Benefits
This post is also available in: Türkçe (Turkish)
The project team believe that, the target stakeholder groups will have an idea about litter at the end of the project. This will be the best benefit of the project to the local people in the project area and other people who visit digital media/portal of the project.
Many national and international organization describe what marine litter is? According to the UNEP: “Marine litter is any persistent, manufactured or processed solid material discarded, disposed of or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment.”
We also produce a description about litter like “A thing is produced for a purpose then not used anymore is “litter”. If it reaches to the sea then is named “marine litter”. Here is the most important dilemma that human must be decide if recycle them or accumulate them under the sea.
After a clear understanding of the meaning of litter, we can also find out a solution together with the collaboration of the neighbors. Project partners have knowledge and experience in the Black Sea and solid waste pollution.
Type and amount of litter of the four countries will be analysed in case of social, cultural, welfair of the targeted groups. In the next step, different awareness material and training methods will be selected for the training of different target groups. On the other hand, we will learn whether cultural differences have an effect or not on their reaction to minimize marine litter pollution.
At present, marine litter is a real challenge for the Black Sea countries because of a lack of knowledge and financial support and also different social and cultural differences. Collection, separation, and recycling systems are not enough to diminish and solve the problem.
Education, training, information, and knowledge are vital components to raise the awareness of the public and decision-makers to combat with marine litter problem. Education/training on sources and possible effects ( may kill, injure, cause pain, suffer and cause important economic losses) of marine litter and ways of reducing their impacts at source needs effective cooperation at different levels with many visual materials and methods. Stakeholders should be warned about the benefits of litter separation on a source in order the reduce ongoing impacts. It will be cheaper, sustainable, and successful than any cleaning and rehabilitation operations.
Training activities should start at early ages at home, then continue in schools and finally in society. If we choose children and juveniles as a target group for training on litter pollution and their effects on the marine ecosystem and human health, we believe that the success level of the project’s success will be the highest.
Although importance and dimensions of the marine litter problem has well known, the main challenges for reducing marine litter are, lack of political willingness, financial and technological requirements ,lack of awareness, increase industrial products which have required packaging, not enough collecting and storing capacity of the solid wastes, no/very few recycling planning facilities around BS countries. Meanwhile, quantity of litters has increased in line with the use of industrial products in wider scale by years
This project is neither scientifically creative nor ambitious about discovering new technologies to save our world forever, but, this project is a collaborative study with our neigbours to reduce marine litter in order to saving our Black Sea marine environment.