To help clean the seas around Greece, fishermen are being paid €200 a month to recycle waste from their nets. More and more plastics and cans are being pulled from the waters as well as the fish. A new Greek company called Enaleia has backing from Greek and foreign donors to introduce a more sustainable way of fishing.
In the last year, Lefteris Arapakis, founder of Enaleia and his team have started an ambitious programme with Greek fishermen. They have given financial incentives so when the fishermen find waste in their nets they don’t throw them back into the sea but keep them to be recycled later. Arapakis and the Enaleia organisation were crowned Young Champions of the Earth by the United Nations Environment department in June.
Arapakis said, “We removed a Coca-Cola can with a very weird colour. So I got it and saw that it had expired in 1987. This thing was in the sea for 30 years. This was the first thing that shocked me. The second thing was to see the fisherman throw it back into the sea. He told me that he was not paid to catch waste, but fish"