People collect waste from the beach in Alexandria, Egypt, Aug. 13, 2022. On the beaches in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a group of Egyptian young people are usually seen holding green and white plastic bags to collect the scattering waste. They are participants in a cleanup campaign organized by Banlastic Egypt, an environmental project launched by a group of youth in the Mediterranean city.(Photo: Xinhua)

 

A child collects waste from the beach in Alexandria, Egypt, Aug. 13, 2022. On the beaches in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a group of Egyptian young people are usually seen holding green and white plastic bags to collect the scattering waste.(Photo: Xinhua)

 

Photo taken on Aug. 13, 2022 shows a beach before the cleanup campaign in Alexandria, Egypt. On the beaches in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a group of Egyptian young people are usually seen holding green and white plastic bags to collect the scattering waste.(Photo: Xinhua)

 

A woman collects waste from the beach in Alexandria, Egypt, Aug. 13, 2022. On the beaches in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a group of Egyptian young people are usually seen holding green and white plastic bags to collect the scattering waste.(Photo: Xinhua)

 
On the beaches in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a group of Egyptian young people are usually seen holding green and white plastic bags to collect the scattering waste.

They are participants in a cleanup campaign organized by Banlastic Egypt, an environmental project launched by a group of youth in the Mediterranean city.

The project seeks to raise the public's awareness of plastic pollution and how single-use plastic waste harms marine life if it eventually ends up in seas and oceans.

Manar Ramadan, a co-founder of the project, told Xinhua that the waste they collected was divided into four categories: recyclable PET plastic bottles and cups, non-recyclable waste, cigarette ends, and bottle caps.

The PET plastic waste will be sent to a recycling company, the cigarette ends are sent to another company that treats and uses them as filling material for making bean bags, while the bottle caps are sent to a charitable project that sells them and uses the money to buy chairs for people with special needs, Ramadan explained.

Later, the young people were joined by some children whose parents like the idea.

Mostafa Rabie, from Upper Egypt's Minya province, was happy to see his four children joining the campaign to clean up the beach.

"My children love cleanliness as their mother brought them up this way. It's a beautiful idea. It makes the beach look great," Rabie said.

The Egyptian Ministry of Environment is considered as "a basic partner" with Banlastic Egypt, said Ahmed Yassin, a solar engineer and another co-founder of the initiative.

"The ministry provides us with technical and logistic support," Yassin said, noting that Alexandria is one of the biggest and most populous cities of Egypt, where single-use plastic is widely used and people need to learn more about its ecological problems.

"Plastic waste on beaches eventually ends up in the sea and then the oceans, forming large floating piles, known as gyres, that harm marine life," Yassin told Xinhua.

About 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing about 269,000 tons are floating in the world's oceans, according to a study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Egyptian environmental experts said that such campaigns are very important to help the government with raising eco-awareness among the citizens, especially since Egypt has recently launched its "Go Green" campaign ahead of hosting the 27th session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in November.

"Plastic debris in seas and oceans takes too long to dissolve and affects biodiversity, for it can lead to the death of marine organisms," said Adel Soliman, an environmental expert with the Egyptian Ministry of Environment.

Soliman emphasized that such cleanup campaigns send a message to the world ahead of COP27 that Egypt has raised the eco-awareness among its citizens, including the youth and children.

"We want to tell the world that our youth launch campaigns that help limit the impacts of climate change. This is surely a very important message," said the Egyptian ecologist.