Greece has 12 million people and is visited by over 15 million tourists a year.

In summer, most Greeks and almost all the tourists visit Greece's well-known coasts for vacations. The footprint of all these people is difficult to stay unnoticed. Despite the efforts of the local municipalities many of the coasts are significantly polluted by waste, and this means that it is not only an unhealthy environment for, people, animals and plants of the area, but it degrades the landscape too. This is a major problem, as it has been proven that the less people are connected with the environment, the easier it is for one to exploit it without facing problems, as people do not care that much.
In addition, knowing from our experience that when people see a perfectly clean coast they almost never leave waste behind, with the environmental team of my school decided to act. We chose the wetland of Vravrona to clean up the waste and hopefully make a new start for this area's pollution.

In a distance of only 30km from the center of Athens, in Vravrona, we can enjoy the beautiful landscape, with its rich history, which has not much changed from the ancient times till today. The large variety of different biotopes in the area, along with the mild methods of exploitation of the place by people, have created an ecosystem of high environmental value.
This wetland is the home of many endemic birds, such as Buteo Rufinus (in Greek "Aetogerakina"), and is protected according to the rules of the EU project NATURA 2000.

The school team spent several hours collecting every kind of waste and fuelling some dozens of bags! Luckily, most of the waste we collected consisted of food packages, so it was not very hard to collect, though other massive objects were also found such as long plastic sheets and electronic devices. One of the most difficult tasks to complete was to remove some heavy objects that were almost submerged under the mud of the area near the sea.

We planned our activity to coincide with the Birds' National Day.
During the event, a photo gallery was shown to the public, and many activities were prepared for children to become more concerned about the birds upon extinction.
It was good to see so many environmentally alert people in the same place, discussing about the different bird species.

At the climax of our visit, the Association for the Protection and Welfare of Wildlife, ANIMA, released endangered birds that had been healed, in front of the public.

It was an impressive experience, to see raptors and other wild small or bigger birds, being released in front of you.

Maybe all this was not a really big event, but as follower of the moto "think globally, act locally" these small actions show the correct direction and train the children and the young people to be ready to achieve really big goals!