Campaign to eliminate single-use plastic

“Keep our Sand and Sea Plastic Free”, is the message of the initiative launched to encourage businesses and community groups to eradicate single-use plastic from the Famagusta district.

The initiative was launched by TUI Care Foundation, which was founded by tourism giant TUI, and is supported by the Deputy Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Cyprus Hoteliers’ Association and the European Commission Office in Cyprus. Commissioner of Environment, the University of Nicosia and others.

It will be implemented by the Cyprus Sustainable Tourism Initiative and the Travel Foundation. The project will focus its activities in the municipalities of Ayia Napa, Paralimni, Sotira and Deryneia in the Famagusta district, but over the next two years, aims to persuade the whole island and other countries to stop the use of single-use plastic.

In addition, the initiative will provide training and support to hotels, bars and restaurants to help them reduce use of single-use plastic by 70 per cent.

The initiative will also undertake an education and awareness-raising campaign targeting at least 20,000 residents and 700,000 tourists.

Savvas Perdios, Deputy Minister of Tourism, said: “We will soon be publishing our new tourism strategy for the next decade, and it is absolutely vital that sustainability plays a role. I congratulate the TUI Care Foundation, the CSTI and the Travel Foundation for this initiative, and it is an honour that it starts here, in Cyprus. If we want a future for tourism, we must act now. There is a big project ahead of us – let’s go for it.”

Thomas Ellerbeck, Chairman of TUI Care Foundation, said “We believe that if you develop tourism in the right way, it has a lot of power to improve things for communities and destinations. This project can become a blueprint on how to change minds about single-use plastic, and protect nature – if we are successful here, we will take this to other destinations.”

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