Tons of marine litter removed in clean-up initiative

A successful beach cleaning initiative organised earlier this month by Let’s Do It Malta has managed to assist MEPA in starting a marine litter-monitoring programme for the Maltese Islands.

This clean up initiative, which was carried out simultaneously across fifteen other countries bordering the Mediterranean, also helped raise a strong awareness about the harm and negative impact litter can have on the marine and coastal environment.

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive requests of Malta and all other EU Member States to develop and implement measures and monitoring programmes aimed at reducing marine litter and assessing the state of health of the marine environment. The very slow rate of degradation of most marine litter items, mainly plastics, causes a wide spectrum of environmental, safety and health impacts on the marine life.

For this international initiative over a thousand volunteers in the Maltese islands joined in their efforts to clean up the islands’ coastal shore. A number of these volunteers were assigned to clean up St. George’s Bay in St Julian’s, Ghajn Tuffieha Bay in Mgarr and Pretty Bay, Birzebbugia and agreed to participate in a citizen science monitoring programme.

Using specific guidelines under the supervision of Professor Victor Axiak, the volunteers moved along given transects and carried out visual counts to monitor the type of marine litter that was found on these beaches.  

The first preliminary results show that cigarette butts and plastic items were by far the most frequent items of beach litter. Most frequent in St. George’s Bay, cigarette butts outnumbered the total of all other litter items by over 5 times. While cigarette butts were also the most frequent litter item at Pretty Bay, they were found to be much less frequent than at St George’s Bay.

With plastic items being the second most frequent type of litter on our beaches, the plastic found at Pretty Bay was double that found at St. George’s Bay. In terms of total litter and apart from cigarette butts, the beach at Ghajn Tuffieha was found to have almost twice as much litter than any of the other two beaches.

Such data not only assists in the compilation of monitoring data for the purposes of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive, but also provides valuable information for the management of protected coastal areas, including areas forming part of the Natura 2000 network of protected sites.

Professor Victor Axiak, a MEPA Board member, who helped co-ordinate this initiative said “the success behind this nationwide coastal clean up not only helps sensitize and educate the public about our responsibilities towards our environment, but more importantly it promotes the concept of citizen science.”

He added, “engaging the participation of volunteers and members of the public to assist, MEPA and other organizations, in collecting valuable environment monitoring data will increase environmental stewardship in our country.”

Faisal Sadegh, national coordinator of Let’s Do It Malta, said, “being an active part of our society brings with it a great personal satisfaction and we urge people to volunteer for this monitoring programme, which benefits our marine and terrestrial environment.”    

More results are expected from other beaches as more volunteers are assisting the competent authority in its endeavour to undertake a ‘medical check’ of the Islands’ precious coastline.

The Authority invites anyone who would like to volunteer and contribute to these monitoring surveys to contact Let's Do It Malta National Co-ordinator Faisal Sadegh through email address [email protected].