This year too, ARCHELON participated in the largest simultaneous voluntary action of Greece. On Sunday, April 29, 2018 we cleaned the beach at the 3rd Marina of Glyfada next to the Sea Turtle Rescue Center in the framework of Let's do it Greece. ARCHELON, recognizing the great global problem of land and sea litter, is participating every year to raise awareness and contribute to the preservation of the environment.

More than 65 people formed a line widthwise the beach and walked across the whole beach so they wouldn’t miss a piece of garbage. The participants consisted of ARCHELON’s volunteers, students from the Department of IB (International Baccalaureate) of the American College of Greece (Pierce) in Agia Paraskevi, students from Webster University and various more citizens that were informed about this action.

The action lasted 2 hours. In total, we gathered 40 kilos of trash, 10 of which were plastic. A large number of waste consisted of plastic straws, whilst we also collected more than 4.000 cigarette butts.

Our volunteer, Natasa Keramida shares her experience with us:

“I am an ARCHELON volunteer and along with the other volunteers I participated for the first time in one of the actions of Let's do it Greece. So, on Sunday, we collected the trash from Glyfada’s beach along with a large group of people of various ages. The process was rather entertaining and interesting, since there was plenty of good will and motivation towards achieving a common target. It is impressive how much litter we collected from things we never thought was possible to exist on a beach. This way, I think and hope all of us who participated will be more careful next time we use and discard of such objects.

Of course, I do not believe that one day alone will save the world but I strongly believe that such days can be days of example, not only for the participants but also for those who are being informed about them. Thus, I am happy to have been a part of this action, as I understood there are simple things we can do and achieve collectively, if we are truly interested in them, act for them and put some individual effort on them.”

Thank you all who contributed to this effort!

We renew our appointment for next year.

Annie Konida
(translation: Alexandra Chatzimpaloglou)