A superficial gesture, perhaps unconscious, but which leads to enormous negative consequences. Throwing a plastic waste in nature means in fact poisoning the environment and doing it for a long time: a straw, for example, takes 500 years, and many more, to completely destroy itself. It applies to all the different plastic accessories (plates, glasses, bottles, bags), which require from 100 to over 500 and many more years to be disposed of. According to studies by the Enea centre, over 80% of the waste on the Italian coasts is represented by plastics, which then end up in the sea, where over the years they become "microplastics": fragments of less than 2 millimetres and almost invisible to the naked eye. The CNR has also given its alarm to disturbing numbers: about 12 out of 300 million tons of polymers produced each year end up at sea. In the Mediterranean there are estimated to be 1.25 million tons of microplastics: the particles are ingested by the fish and we find them in the food chain: at zero kilometer, from the fish to our table. Often, however, it is not clear, especially to young people, what should be considered waste and how long it takes for the environment to 'metabolize' it. Some other examples: the remains of fruit and vegetables (from 3 to 6 months); cigarette butts or filter (from 3 months to 10 years); newspapers (from 3 to 6 months); an aluminium can (from 20 to 100 years); chewing gum (30 years).
It was discussed at the Museum of the Sea of Marceddì on the occasion of the event to raise awareness on the theme of waste, organized as part of the project Maristanis by the MEDSEA Foundation in collaboration with the Municipality of Terralba, the Association 3dna and the Cooperative Concordia: a meeting with high school students of Terralba (third classes), which preceded the clean up of students along the banks of the lagoon of Marceddì. Armed with gloves and bibs, the students cleaned up one of the most beautiful sites in the wetlands of Oristano. Accompanied by the teachers, they collected and learned to divide the waste according to type. An intense day full of information for the citizens of tomorrow: we hear the impressions of some of them, interviewed during the clean up.
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