Lefteris Arapakis is one of the seven young people, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) named as “Young Champion of the Earth for 2020.” The 26-year-old man has created Enaleia, a movement of fishers who sustainably catch fish but also plastic, and bring it back to port to be recycled.”
“We are creating a movement of fishers who sustainably catch fish but also plastic, and bring it back to port to be recycled.”
Lefteris Arapakis is a Young Champion of the Earth: https://t.co/MawtTtGMcA#ForNature. For #CleanSeas. pic.twitter.com/reQK0uYUKn
— UN Environment Programme (@UNEP) December 15, 2020
Lefteris Arapakis comes from a long line of fishers. For five generations his family has plied the bountiful waters off southern Greece, netting the same cod and red mulls that have sustained Greeks for millennia.
But in recent years, overfishing and pollution, especially discarded plastic, have hammered Greece’s fisheries, with catches in the Mediterranean Sea falling as much as 34 per cent in the last 50 years.
Out at sea, Arapakis, 26, noticed many boats around his hometown of Piraeus hauling in nets filled with rubbish, instead of fish. This plastic by-catch was then simply dumped back into the water.
“I got more and more worried about the scarcity of fish and the increase of plastic,” says Arapakis, who trained as an economist. “I was deeply concerned that my father, and now my brothers, could not make a living out of this job, which is what they learned to do and what they love to do.”
Together with the fishermen
The revelation led Arapakis to found Greece’s first professional fishing school, Enaleia (Greek for ‘together with the fishermen’), in 2016. Its mandate would be two-fold. Teach fishers to ply their trade in a more eco-friendly manner, and enlist the help of the seafaring community to scour the Mediterranean for discarded plastic. Since its launch, Enaleia has collected more than 80 tonnes of plastic from the sea.
“We teach students not just how to fish, but also how to fish so fish can exist tomorrow,” said Arapakis.
Arapakis was recently named Europe’s Young Champion of the Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The award provides seed funding and mentorship to promising environmentalists.
“Discarded single-use plastics are notoriously ubiquitous and have adverse and far-reaching environmental and socio-economic impacts, including on human health,” said Gaetano Leone, Coordinator of the UNEP Mediterranean Action Plan-Barcelona Convention Secretariat. “The inspiring work that Lefteris Arapakis is doing with Enaleia demonstrates that individual and local initiatives driven by passion and shared priorities are crucial in complementing action taken at the regional level.”
The Mediterranean Cleanup
About 13 million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans each year, the equivalent of tipping a dustbin lorry into the ocean every minute. Estimates are there could be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050.
To tackle the pollution problem in the Mediterranean Sea, Arapakis and his team at Enaleia launched Mediterranean Cleanup. They now work with 700 people on 145 boats from Greece and Italy and give a monetary reward for the plastic they return to shore. This removes around 12 tonnes of plastic from the sea each month.
Initially, Arapakis and his team stored the plastic at recycling facilities at the port, but the increasing volumes motivated them to create an innovative partnership with Healthy Seas, an organization based in the Netherlands that upcycles fishing nets (the most common “catch”) into carpets, socks, masks and other consumer products.
‘Catching plastic’
Enaleia now operates in 12 Greek ports as well as Rimini in Italy.
Arapakis, who has a degree in economics and management from Athens University, says the plastic pollution in the fishing areas of the Argosaronikos gulf “has been significantly reduced”. “The fishermen are saving the seas from plastic,” he adds.
The spread of COVID-19 dealt a temporary blow to Enaleia earlier this year. During the first lockdown in Greece in March and April, many of their sponsorship contracts were cancelled. However, Enaleia adapted to the pandemic and managed to increase the plastic collected from the sea. Once the pandemic passes, Arapakis plans to expand Enaleia’s work to other seafaring countries. (full story here.)
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The whole meditarenian see thanks you! And så does the people who lives around it! And all the spieces in it, small or big! This kind of initiatives is what can save the beautiful oceans and its inhabitors from what we humans carelessly through away! It is so good to read about, something that gives hope for the environment and the future!