Faro Câmara has strived to make the area’s beaches cleaner and more fun during the summer months, by organising activities such as surfing and capoeira (a Brazilian martial art) for beachgoers to try, as well as rubbish cleanup days.
Around 14,500 euros has been earmarked to organise and run these activities, which involve the Faro Surf Club, the Contemporary Capoeira Company, the National Foot-Volley Federation, the Algarve Mountaineering and Climbing Association and the Santa Maria Lighthouse Island Association. Activities, which are co-ordinated and supervised by the council’s sports division, are being held on every beach in the area.
Throughout the summer months, the câmara has also organised groups of people to collect rubbish from Faro’s beaches, an initiative which has been a huge success so far. Additionally, groups of children, brought together by consumer defence association DECO and with the support of environmentalist group Centro Azul da Praia de Faro, took to Faro Island recently to distribute flyers, informing people about the realities of dropping litter.
The flyers alerted people to the length of time certain materials take to biodegrade. For example, cigarette butts take 10 years, drinks cans and plastic bottles take 200 years and glass takes 4,000 years to biodegrade. As well as the flyers, the children handed out rubbish bags and disposable ashtrays to people on the beach.
However, more still needs to be done to continue to raise the awareness of the general public in regard to disposing of rubbish. In future, collections will be organised on a regular basis and the câmara hopes that by investing in distributing information leaflets, it will inspire people to develop a socioenvironmental conscience, so that beach cleanups become a thing of the past.
