Goodbye to plastic. Are we ready?

Are we ready to live without plastic? Andrea Bettini of RaiNews realized an interesting video (in Italian language) on plastic waste which threatens the health of our seas, aimed at exploring  possible solutions suitable to protect the environment, the economy and our lifestyles. The GHOST team would like to thank RaiNews editorial team for giving us the possibility to contribute to the video which can be viewed at the following link: http://www.rainews.it/dl/rainews/media/Addio-alla-plastica-Siamo-pronti-d58565ee-d2ca-403f-99d1-a8b9b3ebfa9f.html

LIFE-GHOST at “Venezia blu: plastica a mare” Conference

On Sunday 16th December a conference on plastic waste and marine litter, was held at the suggestive Church of S. Vidal in Venice. The event, organized by Venice Calls Association, was attended by Federico Riccato (Laguna Project) who illustrated the problem of ghost nets and the mapping and recovery activities carried out within the GHOST project. The video of the presentation is available at the following link:

https://www.facebook.com/giovanni.cecconi.venice.resilience.ecolab/videos/10215500037567618/?hc_ref=ARSEPd--m-2Nr49J30wDcswbzSdNRSDVZoS3TufiLvxCDKkfk3vV0ANevBJzMpqSipI

End of year, time of evaluations

The After Life activity of the GHOST project continues to give us great satisfaction.

During these last two years by the end of the project we participated more than thirty dissemination events, including scientific conferences, round tables, seminars and technical working groups.

An important result regarding the regulatory process for the appropriate management of ghost nets in Veneto Region was reached last June when the Municipal Administration of Venice approved a Council Resolution aimed at providing the Pellestrina island with suitable bins for the disposal of disused fishing nets, so that to meet the needs of the fishermen who had for a long time asked for eco-compatible solutions to their urgent need of disposing obsolete fishing gears.

Our participation in the KTE EnvHealth network continues to be very interesting and promising especially for the possibility of improving our knowledge about the most suitable communication tools to better convey useful information to citizens, stakeholders and political decision makers to promote policies for the protection of the environment and of human health.

Finally, a great effort has been made in publishing  part of results obtained by the project, in particular those ones regarding the economic analyses (carried out by IUAV Partner), which have been described in three scientific articles published in main international journals:

• Tonin S., Lucaroni G., 2017. Understanding social knowledge, attitudes and perceptions towards marine biodiversity: The case of tegnùe in Italy. Ocean & Coastal Management 140: 68-78. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0964569117301837
• Tonin S., 2018. Economic value of marine biodiversity improvement in coralligenous Habitats. Ecological Indicators 85: 1121-1132. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X1730729X
• Tonin S., 2018. Citizens' perspectives on marine protected ecosystem services and biodiversity. Ecosystem Services 34: 189-200. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041617304606

Merry Christmas to everybody by the GHOST team!

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Climathon Venice - Let’s plan together a more sustainable future for Venice!

On 25t^h and 26^th October the third edition of Climathon Venice took place at the VEGA, Venice Science and Technology Park (Venezia Marghera). Climathon is a global hacakton focused on climate change which has been held simultaneously in over one hundred cities worldwide. This year, the initiative was focused on reducing resource utilization and improving waste management, in order to lower the greenhouse gas emissions. Prof. Stefania Tonin of the IUAV University of Venice was invited to a round table to share the results obtained by GHOST project with researchers, city officials and entrepreneurs in order to identify sustainable management proposals for fishing waste in a  circular economy perspective.