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Hundreds of thousands of tourists spend their summer vacations on the Romanian coast every year, and several dozens of tonnes of waste are left behind them, show centralized data of a company active on the specialized market.
Thus, 85% of the waste discovered on the most crowded beaches in Constanta county is plastic, the rest being metal, glass/ceramic, rubber, paper/cardboard, textiles and processed wood waste, and the quantities are increasing, from year to year, according to the Clean Recycle analysis.
A large part of the waste that is not collected selectively in the special bins ends up in the Black Sea water. Plastic is also predominant, as much as 89%, in terms of the amount of floating waste found in the water, according to public data cited by the company.
Most of the plastic waste discovered by the authorities both on the beach and in the water consisted of plastic bottles, plastic bags, garbage sacks, linoleum, buckets and plastic cans.
"If it is not collected, and then recycled and exploited, plastic can be harmful to the environment. A plastic bottle can take approximately 500 years to decompose and can affect the marine fauna, but also each of us, through the food chain," declared Cosmin Monda, founder and CEO of Clean Recycle.
In this context, the specialists' recommendation for tourists is to have bags with them when they go to the beach in which to collect the waste, which they should then take to the special collection points, thus minimizing the amount of packaging waste or of another kind on the beaches.
In order to achieve the recycling objectives, which Romania has missed so far, the amount of selectively collected waste must be increased. The country currently has a recycling rate below 50%, according to Eurostat. As of 2023, the targets increase to 65%, and from 2025 to 70%.
In this sense, the collection infrastructure must be improved at the level of the entire country, and intensive awareness-raising and information campaigns are also necessary, Clean Recycle appreciates.
Plastic packaging reached a total volume of 15.4 million tonnes in 2019, being the second most important packaging material in the EU, up 26.4% compared to 2009, according to the Eurostat barometer.
Clean Recycle is one of the first five players on the local packaging waste transfer of responsibility market (OIREP) and manages a portfolio of over 700 companies that produce and put on the market packaging waste, active throughout Romania, from fields such as FMCG and retail, agribusiness, automotive, distribution, industrial or pharmaceutical production. AGERPRES
