We can continue talking…
Dear Haifaites, environmental pollution is not a new issue, and you can talk about it again and again, looking for culprits in the level of cleanliness (or the lack of cleanliness) on the beaches in Haifa, but this is only a small part of the matter. I actually want to ask, what happened to personal responsibility? The environmental, the collective? Imagine how wonderful it would be if we spent the summer days on clean beaches, without human waste, and without the corpses of animals, whose fate was decided because of a tarpaulin left in the sea or on the beach, or in general somewhere across the sea, and reached us...
"imagine to yourself…"
Imagine what it would be like, if we weren't indifferent and weren't busy throwing the responsibility and blame on someone else, no matter if it's a senior official in the municipality, or someone sitting next to us in the sun lounger on the beach, with a plastic cup in hand, who will soon find herself plugging the mouth of an unfortunate dolphin...
"Very dirty" to "Very clean"
From the index data of the plan to eradicate pollution on the coasts of Israel "clean beach" And from the tests done last August (2020), which examined the amounts of waste on the beaches and cataloged them from - "very clean" to - "very dirty", it appears that from Shekmona Beach to the Carmel Castle, the level of cleanliness is defined as "medium".
Killing the sea turtles
By site Nature and Parks Authority, one of the main reasons for the extinction of sea turtles in Israel, is the floating debris in the sea, which causes the turtles to die. In addition, the increasing use of humans on the spawning beaches, causes their destruction.
Yehuda Ben Ezra, a lifeguard at Zamir Beach:
You have to take care of big bins in arenas that are known to have picnics and things like that, there is no choice. They want to preserve the quality of the environment, but there are no bins, there is nothing, so the bathers leave the trash and go. If there are concentrated, large bins, I think there won't be garbage at such levels, as there is now.
Over the years there has actually been a decrease in the amount of garbage, there is more awareness. You have to "dig" for people and get it into their heads. The more they see it in articles, on TV, it will enter the ads. You have to pass with bags, give them to people and tell them "take, collect with you". Really physically, going through people and telling them to take the trash with them. Everyone will collect around them and there will be a concentration of garbage bags. Like it or not, bags will be in the end. We need proper advertising, more awareness for the public that comes to the sea, like they once advertised about the waste of water. Let them do this on dirt, there is no choice. Let's memorize it until it is absorbed in everyone's brain.
Be sure to pick up your waste
The Nature and Parks Authority informed Lai Pa:
Minimizing waste ultimately starts with education, advocacy and personal responsibility. By way of prevention in advance. Of course, there is also a way of fines and enforcement and cleaning operations with the help of bodies responsible for the beaches as well as volunteers. There are such organizations from time to time.
If everyone takes care to collect the waste they produce and bring with them from home, and take it back, there will be much less of it. Meanwhile, it is important to try and reduce the use of disposable plastic utensils, and switch to reusable utensils.
The wildlife, turtles and whales, suffocate by swallowing this waste, get caught in this waste and drown. The fish also feed on the microplastics found in the sea, and in fact, apparently, this plastic returns to the people who eat the fish.
Imagine the poor sea turtle…
If you don't care about the consequences of the trash you leave on the beaches for the wildlife, imagine that poor sea turtle (you are welcome to use the photo above), which could also have been your dog, and the next time you see a wandering bag, an abandoned bottle, scattered glasses or a pack of cigarettes - pick up It's not that hard and it just saves lives. Straightforward.
In the end it comes back to us…
The Ministry of Environmental Protection stated in response to Lai Fe:
The Ministry of Environmental Protection emphasizes that every person who comes to the beach has an obligation to remove the trash he produces, from the level of cigarette butts, to trash bags, and take it to the nearest trash can.
Waste in the sea and on the beaches, especially plastic, is destructive to the ecosystem.
Israel is a member of the Barcelona Convention, which aims to implement an action plan to reduce marine waste and plastic waste in particular. The plastic, and especially the tiny plastic (microplastic), floats in the sea, is eaten by marine animals and may even reach humans through the food chain.
Thanks for an important article! More of this kind please