One COMMON goal: a litter-free Mediterranean sea!

Plastic Busters CAP, a new Mediterranean project following in the footsteps of COMMON (COastal Management and MOnitoring Network for tackling marine litter in the Mediterranean Sea) to consolidate efforts to slash plastic pollution in the Mediterranean sea, will be officially launched in Tunisia, Bizerte, during the second meeting of the steering committee on November 1st.

The COMMON projects' achievements, methodologies and monitoring resources, will be capitalized through the Plastic Busters CAP project, ensuring that progress and lessons learned can feed into the global process, aiming to address the Mediterranean sea's plastic pollution problem.

This European project falls under the umbrella of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) "Plastic Busters Initiative" and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network in the Mediterranean (SDSN MED), led by the University of Siena (Italy), with a budget of 1.1 million euros and co-financed by the European Union within the framework of the ENI CBC Med programme from November 13, 2021, to November 12, 2023.
Among the expected results of the project are 4 technical pieces of training on marine litter monitoring and assessment, 1 online course on marine litter monitoring and assessment, 4 pilot marine litter monitoring and assessment campaigns, 1 roadmap on policy priorities on marine litter, 1 network of coastal cities for the litter-free Mediterranean.

After the first capacity-building training that took place in Manfredonia, organized with COMMON and Ufm, the plastic Busters CAP project team at the National Institute of Marine Science and Technologies - INSTM will organize the second regional training titled "Monitoring of marine litter in the environment and biodiversity", in collaboration with the University of Siena (department of physical sciences of the Earth and the environment) and the Mediterranean Office of Information on the Environment, Culture and Sustainable Development-MIO-ECSDE.

This training's goal is to build the capacity of project managers and different stakeholders to design and conduct a monitoring program for marine litter on the beaches and the sea. It is a practical and highly interactive training, during which participants will become familiar with methodologies and monitoring approaches, the assessment of macro and micro litter on beaches, surface waters and in biota.

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