Plastic bags, plastic bottles and aluminium cans for beer and soft drinks account for roughly half the waste that finds its way into Greek seas, according to Professor Giorgos Papatheodorou of the Marine Geology and Natural Oceanography Laboratory at Patras University, ANA reports.
Speaking to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency, the professor also revealed that, based on research findings over the years, the amount of waste on the seabed has actually increased during the last 15 years, in spite of the introduction of environmental legislation to protect against this.
Regarding Greek seas, in particular, Papatheodorou said the picture was “incomplete” in spite of research conducted by several teams in the country: “In reality we have data on the plastic pollution in the Patras Gulf, the Ionian Sea and the Saronic Gulf, where we have data that I consider to be to some degree reliable. Significant densities of plastic waste have been found there at the bottom of the sea, ranging from 500 waste items per square kilometre and in the Saronic Gulf reach as high as 3,500 waste items per square kilometre.”
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