“I PROTECT THE BLACK SEA AGAINST THE PLASTIC”: CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT “GREEN PACKAGING” AT THE BEACH

Location: Ukraine, three Black Sea coast towns (Zalizny port, Lazurne, Skadovsk)

Dates: 4-6/08/2021

Informational campaign for the kids and adults at beaches

Team of 13 kids from Kherson with two teachers gave ecomagazines about the Black Sea (developed in the frame of the pilot project under EMBLAS-Plus and invited for the evening action. In total, 210 ecomagazines were disseminated.

A new interesting option was exchange of the plastic waste, which people had to collect at the beach for the prizes – ecobags for fruits. The main goal of this activity is to attract the people’s attention to the state of the beach. The participants have to bring 4 strewers, 4 plastic bags and 4 PET bottles. But in reality, the people brought much more than this, they were collecting litter as whole families and brought for the exchange. In total, 38 bags of waste were collected (Figures 1-2).

In total, 128 people took part in the actions, out of thwm 79 are kids of different age. There were a lot of games developed, e.g. “Guess what kind of waste it is?”, “Sort the waste according to its decomposition level” etc (Figure 3). The key motto was not to wait for 9 months to support ecological packaging, but start right now. The adults were very grateful for such activities for the kids. For correct answers, the kids got eco strewers and small eco fruit bags.

Figure 3. Competition for kids on waste

Informational campaign for the beach entrepreneurs selling food

The main target group were local sellers providing crayfish, corn, sweets etc in plastic packaging. The organizers explained them about the new Law on Eco packaging and harm caused by plastic packaging. The sellers got some paper bags as a present. All of the sellers agreed that current plastic packaging needs to be replaced and were glad to hear and test ecoalternatives. 15 the most active entrepreneurs got T-shirts “I protect the Black Sea against the plastic” to promote the idea of green packaging (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Local sellers in T-shirts with ecopackaging

Informational campaign with local shops

The information about the new Law was brought to attention of the local shops. It was advised to use ecological packaging in advance and in this way to advertise their production. The shops got a sticker poster on the ecopackaging as a present.

Conclusions: The campaign went very successfully, targeting the people on the ground and local sellers. The additional bonus was the fact that the campaign was conducted directly by kids and their teachers (training for trainers). It is suggested to continue with such effective and low costs action.