Fourth beach-cleaning 2022 of the environmental program LlévateTuBasura. Punta La Barca, Santa Marianita

One year after the execution of the #LlévateTuBasura program, our environmental education initiative, Ecoplayas developed the fourth beach-cleaning 2022, an event that allows monitoring how the campaign has worked and if people have been receiving and replicating the message in a positive way.

In this minga, we participate together with students from the Faculty of Marine Sciences of the Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí and the volunteers from Ecoplayas, who have joined the team to be the spokespersons for the message, which I remind you is all the garbage that you generate while enjoying a day at the beach, you must pick it up and take it away. We must be aware of and responsible for all the waste we generate.

We also have the presence of Purissima, Mingas por el Mar and the Municipality of Manta who always collaborate with the removal of waste from the beach.

On a cold morning on July 18, we met at 8:00 am in Punta la Barca, Santa Marianita. A place that has been our point of development of the campaign #LlévateTuBasura. As is common in the mingas that we participate in, we begin by thanking everyone for their presence in this activity. And the people were divided into groups, where some were in charge of collecting solid waste and another group was dedicated to collecting pellets and microplastic.

After approximately an hour and a half, all the garbage bags were gathered, and immediately after a quick classification, each of the collected waste was weighed. A curious fact is that we found several meters of nylon fishing line buried on the beach, we had to dig a lot to extract the nylon, there is an assumption that, due to the tides, the nylon gets trapped in the sand and if we let it there, it will take approximately 600 years to degrade.

We simply will not see it disappear, nor will our next generations of children and grandchildren. It's a shame!

When we finished weighing all the garbage, the data on the collected waste was taken: we collected 40 kg of garbage, of which 16 kg were from cabos and Maya; In addition, 40.01 grams of microplastic were found.

After a year of work, we see how the program has impacted the community. Check it out here.

We want to thank those who are always aware of our activities and support the different projects. Together we will continue educating society so that each time we have to do less mingas. We dream at one point in life to enjoy the sea and not find any waste.

Why do we educate on the beaches?

As part of our social responsibility as a company, we are committed to continuing to participate in activities organized by Ecoplayas, which with its educational campaign #LlévateTuBasura has managed to remove the garbage cans from the beach and replace them with educational signs urging tourists and the community in general to When they visit the beaches, all the waste they generate is stored and taken to a place where they can be disposed of correctly. Thus, together we make sure not to leave waste in the sand. As the mingas have developed, Ecoplayas has been able to compare the results of each of these activities to measure the real impact of the educational campaign.

In line with the 2030 Agenda in its Goal 13: Adopt urgent measures to combat climate change and its effects. In accordance with the goal:

13.3 Improve education, awareness, and human and institutional capacity regarding climate change mitigation, adaptation, reduction of its effects, and early warning

We want to contribute to our actions and educate and guide people that climate change is being experienced now. In this minga, we were able to show a remarkable reduction in waste compared to the results obtained in our first mingas. We hope that soon many beaches replicate this initiative where education and responsibility is our fundamental pillar, only in this way can we mitigate the contamination of our beaches and achieve a better place where we can all enjoy its beauty.

For cleaner beaches #LlévateTuBasura