ENVIRONMENT

The first action of this big project is the cleaning of 100 selected spots of Ymittos, the liberation of nature from plastics and the simultaneous awareness of the citizens who visit the mountain every day.

The large project implemented by SPAW under the name Zero Plastic Ymittos included 3 phases of implementation:

Phase A: Targeted cleanings along a length of 95 kilometers in the 11 Municipalities around Ymittos, recording, collecting plastic waste and promoting it for recycling.

Phase B: Establishment of a circular route for regular and repeated cleanings in 100 selected points of Ymittos (forest roads, paths, high-traffic points). A data portal was created with an interactive map of Hymettos where all points and routes were mapped with the aim of recording and monitoring progress through indicators that capture the level of cleanliness in real time. The resulting data was used to better coordinate the actors involved and draw up a common strategy to maintain the high level of cleanliness of the 100 points and to jointly promote the message of reducing single-use plastics. At the same time, the portal is publicly available to citizens in the form of open data through a special website created for this purpose (https://zeroplastic.spay.gr/).

Phase C: Taking advantage of the above data, additional actions of the SPA were organized in cooperation with each Municipality - Member and with the activation of volunteer groups, the student community and the agencies that are active around Ymittos. New wooden waste and recycling bins were placed at the visitor points, plastic bags were replaced with multi-purpose sacks, special bins were installed for the collection and recycling of cigarette butts, multi-purpose and metal bottles were distributed to mountain walkers and volunteer forest firefighters.