Raven Russia Beach Cleanup - Let's Make Cyprus Green

To demonstrate their care for the local environment, Raven Russia carried out a clean-up at the northern end of Lady’s Mile Beach on 14 November. More than thirty volunteers, including families with children, gave their time to collect rubbish from the seashore and marshy land behind it.

Lady’s Mile is part of the Akrotiri wetland complex, which is one of Cyprus’ most outstanding Important Bird Areas (IBAs). It hosts numerous waterbirds in winter and spring, including globally important numbers of Greater Flamingos and migrants such as the little Egret, Glossy Ibis and Demoiselle Crane. Not far from the beach are breeding sites of ground-nesting birds such as the Black-winged Stilt and Kentish Plover. At the shoreline, scraps from the beachfront restaurants attract many gulls. But sadly, this beach is also one of the most badly littered in Cyprus, probably due to its closeness to the modern port and industrial area.

The volunteers collected approximately 135kg of trash, ranging from large plastic items such as piping and car body parts to packaging waste and hundreds of cigarette butts. 163 aluminium and steel cans were taken away by Let’s Make Cyprus Green, to be washed and donated to the “Cans for Kids” charity. A bagful of plastic bottles were also taken separately for washing and recycling.

Cleanups are immensely important and unfortunately will continue to be for many years, so long as humans allow the land and seas to be polluted with waste materials such as plastics. The rubbish collected has been removed from a nature-sensitive area and will go to landfill or recycling.

Cyprus produces 640 kilos of municipal waste per person every year, much higher than the EU average of 482 kilos. So as well as cleaning up our environment, we all need to consider how to reduce the amount of waste we generate. We should maximize our use of reusable items and avoid single-use, disposable ones. Reuse systems such as deposit-and-return must become the norm. Environmental education needs to be built into our school curricula. Together can we work towards a cleaner world and a more circular economy, in an effort to benefit humans and all other species.

We warmly thank Raven Russia for their generous support of Let’s Make Cyprus Green. Thanks to your help we can keep campaigning for a more sustainable way of life in Cyprus.

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