The “A Minha Praia” project, one of the winners of the first edition of the Participatory Budget Portugal, has already started and children from the Santa Luzia 1st Cycle Basic School (Tavira) were, on the 28th of September, cleaning Praia do Barril.
“The participating children were given an introduction to the problem of marine litter, its origins and impacts, especially how the presence on our beaches affects the health of the marine environment, the daily lives of residents and the local economy,” says Centro Ciência Viva de Tavira.
Then, "armed with protective gloves, garbage collection bags and registration and cataloging sheets, they set to work, traveling a portion of Praia do Barril in search of all the visible garbage."
These monitoring actions “follow the methodology proposed and standardized by the OSPAR Convention (Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Northeast Atlantic), which is the current legislative instrument that regulates international cooperation in environmental protection in the Northeast Atlantic and of which Portugal it has been a signatory since 1992», adds the Centro Ciência Viva de Tavira.
«These monitoring and cleaning actions, carried out by Algarve students from several academic years, are not only acts of environmental civility, but are true events of citizen science, as the intention is to collect not only garbage, but also information on quantities and types of waste found, as well as their seasonality'.
These data will then be provided to the competent authorities so that they can be incorporated into national and international analyzes and studies on the permanence of marine litter on Portuguese and European coasts.
Coordinated by Centro Ciência Viva de Tavira, the project “A Minha Praia” was one of the winners of the first edition of the Participatory Budget Portugal (OPP) in the area of Science, in 2017, and combines the three Ciência Viva Centers in the region (Centro Ciência Viva do Algarve, Centro Ciência Viva de Lagos and Centro Ciência Viva de Tavira), also involving the Straw Patrol project, the Sea Science Center of the University of Algarve, the Portuguese Environment Agency, the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA ), several Algarve municipalities and the Pedras d'El-Rei tourist development.
The association between the three Ciência Viva Centers «is essential to create a network to monitor marine litter along the Algarve coast, one of the objectives of this project. Each Ciência Viva Center is responsible for implementing several actions to monitor marine litter on beaches within its geographic reach».
The Centro Ciência Viva de Tavira is responsible for conducting these monitoring actions at Praia do Barril (Tavira) and Praia de Monte Gordo (Vila Real de Santo António), while the Live Science Center of the Algarve is in charge of the Ilha de Faro and Praia dos Pescadores (Albufeira).
Finally, the Centro Ciência Viva de Lagos coordinates actions in Meia Praia (Lagos) and Praia da Mareta (Vila do Bispo).
Another particularity of this project is the installation of “Precious Plastic” plastic recycling stations at the participating Ciência Viva Centers.
These recycling stations will be available to the regional school community for the development of educational activities for recycling and reuse, where, from the plastic waste found, new objects are wanted to be produced for students to use, thus extending the useful life of the materials and reducing the impact of garbage.
Despite being aimed at schools, this project seeks to «reach the whole of society, making it aware of the environmental, economic and social consequences of the growing presence of litter in the marine environment and areas associated with it, such as beaches».
«It is because of the damage caused to the Ocean and because it is necessary for it to continue to sustain life on Earth and to be a source of inspiration, pleasure and discovery that the “A Minha Praia” project aspires to raise awareness of the preservation of the marine environment and its importance sustainable consumption habits in reducing the tons of waste produced daily by all of us».
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