00:00It's the middle of the night and the fishermen of San Bernadetto del Pronto are already bringing
00:07their nets below the Atlantic Sea. As usual, they have fish, crustaceans and lots of plastic.
00:14Now the sorting begins. For the past few weeks they've collected bottles, cans, paint pots
00:21and more. Everything they catch is kept on board and not thrown back into the sea. In
00:27the past, laws prohibiting waste transportation and the lack of facilities on land prevented
00:32them from doing so. Before there was no one on land to take the plastic. Now someone has
00:40had this excellent idea and we really hope it continues. It's all part of the pan-European
00:51Clean Sea Life project, with the help of fishermen, the main witnesses and first victims of sea
00:58pollution. The operation, named Fishing for Plastic, will last a month and the 40 fishing
01:03boats sailing from this Adriatic port have agreed to take part. We all saw the pictures
01:13of dead sperm whales washed up on beaches. There were three recently. Their stomachs
01:18were full of plastic. This wakes people up and makes the whole world see what specialists
01:23have been saying for years. The amount of plastic in the sea has reached a dramatic
01:28level. In two weeks over a tonne of waste has been recovered. It's weighed, catalogued
01:37and sorted by volunteers, with the support of port authorities who are also involved
01:42in the project. The rubbish that ends up in the sea all comes from people, from lakes
01:50and rivers. It's essential to educate people, tell them that what they put in the water
01:58ends up in the sea. That's what this initiative is also about. A draft bill is now before
02:06the Italian Parliament to provide facilities and money for handling the waste and the San
02:11Benedetto del Tronto initiative hopes to spread across the rest of the country and
02:15even Europe.
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