“We are all Med. Schools vs Marine Litter”: this is the name of the contest born from COMMON project with the aim to sensitize the schools to the theme of marine litter and launched in Italy, in the Tuscan Maremma area by Legambiente Festambiente. The contest saw the participation of over 150 middle and infant school students, and allowed the creation of works and communication material related to the impact of plastic waste in the Mediterranean Sea.
Whit the pandemic in progress and its lockdown, the contest was designed as a tool to enhance those educational initiatives implemented during the school year that had thematic relevance to the objectives of the Common project. The schools have joined both with classroom projects and with school projects. The following were awarded:
– Two class projects carried out by the students of the Civinini Comprehensive Institute of Albinia, where the middle schools students were invited by their teacher to create communication materials on the theme of plastic waste. The project carried out by the students was able to effectively synthesize the principles on which to be based in order to adopt an eco-sustainable lifestyle, with particular reference to the mitigation of plastic contamination, one of the main threats for the biodiversity. All students, principal and teacher will receive COMMON t-shirts, designed for the project by the artist Giuseppe Palumbo, in addition to the certificate of participation.
– The “Little Friends of Nature” project, promoted by the comprehensive Institute of Castiglione della Pescaia which involved the entire Institute with schools in Marina di Grosseto, in Buriano and in Castiglione della Pescaia. Over 100 students participated in the project, aimed at promoting greater awareness of the waste cycle and deepening their impact on the environments that surround them, in particular on aquatic ecosystems, and on the importance of recycling as the main mitigation tool. The children created drawings and were engaged in practical recycling workshops on the various themes. The certificate of participation will go to the school.
The Tuscan Maremma is one of the five pilot areas of the COMMON project, together with Salento (in Italy), Monastir and Isola Kuriat (in Tunisia) and the coastal area of Tire (in Lebanon). The COMMON project is funded by the European Union under the ENI CBC Med Programme.