Samothrace, a beautiful island in northern Greece, is the new entry for BlueCycle’s collection network of plastic fishing and shipping equipment. On Saturday 15 February 2020, we visited the island at the invitation of the Municipality of Samothrace, where local organizations and fishermen were informed about the BlueCycle programme. The meeting was attended by the Deputy Mayor of Samothrace, Mrs. Katerina Karamitsou Giannelou, the Municipal Councilor, Mr. Sarantos Sarantou, the competent employee of the Municipality, Mrs. Panagiota Fotaki, the president of the Association “Sustainable Samothrace” Mr. Manolis Stergiou, and the vice-president Mr. George Maskalidis. The fishermen responded to the Municipality’s call and enthusiastically embraced the new effort that begun on the island. After mapping the needs, it was decided to create two collection points for fishing and shipping gear on the island, while all entities committed to achieving the common goal of reducing plastic waste from fishing and shipping on the island.
And since we were visiting Northern Greece, we took the opportunity to visit also the net manufacturing company DIOPAS S.A., one of our first partners since the beginning of BlueCycle. From DIOPAS we collected material for further processing and exploitation, while we discussed the next steps in our collaboration.