Volunteers take to Algeria’s beaches in clean-up operation

Algerian volunteers spent the weekend clean the beaches to the east of Algiers in a campaign to make the country cleaner.

Using diving equipment and armed with gloves, men, women and children gathered to clean the beaches which have been littered with waste.

In the Tamentfoust beach, which borders a small seaside town about 30 kilometres from the centre of the capital, hundreds of volunteers took to the beach and filled their bags with bottles, cans, plastic bags and other debris.

According to a study carried out in 2015 by researchers at the University of Cadiz in Spain, the Mediterranean Sea contains between 1,000 and 3,000 tonnes of plastic waste every four square kilometres.

Read: Algeria’s foreign currency reserves down $6bn

Saturday’s operation, which extends to 14 provinces in Algiers, also saw 30 divers plunge into the water to clean the seabed, according to Jeune Afrique.

Assia Laoubi, a 40-year-old educator, said she has been coming regularly for six years to clean the beach.

The Algerian coast, which is more than 1,600 kilometres long, brings in millions of summer visitors each year. However, swimming is prohibited at a number of beaches because of the levels of pollution, particularly due to sewage or indutrial waste that drains directly into the sea.

Algerian authorities launched a project in 2014 to depollute the Oued El Harrach River, which is contaminated by sewage. The project is due to be completed by 2029.

“I live next to a beach but I have to travel dozens of kilometres to take my children to swim,” one volunteer said on the beach of Kadous, east of Algiers.

“If industrial companies were to dispose of their wastes according to standards, much of the coastal pollution would be settled,” Aomar Khaber, director general of the National Coastal Commission (CNL), explained. “The environment is not only the business of the state; it is the business of all.”

The initiative of cleaning Algeria’s beaches began in 1993, in the midst of the Algerian civil war, with eight young environmental divers from Tamentfoust.

“It all started with a stranded cow discovered on the beach,” remembers Younes Aouda, one of the eight divers who launched the campaign.

Over the years, Algerian public radio and dozens of other associations have joined the initiative with tonnes of waste retrieved from the beaches and the sea.

Volunteers clean up the beaches in Algeria on 22 May 2015 [impact24.info‏ ‏/Twitter]

Image of posters and signs promoting the clean up operation of the beaches in Algeria on 30 June 2017 [Sofiane‏/Twitter]

Image of posters and signs promoting the clean up operation of the beaches in Algeria on 30 June 2017 [Sofiane‏/Twitter]

Image of posters and signs promoting the clean up operation of the beaches in Algeria on 30 June 2017 [Sofiane‏/Twitter]