Out To Sea? The Plastic Garbage Project – Egypt
“Today, not a single cubic meter of seawater is free of plastic particles”
It’ll come as no surprise to you, if you’ve been here before, that Egypt has a bit of a problem with plastic garbage. In fact the flying plastic bag was once dubbed ‘the national bird’.
Egypt is certainly not alone in this problem but in a country where leaving the shop with your items just in your hand can be considered a bit uncouth, education on the environmental effect of plastic overuse and abuse goes a long way.
That’s why we were so excited to find out about the Out To Sea Project. The initiative started at the Museum Für Gestaltung in Zurich in 2013. Plastic and other garbage from the world’s oceans and beaches is collected and made into an exhibition which hopes to bring about a more conscious use of plastics. In addition the project also focuses on the health disadvantages of plastics in our waterways and innovative ideas for reusing and reducing plastic garbage. In Egypt the project is headed up by Darb 1718, a nonprofit contemporary art and culture centre.
May 21st and 22nd were the clean up dates for Dahab, run by Darb’s Reem Hatem and supported by H2O Divers Dahab. Volunteers were divided into land and underwater teams and then sent off to local beaches and dive sites.
Myself and another local dive instructor were team leaders for the Lighthouse dive site. We were proud to have collected over 6 full camel feed bags of garbage and oddly enough a mattress, on our 72 minute dive encompassing the bay area.
All the rubbish we collected was bagged up and sent to Cairo to be sorted and made into part of the exhibition.
It was great to be part of such an initiative and I can’t wait to catch the exhibition itself, scheduled for September.
For more information and exhibition dates, both here and abroad please head to:
www.plasticgarbageproject.org
Till next blog,
Summer
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