Young Greek mobilizes fishermen to clean up the Mediterranean 1 minute read
By Alberto Borreguero
Athens, Dec 23 (efe-epa).- In a corner of the port in Piraeus near Athens, Lefteris Arapakis looks at a floating glass bottle on the sea as he rifles through several recycling bags. Over the four years he has spent cleaning the Mediterranean; his eyes have always fixed on the bottle he could not collect.
“Sometimes it is very difficult to know if our work has an impact,” Arapakis, the United Nations’ Young Champions of the Earth, tells Efe.
Receiving the prize represents a huge responsibility, but also a huge motivation, as it recognizes the work done by him and the Enaleia social enterprise the 26-year-old co-founded with his friend in 2016, he says.
Un joven griego moviliza a los pescadores para limpiar el Mediterráneo
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Lefteris Arapakis, 26, was named by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) a “Young Champion of the Earth” on December 15, the day of his actual name day.
Lefteris is one of seven young scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and activists from across the globe named by UNEP as its 2020 Young Champions of the Earth. With solutions to harvest water from the air, recycle plastic into paving slabs, and motivate fishers to haul tons of plastic out of the ocean, these changemakers show how innovative ideas coupled with ambitious action can help solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.
Lefteris is the fifth generation of a long line of fishermen. His family has fished off southern Greece, netting the same cod and red mullets that have sustained Greeks for millennia. But in recent years, overfishing and pollution, especially discarded plastic, have hammered Greece’s fisheries and led to a dramatic drop in fish yields in the Mediterranean Sea by as mu