 90 bags or 212kgs of litter, 30 of the bags were processed according to the brand/company manufacturers. This was to check from which companies the garbage came from, and to put pressure on corporations to increase their efforts and improve the management of their product packaging.
“From the specialised categories chosen for the audit the biggest representation of % waste in volume and weight were plastic bottles, followed by glass and cans, all of which are recyclable,” the press release says.
The FoE and Greenpeace “urge companies to take more responsibility on the management of their product packaging, by monitoring the product cycle from the beginning to the end, making it more environmentally friendly with no waste.”
It is further recalled that “every year big quantities of waste end up in the oceans, approximately 90% of all trash floating on the ocean`s surface is plastic; this is more than 5 trillion pieces.”
“Over 44% of all seabirds and 86% of turtles have ingested or become entangled in ocean plastic, while over 1 million marine birds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually,” the press release says.
