The civic led mass movement Lets Do It! World is inviting people to participate in a unique project, bringing together a large number of volunteers to clean up the beaches, islands and sea in 20 Mediterranean countries during the same weekend 10th and 11th of May.
Lets Do It! Mediterranean aims to draw attention to pollution of the Mediterranean Sea and motivate communities to work together to change the situation. Studies show that thecontamination of the Mediterranean Sea is very high and the level of plastic waste is beyond critical. In certain places the volume of micro plastic in the water exceeds that of plankton.
Faisal Sadegh, the project coordinator of Lets Do It! Mediterranean emphasises how such a sea cleanup action has never been organised before. The Mediterranean is one of the most touristic regions in the world, connecting three continents with different social, economic and cultural backgrounds. The population is dense, surviving on the support that the land and marine ecosystems can provide. The negative anthropogenic effects must be responsibly dealt with and to make matters worse, the natural outflow of the sea is very small. This means that the harmful effects will continue to increase in concentration, affecting the people through accumulation within marine life and the food chain. Pollution does not stop at a countries border, and the problems are spreading to effect the Mediterranean region in more direct ways than ever before, he said.
Sadegh explains, that this is exactly the reason why the organisers invite the whole region to participate and clean up together. Such a massive voluntary cleanup action for the Mediterranean is unique. There have been separate cleanup actions, but this scale is unprecedented. We need to work together for the environment we all share. This is why we are inviting everybody to take part support us and join up for the cleanup actions on the 10th and 11th of May. We invite people to come with their family, to bring neighbours, colleagues, etc. It simply works better and is much more fun together, encouraged Sadegh.
The Lets Do It! Mediterranean campaign is run and organised by volunteers, and the team plans to organise massive actions in concentrated periods until 2018. Our action tries to involve as many people and organisations as possible. To shine a light on the problem and give support to those with solutions, and make them more noticeable. We need a quick change in mentality as were running out of time. Lets Do It! actions have already made that change in many countries, which used to struggle with illegal dumping and trash, but are now clean and even moving towards great innovations and planning stop producing trash altogether, commented Sadegh.
You can find more information about the teams and actions of the Lets Do It! Mediterraneanhere.
The Lets Do It! movement started in Estonia in 2008, when 50,000 people came together to clean up the whole country. Under normal circumstances it would have taken the government three years and 22,500,000 Euros to clean up the same amount of illegal garbage, but it was done for 500,000 euros and in only five hours. By now, the network unites over 100 countries and over nine million volunteers.
The Lets Do It! Mediterranean action is supported by the Anna Lindh Foundation. The Lets Do It! movement is supportedbytheEstonian Ministry of Foreign Affairsfrom theDevelopment Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid fund, theOpen Estonia Foundation, Skype, Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, QlikView, Tallink Group, DHL Estonia, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Estonian Air, Meedius Estonia, Sendsmaily and EuroPark Estonia.
More information about the Lets Do It! global movement:
Meelika Hirmo
Lets Do It! World Cleanup 2014
Head of Public Relations & Communication
Tel: +372 5041258
E-mail:[emailprotected]
Home page: www.letsdoitworld.org
Facebook:www.facebook.com/letsoitworld
Twitter:www.twitter.com/letsdoitworld
Youtube:www.youtube.com/letsdoitworld
More information about Lets Do It! Mediterranean action:
Faisal Sadegh
Lets Do It! Mediterranean
Main Project Coordinator
Tel: +356 99 435 806
E-mail:[emailprotected]
Home page:www.ldim.net
Facebook:www.facebook.com/LetsDoItMediterranean