TIRANA, August 1
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has published recently a report for the management of untreated plastic waste, and the way that Mediterranean countries could get rid of them. In this report, it is pointed out that Albania, is one of the most problematic countries, with the highest percentage of untreated plastic waste, 73%. This ranks Albania in one of the top 4 countries with the highest norm of the untreated plastic waste in the Mediterranean, along with Montenegro, Egypt, and Libya.
According to a WWF report, the Mediterranean Sea is among the seas with the highest levels of plastic pollution in the world. It contains only 1% of the world’s water but it houses 7% of the world’s microplastics. Between 70,000 and 130,000 tones of microplastics and between 150,000 and 500,000 tonnes of macroplastics finish in the Mediterranean and other European seas each year, waste that ends up in fishes eaten by humans. This implies that every week, Europeans eat the equivalent of a plastic bank card (five grams or 1,769 microparticles).
Regarding Albania, this high level of plastic pollution is surprising somehow considering the size of the country and the number of inhabitants. But, the Albanian government doesn’t have the tools and capacities to manage this waste, which according to the report by WWF most of them end up in the sea, damaging not only the flora and fauna but tourism as well in long-term. The report is referred to the plastic waste, saying that most of them are transported via rivers, and end up on the Mediterranean Sea. The organization based in Switzerland calls on governments of these countries to do more, starting with the reduction of plastic usage.
Read also: Pollution Poses Threat to Karaburun-Sazan Marine Park
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