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Plastic pollution of the sea is one of the most serious environmental emergiencies of the modern era. Seas and oceans are invaded by plastic, to the point that real islands have formed: the so-called Plastic Islands or the Great Garbage Patch.

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Our sea is the sixth largest area for plastic pollution in the world. The numbers describe a real emergency: plastic represents 95% of the waste in the Mediterranean and comes mainly from Turkey, Spain, Italy, Egypt and France. Overall, Europe, the second largest producer of plastic in the world after China, pours between 150 and 500 thousand tons of macroplastics and between 70 and 130 thousand tons of microplastics into the sea every year. The Mediterranean Sea represents 1% of water but contains 7% of marine microplastics worldwide.

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The negative effects of pollution are also seen on animals. Most marine species ingest plastics or microplastics. There is not a single species of sea turtle that swims in the Mediterranean without plastic in the stomach. Approximately 1.5 million marine animals are victims of plastic discharged into the seas every year.

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In our country the situation has been the same for years. At the top of the list of causes of pollution of our seas is bad water purification and illegal dumping of waste on our beaches. But the Mediterranean is also impoverished by overfishing which has reduced food production, damaged ecosystems and affected biodiversity.

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Fortunately, in Italy there is no shortage of protected areas, over 3,000 kilometers of which 75% are located in Sardinia, Sicily and Tuscany. Several studies show that protected areas are the only way to slow down the bio-invasion, which is linked to the phenomenon of climate change and in particular to the rise in water temperature.