On 18, 19 and 20 May, Seville hosted the 2nd International Forum on Marine Litter and the Circular Economy MARLICE, with the aim of developing strategies to move towards a waste-free ocean.
Jordi Oliva Farriol, Co-founder and Project Manager of Good Karma Projects was invited to this forum organised by the Spanish Marine Litter Association, and presented the progress of the study on plastic pellet pollution in the Western Mediterranean.
The study has already been running for 4 months and 80% of the pellet sampling has been carried out at Playa de La Pineda, Playa dels Prats and Playa Cavalleria.
So far, from the samples taken at La Pineda beach and dels Prats beach in Vila Seca, from February to April, pellets have been found in all samples. This means that there has been a steady arrival of pellets on these beaches since sampling began last January.
As for Cavalleria beach, a very low frequency of pellets arrival has been detected since February, however, since the beginning of April an increase in pellets arrival has been observed on this beach.
In the case of Platja Llarga in Tarragona, 50.9% of the microplastics, larger than 1mm, are plastic pellets. First calculations estimate that on this same beach there are 11.6 million plastic pellets. Equivalent to approximately 245 kilos, spread over an affected area of 30,000 m2.
During the congress, in the presentation of our documentary CHASINGPELLETS, we decided to share a tweet showing some images of the state of the streams of Tarragona on Monday 16 May, 2 days before the beginning of the congress.
These data and the progress achieved so far reflect the serious problem of this pellet pollution.
Medpellets is a project developed by Good Karma Projects with the collaboration of the Biodiversity Foundation (Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge), through the Pleamar Program, co-financed by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF).
