The Foundation for Environmental Education Turkey (TÜRÇEV) continues to implement the Marine Litter Watch Programme of the European Environment Agency's ′′Marine Litter Watch′′ on the shores of the country.
Photo: © Foundation for Environmental Education Turkey (TÜRÇEV)
The Marine Litter Watch (MLW) programme is an initiative by the European Environment Agency (EEA) aiming to fight marine litter through the collection of data and information about disposed waste. At the same time, the initiative is designed to create awareness about the impact of littering on marine ecosystems and should strengthen the public’s willingness to provide the much-needed data.
Almila Kindan, National Operator for the Blue Flag Programme at the Foundation for Environmental Education in Turkey, very much believed in this idea of contributing to global environmental solutions through scientific-based studies. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, TURCEV had already planned to do a pilot study together with the EEA MLW Expert in Turkey, Professor Ahmet Kideys from the Marine Sciences Institute of the Middle European Technical University (METU). After the pandemic, the TURCEV team still had the desire to be part of the marine litter monitoring activities and therefore decided to execute the project together with the guidance of Professor Ahmet Kideys. The expert provided detailed information about necessary litter items to look for at the beaches and the corresponding reporting procedure of the Marine Litter Watch initiative.
Following this guidance, Blue Flag Turkey organised the first Marine Litter Watch clean up and monitoring on the 13th of October 2020. The event was held at the Kumkoy Public Beach located in Aksu-Antalya, which is situated next to Blue Flag awarded beaches. Besides eight people from the TURCEV Antalya regional staff, representatives of the municipality of Aksu and officials of the Kundu Tourism Investors Union also participated in the event.
One of the requirements of the Marine Litter Watch initiative is to monitor littering in uncontrolled areas. This is why beaches situated close to Blue Flag beaches, which are not monitored but could potentially affect the image of Blue Flag beaches, have been chosen for the events. Therefore, considering the Marine Litter Watch application protocol, different 100-meter-long parts of uncontrolled non-Blue Flag beaches have been selected. This includes the Kumkoy Public Beach and the Sarigerme Beach in Ortaca-Mugla, which is placed between two different Blue Flag awarded beaches.
During the first survey at the Kumkoy Public Beach, waste was collected in about fifteen minutes by scanning the chosen area. Afterwards, the collected items were separated and registered according to their types. The most commonly collected items were: 121 pieces of cigarette butts, 64 pieces of plastic pet bottles, 36 pieces of single-use cutlery, 23 pieces of disposable face masks, disposable gloves and wet towels. The full list of items can be seen here.
At the second activity on the 17th of October 2020, 25 people from Blue Flag awarded beaches attended. These included representatives from Sarıgerme Çevre Eğitim Derneği-SARÇED, Hilton Dalaman Sarıgerme Resort, TT Hotels Tropical, TT Hotels Palace, Tui Blue Sarıgerme Park, Tui Magic Life Sarıgerme and Tui Blue Seno and TURCEV Mugla Regional Office Coordinator. Due to the significant number of participants, the collection of waste within the designated area was finished after only 30 minutes. Again, the waste was sorted by category, weighed and recorded according to the Marine Litter Watch excel template. The waste accumulated during the second event included: 1,103 pieces of plastics, 817 cigarette butts, 90 pieces of paper, 31 pieces of metals, 10 textile pieces, nine pieces of wood and six pieces of glass. Finally, the collected data was entered into the system of the Marine Litter Watch website and registered as a TURCEV Mavi Bayrak (Blue Flag Turkey) community activity. After approval from the EEA, the activity will be publicly displayed on the Marine Litter Watch map.
So far, Blue Flag Turkey has conducted two surveys. Another event is scheduled for the 27th of October in the Kocaeli Region.
