Marine and River Litter Elimination New Approach

NGO "Green Strandzha" organized the next cleaning of hard-to-reach places on the route from Ahtopol to the mouth of the Veleka river on 26.06.2019.

Personally, the Mayor of Ahtopol, Mr. Stanislav Dimitrov, started the campaign for cleaning of hard-to-reach places on a route from Ahtopol to the mouth of Veleka river, which was held on 26.06.2019. Among the participants who supported the initiative were Mrs. Rumiana Tsvyatkova - the director of Strandja Nature Park, Agatopol Bishop Jeroen and Father Jordan, the researcher of the Black Sea and the Strandzha Coast Dr. Atanas Oratchev, tourists and citizens. This is the second clean-up campaign this year, organized under the project "Marine and River Litter Elimination New Approach" - MARLENA, BSB-139, funded under the Black Sea Joint Operational Program 2014-2020. Traditionally, the Green Strandja Association has been organizing cleaning for the hard-to-reach bays along the Strandja Mountain for 4 years.

The MARLENA project, in which the association is a partner, seeks to unite people against pollution along the Black Sea coast and the rivers flowing into it. It is especially important to protect clean protected areas near the Black Sea basin. These are areas in the Black Sea basin that have a rich biodiversity and tourism potential.


MARLENA aims to provide more information and publicity about waste problems at sea and rivers, their consequences, and ways to deal with everyday pollution around us. The target audience of the project is young people, tourists, business, local communities and authorities, educational organizations. Particular attention is paid to the development of responsible civic and environmental behavior among young people.

The eco-organizations and young people are also targeted at the platform http://www.marlenablacksea.eu/, which enables every citizen who has come to grips with pollution to signal this and attract volunteers to clean up the site.


More than 20 volunteers took part in the 26 June action, which managed to collect and load about 700kg of waste for landfilling the nearest landfill site. The smallest participant, Martina, is not yet 6 years old, but she is already aware of the seriousness of the junk problem. An interesting fact is that just a year ago the same places were cleaned by volunteers of Green Strandzha, but the sea is so polluted that it constantly throws out new junk. A bigger problem is the waste that remains hidden in the water and becomes part of it, becoming the so-called "plastic soup". These fine particles are swallowed by fish and can then fall into the bodies of humans.

/2019-06-28/