LIFE

Date published: 13 June 2019 12:36

~ Modified On: 13 June 2019 16:58

3 min Read

CALL BY GREENPEACE MEDITERRANEAN

150 Thousand People Sign the Project for Single-Use Plastic Ban in Turkey

150 thousand people have so far signed the project run by Greenpeace Mediterranean to ban single-use plastics in Turkey. The EU signed the agreement introducing an EU-wide ban on single-use plastics on December 20, 2018.

İstanbul

150 Thousand People Sign the Project for Single-Use Plastic Ban in Turkey

* Seabirds in Mauritania - Photograph: Pierre Gleizes/ Greenpeace

Click to read the article in Turkish

According to "A Mediterranean Full of Plastic" report released by Greenpeace, plastics were present in 92.8 percent of the samples collected from the Mediterranean Sea in 2013. Moreover, the Mediterranean basin has one piece of plastic waste per four kilometers.

This high density of plastic waste in Mediterranean is mostly caused by single-use plastics that we use for two minutes just to throw them in the dustbin shortly after. The European Union (EU) introduced an EU-wide ban on single-use plastics such as plastic eating utensils and straws, foam food and beverage containers on December 20, 2018.

After the agreement came into force, the member countries would be obliged to adapt their legislatures to the articles of the agreement in two years. Each member country would amend its constitution to ban the single-use plastics as stipulated by the agreement. Accordingly, Greenpeace Mediterranean request the introduction of a similar ban in Turkey.

'They don't dissolve in nature for hundreds of years'

Greenpeace Mediterranean Project Director Deniz Bayram has stated the following about the issue:

"We need to take immediate action to struggle against plastic pollution, because the plastics that we use for two minutes just to throw away in the dustbin do not dissolve in nature for hundreds of years. Our seas are not in a condition to tolerate more plastics. European Union has banned the manufacture of these unnecessary plastics, including straws and plastic eating utensils.

"150 thousand people whosigned our project in Turkey say, 'We don't need single-use plastics.' The Ministry of Environment and Urbanization should act as required by the zero-waste policy and introduce this ban in Turkey, thereby adding Turkey to the list of countries pioneering the struggle against plastics. We should do it for a Turkey surrounded by seas, not plastics."

5 key facts about plastic pollution

* Protest against plastics in Italy - Photograph: Lorenzo Moscia/ Greenpeace

About 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced since the 1950s – the weight of roughly a billion elephants or 47 million blue whales.
Only about 9 percent of this plastic has been recycled, 12 percent has been burned and the remaining 79 percent has ended up in landfills or the environment.
Up to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic enters the oceans every year.
The equivalent of a truckload of plastic enters the oceans every minute.
There are five trillion pieces of plastic in our oceans – enough to circle the Earth over 400 times.
Countries like Canada, the U.S., and the UK export plastic waste to various countries in Asia and Africa, offloading their trash problem to other communities.

Click here for further facts about plastic pollution

Source: greenpeace.org/usa

Click here to give signature to the Greenpeace project

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CALL BY GREENPEACE MEDITERRANEAN

150 Thousand People Sign the Project for Single-Use Plastic Ban in Turkey

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İstanbul

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