Yesterday, the Güímar City Council and Coca-Cola united over 120 volunteers, including five individuals from the Inclusive Sports and Disability Sector of the Canary Islands Foundation of CD Tenerife, along with students from IES Güímar, for a waste collection event at the beach of del Socorro, part of the Circular Seas programme. This initiative, which will celebrate its sixth anniversary in 2024, receives support from the Environmental Volunteering Office of the Cabildo de Tenerife and Terramare Medioambiente.
The volunteers gathered over 250 kilograms of refuse, which the Environmental Volunteer Office categorised for recycling. Furthermore, the collected data will be assessed and added to the project’s database. This information, complementing the monitoring conducted at 80 locations where cleaning operations have taken place since the first edition in 2018, is shared with researchers and scientists to foster the development of new innovative strategies that genuinely impact the preservation of marine environments.
The president of the Cabildo of Tenerife, Rosa Dávila, remarked that initiatives like these “demonstrate the unwavering dedication of the island’s government to the Alliance for the Oceans”, a project aimed at enhancing the sustainability and protection of oceanic ecosystems through the encouragement of research and knowledge sharing. She also underlined the significance of the initiative, believing that “we set an example and highlight the necessity of safeguarding our coastlines, whilst fostering the protection of our marine ecosystems.”
Victor Morales, the head of Communication, Public Affairs and Sustainability at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners Iberia, emphasised “the crucial role of partnerships and collaborations in achieving objectives such as those identified by Circular Seas to realise a waste-free world and marine environment. It is essential to act to protect these ecosystems and raise awareness regarding the need for initiatives that advocate a circular economy. A distinguishing feature of this project is that, after nearly seven years, we have established a database that provides valuable insights to the scientific community to help advance solutions to this challenge. We are thankful to the volunteers who have exemplified what can be accomplished when we collaborate as a team.”
On a national scale, the latest edition in 2023 of Mares Circulares successfully collected over 418 tonnes of waste, an increase of 25% compared to the preceding year, thanks to a network of collaboration comprising over 10,600 volunteers and fishermen’s associations from 17 ports across Spain and Portugal. Last year, 175 waste collection and cleaning operations were conducted on beaches and aquatic areas, in 24 marine reserves and protected natural sites, complemented by eight underwater cleaning efforts.
