Background:

The component 2 of the project envisaged public involvement in the marine litter reduction. One of the ways to do this is to inform public about the consequences of littering and promoting recycling.

Main idea of the campaign: to involve educational institutions and authorities into plastic sorting.

Concept:

A new hero – PlasticChew (Пластикожуй) is created jointly with the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources of Ukraine to visualize this initiative.

The main idea is to make participants of the action to exchange one type of collected plastic (HDPE – plastic marked with 2) for the puzzles from recycled plastic, where the marine animals are drawn. The final goal is to collect the whole huge Black Sea puzzle. The plastic will be from local schools and communities sent to Odesa to existing laboratory of plastic transformation “Precious plastic” where it will be transformed into the puzzles (Figure 1).

The cartoon was developed about this action.

English version:

Georgian version:

Russian version:

Dissemination

The cartoon and conditions of campaign was disseminated on 4^th of April 2019 using

Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources of Ukraine (581 reposts, 21322 views, 54000 involved)

UNDP Ukraine (223 reposts, 8 607 views)

Fans of the Black Sea (61 reposts)

Results of registration:

During one week, 70 participants were registered, representing almost the whole Ukraine with more than 8000 people involved. All registered participants got stickets and infographics, which assured the unified visibility of the project.

Key message:

The target goal – 14 kg is hard to reach, taking into account the light weight of the HDPE plastic, unless the participant involves people around it in the sorting action. This was the main goal of the action – to make an organization or community to make itself self-organized and prepare and implement its own unique plan of reaching the target.

Results sharing and publicity

According to the rules of the competition, each organization needs to share the photos of the process of the sorting in the facebook group “Fans of the Black Sea”

The photos of sorting were widely discussed and got a lot of likes Below some of the phtoos received.

Also Plastikozhuy Ozzi placed there regularly some advices and information on the marine litter, HDPE plastic, advices on sorting etc.

Out of 70 organizations, 47 organizations and communities have managed to collect and send their plastic to Precious laboratory in Odesa (see Annex 1). Most of them were schools and kindergardens (Figure 2).

Obtained results:

The amount of collected plastic – 786 kg (314 thousands of bottle caps).

The number of directly involved people is 5851 people.

Lessons learned:

The main result of the action is perfectly presented in the letter to Plastikozhuy Ozzi we got recently.

Letter to Plastikozhuy Ozzi   “Dear friend Ozzi, finally today we have sent you the package (plastic to be recycled)… 🙂  To complete this task was not easy for us, but extremaly interesting – we have learned colours, forms, plastic marking in English and main thing – mathematics … 😉 We got support from friends and neigbours, relatives and some people we met occasionally…  Ozzi, you tought us how to save resources, how to act together and be environmentally friendly … 🙂 We were a lot of people who care, that it why we completed the task!!! And we are very grateful to you for this! 😉 With love kids of Zvanivska community ”

1.Communities learned how to sort the waste

The same message that the key idea to learn how to sort is reached is also reflected in the post of the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine Ostap Semerak

A lot of communities reported that they plan to continue waste management after the action by their own efforts.

2.Wide publicity of the issues of marine litter

Most of organizations conducted special lessons on the danger of marine litter. The project inforgraphics on marine litter was widely distributed. Visibility of the project is assured.

3.Development of the Fan’s of the Black Sea community

More than 150 people representing different organizations joined Fans of the Black Sea community (increase by 26%) for the period from 1^st of April to 27^th of May. This creates a good basis for further dissemination of the information on the Black Sea.

In the same time schools and authorities want to have new competitions announced by Ozzi. Kids loved Ozzi and sending him letters and drawings.

Now the project has a large network to implement the further environmental actions.

Black Sea puzzles as a tool to learn more about marine inhabitants

Follow up actions:

1.To replicate this action in Georgia (but prior it requires establishment of the Precious laboratory in frame of the small-scale projects).

2.To develop new competitions on behalf of Ozzi for the Black Sea community.

3.To use public awareness raising for further promotion of the marine litter reduction in frame of EMBLAS-Plus project.