Less rubbish to collect from Balearic coastline

LESS rubbish has been collected from the Balearic coastline this summer by the forty rubbish collection boats. But still the summer sea-cleaning project collected hundreds of tons of rubbish including thousands of plastic bottles. Between the months of June and September the distinctive yellow and red boats collected a total of 206 tonnes of rubbish from the sea, which is 10.7 percent less than the same time last year. These figures were unveiled yesterday at a press conference by the Minister for the Environment, Jaume Font.
The volume of plastic material collected in 2004 represented 72 percent of the total, a percentage which has decreased to 55 percent this year.
This decrease is due to the fact that plastic materials remain at the bottom of the sea during the winter and only resurface when temperatures rise, so that last year “a lot of rubbish which has spent years floating around the Balearic coast” was collected. However, an increased amount of wood and seaweed has been taken from the sea this year.
The rainfall in September launched a greater quantity of wood into the sea which had been deposited in the water channels and torrents.
More rubbish was found along the Majorcan coastline this summer ( a total of 134'000 kilos). In Minorca the joint effort by the rubbish collection boats managed to find and destroy 35'000 kilogrammes of waste, in Ibiza 29'150 kilogrammes was taken out of the sea, and finally in Formentera 8'200 kilogrammes was collected. The Ministry ran this project from June to September, with the help of 34 specially designed boats (17 in Majorca, 8 in Minorca, 6 in Ibiza and 3 in Formentera). During the high summer season (July and August) a further 6 boats were made available to keep the sea clean.
It is not only wood and plastic that these boats have collected. This year they have been known to come back with motorbikes, speedboats, huge dead fish and much more.