「潮目変えたい」　海洋ごみと闘うギリシャの有志たち

【ザキントスＡＦＰ＝時事】ギリシャ西部のイオニア海に浮かぶザキントス（ザンテ）島は、手付かずの自然が残る同国有数の観光地。青い海と美しい砂浜で知られ、アカウミガメの地中海での主要な営巣地になっているほどきれいな環境だ。だが、ここでも、プラスチック汚染が野生生物への大きな脅威となっている。（写真はギリシャ・ザキントス島付近の海でごみを収集するボランティア。イジーアン・リブレス提供）
　エーゲ海の生物多様性を廃棄物から保護することを目的に、２０１７年に設立された「イジーアン・リブレス（息を吹き返すエーゲ海の意）」は発足から２年で、ペットボトル９０００本、漁網３．６トン、タイヤ２８９本を収集。先月２３日に行った活動では、わずか３時間でタイヤ４本、ショッピングカート２台の他、街灯や金属製の箱、ポリ袋やペットボトル数十本、数キロメートルの釣り糸を収集した。
　アテネ近郊の海洋研究ヘレニック・センターの生物学者カテリーナ・ツァガリ氏は、「海洋ごみは地球規模の問題で、ギリシャでも起きている。ギリシャの海洋ごみの７割以上はプラスチックだ」と語る。
　ツァガリ氏のチームが検査したアカウミガメのうち、およそ７５％の体内でごみが見つかった。そのほとんどはプラスチックだった。海洋種全体では、２０～４５％の種でプラスチックの摂取が確認された。これには、魚やムール貝が含まれていたという。
　世界自然保護基金（ＷＷＦ）によると、閉鎖性海域である地中海に蓄積される周辺国からのプラスチックごみは、年間５７万トンに上る。
　ギリシャ政府は、毎日４０トン近くのプラスチックごみが同国の海に流れ着いていることを認めている。
　キリアコス・ミツォタキス首相は先月、ＡＦＰに対し、海洋保護は観光に大きく依存する同国にとって「重要な優先事項」だと述べた。
　政府は最近、カップやストローなどの使い捨てプラスチックを段階的に廃止する取り組みを始めたが、コーヒーの持ち帰り文化が広く浸透した同国では至難の業だ。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2019/12/05-08:51）

Dressed in her protective wetsuit and scuba gear, Antigone Kouteri jumps into the murky waters of Zakynthos harbour in search of plastics -- and promptly snags her arm on a submerged object.
It was a tyre, offers her patrol mate Efthymis, coming up with a discarded beer bottle. My treat! he jibes.
The Ionian island of Zakynthos is one of Greece's most pristine travel destinations, renowned for its azure waters and fabulous beaches, an environment clean enough to be a major Mediterranean nesting ground sought out by loggerhead sea turtles.
But even here, plastic pollution poses a grave threat to wildlife.
Kouteri is one of nearly a dozen volunteers from Aegean Rebreath, a Greek organisation formed in 2017 to protect Aegean biodiversity from waste.
Within three hours, the team has collected four tyres, two shopping carts, a street lamp, metal boxes, plastic bags, dozens of plastic bottles and several kilometres of fishing line.
Marine litter is a global issue, so it is (present) in Greece. More than 70 percent of marine litter is plastic in Greece, says Katerina Tsagari, a biologist at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research near Athens.
Tsagari says her team has found litter, most of it plastic, in about 75 percent of loggerhead sea turtles tested.
Overall, they have found plastic ingestion in between 20 and 45 percent of the species tested, which include fish and mussels.
With a coastline of some 14,000 kilometres (8,500 miles), one of the longest in the southeastern Mediterranean, Greece attracts tens of millions of tourists every year.
It's a regional problem. The Mediterranean, a partly closed sea, accumulates 570,000 tonnes of plastic annually from surrounding countries, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
WWF has reported that Greece produces 700,000 tonnes of plastic per year, or 68 kilos per capita. Out of that, 11,500 tonnes end up in the sea, it said.
- 'Junkyard' beneath the waves -
There is a junkyard beneath the blue waters, says Violetta Walczyk, a Greek-Polish lawyer active with Aegean Rebreath.
On the Cycladic island of Andros, mounds of waste from a 2011 hilltop landfill collapse are still to be found in the sea below.
In its two years of operation, Aegean Rebreath has amassed 9,000 plastic water bottles, 3,6 tonnes of fishing net and 289 tyres.
The government readily admits that nearly 40 tonnes of plastic waste end up in Greek seas every day.
It recently started a campaign to phase out single-use plastics such as cups and straws -- no small feat in a country with a huge coffee-to-go market.
Speaking to AFP last month, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that marine protection was a key priority for a country so dependent on tourism.
Greece continues to pay millions of euros in fines to the European Commission concerning the operation of illegal landfills.
But recycling efforts are still basic. Greece last year eliminated free supermarket bags, long after other European countries.
Recycling in Greece is a joke, snorts George Sarelakos, the co-founder of Aegean Rebreath.
Every municipality has its own policy, there is no central strategy, he told AFP.
George Triantafyllou, the HCMR's head of research, says the institute is coordinating a European project, Claim, across 13 EU countries in addition to Tunisia and Lebanon to eliminate microplastics.
The project includes developing photocatalytic technology to accelerate the degradation of microplastics in seas and rivers, he notes.
The HCMR has also helped develop a floating litter-collection barrier that is currently deployed at the mouth of Kifissos river in Athens.
I believe everybody should change habits. We don't have to use plastics in our everyday life, says George Triantaphyllidis.