If you read our Trash Tuesday post from 23rd July you may remember that on a 4km stretch of one of the most beautiful beaches in Greece, I picked up 668 plastic bottle caps while out running one day.
After leaving Sani Marina we travelled north to Thessaloniki where we left LADY ROSLYN for 6 weeks to return home. As soon as I arrived home I forwarded my blog post to Sani Resort, which borders Bousalas beach, for their comments. They have one of the most comprehensive Sustainability Reports of any corporations I have ever seen and they take sustainability very seriously. Our blog post was given to their Sustainability Board and they responded promptly with a call to action and an undertaking to ensure that the full length of the Bousalas beach would be regularly scanned for trash, not just the beach area near to their umbrellas and beach bar.
On our journey south from Thessaloniki yesterday, we stopped at Sani Marina for the night so that I could once again run the beach to see how it looks now. I left LADY ROSLYN armed with a backpack, large plastic bin bag, water and my phone.
I am really happy to say that the beach was MUCH cleaner than when I ran it in July. Clearly, Sani have kept their promise because I could see the tracks of a quadbike along the length of the beach and I could see that all of the plastic trash which I had not been able to pick up last time, was no longer there.
I still managed to fill most of the bin bag with plastic trash but if you consider that I effectively scanned 8 kilometres of beach, only one bag of plastic is very heartening.
Most of the plastic was made up of white polystyrene from the fishing boats in the Mediterranean. This is of particular concern because it breaks up very easily into tiny balls and small pieces and it is clearly attractive to birds. As you can see from the image above, I made a rookie error of collecting all the plastic trash immediately I saw it, so I ended up with most of the trash in the bag at the far end of the beach and had to lug it over my shoulders on the return leg. The only positive thing I can say about styrene is that it is light!
So, it's a happy Trash Tuesday post for today and a well done to Sani Resort. Hopefully they can keep scanning this beautiful beach on a regular basis and we can rest easy knowing that it remains pristine for all who visit there.
