25 February 2012 Mexico Hub Marine debris: a problem in every beach in the world.

Whether you are in Fiji, Brazil, Australia, Seychelles, Costa Rica, etc.; every time you go to a non tourist beach you will encounter with a sad truth, marine debris from all over the world is taking over the beaches. The Ocean Conservancy organizes an annual Beach Cleanup Day; in 2010 they celebrated the 25th anniversary of this campaign and they had 615,407 volunteers cleaning the beaches all over the world. They collected more than 8 million pounds of trash and other debrisenough to cover about 170 football fields.

1 Caribbean beach full with plastic

According to the United Nation Environmental Program (UNEP) marine debris is any manufactured or processed solid waste material (typically inert) that enters the marine environment from any source. Mahahual, a small village in the Coast of the Mexican Caribbean is not the exception to this. Marine currents from all over the world bring a lot of marine debris to these beautiful beaches. GVI Mexico has worked in the area for over 6 years participating with weekly beach cleans where it has been observed that between 60 and 70% of the debris is plastic. To continue getting hands on the problem, a massive beach cleanup was organized by Sustenta (Mexican organization that promotes sustainable development and green technologies) and other organizations. This beach clean is done on the International beach cleanup day organized by the Ocean Conservancy; however this year was done on a different date. GVI Mexico has been working closely with Sustenta for three years in raising funds for a campaign to reduce the amount of plastic bottles. The goal was to buy water filters and give them out to families in Mahahual, that way they would get drinkable water reducing the amount of bottles they had to buy. In two years more than 2500usd were raised to buy the filters and they were given out to the families that collected the most plastic in the beach clean and during a campaign that Sustenta launched to collect plastic from town.
3 Marine debris collected in the beach clean

bottles

2 Water filter given to a family

On February 25th, a great effort was done as there were 350 participants, including members of the community and all the organizations involved.

A total of 1547.5kg of plastic bottles were collected during the campaign, and 4888kg of marine debris were removed from the beaches around the area in only a few hours! Marine debris come from the land, therefore campaigns like this one where the goal is to reduce the amount of plastic used are really important. GVI Mexico will continue working towards the collection of marine debris as well as to raise awareness on the importance of recycling, reducing and reusing things. If you would like to know more about GVI Mexicos marine programme visit http://www.gvi.co.uk/programs/marineconservation-expedition-mexico