Country: Türkiye

Site: Fethiye Municipality

Target: Tourists and visitors, Local communities and residents, Practitioners

Short Description

A competition by Fethiye Municipality and the Fethiye Chamber of Maritime Trade ensured proper separation of boat waste to prevent pollution, reduce microplastics, and support the circular economy.

Waste was collected daily, recorded per boat, and included wet waste, packaging waste, and waste oils.

A total of 156 boats competed in three categories—Daily, Private, and Charter Tour Boats. Rankings were based on passenger capacity and per capita waste: high packaging (kg/person/day), low wet waste (kg/person/day), and regular oil delivery. Some information about environment awareness was also displayed (ex: one litre of waste oil can pollute one million litres of seawater and five million litres of drinking water)

Goals

To prevent recyclable waste from becoming general waste
To encourage greater attention to this issue through incentive-based awards among boat operators and employees
To protect marine ecosystems against climate change, especially macro/microplastics and waste oils

Reproducibility/lessons learnt

In line with sustainability principles, such practices are considered a necessity rather than a choice.
Recycling contributes to energy and oil savings and protects natural resources such as trees, sand, soda ash...
Local authorities were highlighted as facilitators in preventing solid and liquid waste from entering marine environments.