Pilar Bernal Zamora
Zaragoza, May 3 (EFE). – More than 200,000 volunteers distributed throughout Spain continue to fight against the one known as ‘Romuraza’, and thus has been demonstrated with the Libera project, which since 2017 has helped to remove 800 tons of cans, butts, bottles and other waste that had become a common scenario between the forests and rivers of the territory.
Only in the last national campaign, held last March, about 6,300 people acted in almost 400 points of the country and withdrew 4.5 tons, on a day focused on river channels, especially affected by recent storms and the accumulation of garbage.
“They could have been more points, but due to the weather conditions, a few meetings had to be canceled,” explained to Efe the head of project communication, Eliezer Sánchez, who added that still the impact of the campaigns continues to grow pending new calls, such as the one planned for September, focused on beaches, seas and seabed, and that of December, dedicated to earthly environments.
It was during one of the activities organized by SEO BirdLife to observe birds when they realized that, “instead of looking at the sky”, we had to “look to the ground”, a problem that caused the organization to promote this project with Ecoembes, and that it also brought with it the birth of the term of ‘garbagety’.
Since then, they have identified thousands of waste, among which the butts, heading the list, followed by cans, bags, wraps and plastic fragments, mostly linked to recreational activities. “It is not about not doing excursions or parties in nature, but about taking the waste generated back,” said Sánchez.
But, of all of them, the butts are not only the most common, but also the most harmful. “Even turned off, more than 400 toxic substances that pollute soil and water release, in addition to the risk of provoking fires,” said communication head.
In addition to these objects, the collected have also had peculiar protagonists, where volunteers have collected from appliances such as washing machines or refrigerators to pipes, drills, vapers or toys.
To this is added the slowness with which this waste is degraded. “A button can take 10 and 15 years to disappear, while a can can remain in the environment for several centuries,” said Sánchez, who also added that, during that time, animals can ingest these objects or get trapped in them.
“In the end that bioacumulation of microplastics in animals also affects us through the trophic chain,” said Sánchez, who has warned that these waste is not only in animals. “Also in what we breathe or what we wear, what it does is that they end up within our body,” he said.
This pattern has been repeated in different regions of the country, although with very different figures, the community being the area with more retired waste, especially in the Jarama and Guadarrama rivers, with more than 9,000 objects found in this last meeting. Although there was also a large presence of volunteers in other points such as the vicinity of the Duero River in Valladolid, the Júcar River in Cuenca and Valencia or the Segura River in Murcia.
With regard to Aragon, cleaning focused on the Ebro banks, although there were actions in the three provinces, with 434 volunteers who collected more than 2,100 waste in more than 20 different points of the territory.
Given this type of collection, more and more people decide to join cleaning campaigns. And, although there is still a way to go, the organization trusts the multiplier effect of its initiatives.
For the next national day, scheduled for June 7, they hope to match or exceed 15,000 volunteers from previous editions. “As long as there is a single abandoned waste, there is work to do,” said Sánchez. EFE
pbz/ipl/sgb
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