Plastic Pirates Azores Campaign – Connecting Atlantic Ministers & Youth

This event will gather ministers and young people in a common action applying the sampling methods from the Plastic Pirates booklet, adjusted to the ocean context.

Through the citizen science campaign, Go Europe-Plastic pirates (https://www.plastic-pirates.eu/en), a campaign of the joint Trio-Presidency of the Council of the European Union for 2020 and 2021, Germany, Portugal and Slovenia, are advocating for clean seas, ocean and rivers, as well as the nature surrounding these waters, with an emphasis in the importance of international research collaboration. In this campaign kids and youth groups are called to collect plastic waste along the waterbodies, rivers and streams with the intention to document the various types of the plastic waste collected at different points. In Portugal, Ciência Viva represents the Plastic Pirates campaigns, together with other partners’ support.

The Go Europe-Plastic pirates has developed standardized experimental guidelines and working steps for all participating teams to ensure that the data collected is comparable and will become visible, step by step on an online map.

Under the Portuguese Presidency of the European Council, the Plastic Pirates initiative assumes an important challenge to extend the initiative to the seas and oceans, as the last sink receptor. This opportunity arises due the importance that the Sea, specifically the Atlantic, represents for Portugal at heritage, cultural and economic level.

Under the All-Atlantic2021 Conference, a side event will be organised in the Marina of Ponta Delgada on June 4th. The action will involve a group of youngsters that, together with the Atlantic Ministers, will set up four working teams with specific missions: collect waste along the coastline; categorise the variety of waste and calculate the proportion of single use plastic; sample, count and classify waste and larger microplastic; observe plankton; document the sampling with photos and videos. This action will be implemented by Expolab, a Ciência Viva Science Centre at Azores.

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