BACKGROUND
A pilot project started in 2019. Enaleia in collaboration with 10 fishing boats cleaned the bottom of the sea from plastic in the most efficient way (cost – time – quantities).
At the same time, within the framework of prevention, professional fishermen in 21 ports around Greece and Italy hand us over their nets to prevent them from ending up in the sea or landfills and instead are utilized to create products by recycling or upcycling.
THE FUTURE
Currently we collaborate with 229 fishing vessels both in Greece and Italy, cleaning thousands kilos of plastic from the sea every week! Next, all this plastic enters the circular economy, either through recycling or upcycling.
We contribute to the circular economy, while doing both the cleaning and the management of this marine litter. Specifically, we send the plastic bottles to a fashion company in Madrid which turns them into clothes while the nets we clean from the sea are sent to the environmental organization Healthy Seas, which turns these nets into useful products such as swimwear and socks. This will reduce the amount of plastic and CO2 emissions produced to create new products and thus the power of message we want to convey is multiplied.
Personally, I believe that we can make the change, because if we don’t believe that, we can just give up. It’s our only choice. Optimism is our main weapon against the climate crisis.
Lefteris Arapakis- Director & Co-founder of Enaleia- during an official call with Prince William