Italy and Tunisia fighting seagrass problem together
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Italy and Tunisia fighting seagrass problem together

Italy and Tunisia fighting seagrass problem together

di lettura
AGI) Rome, June 25 - A new project meant to revive tourism oncoastlines covered with Posidonia, a type of seagrass, waspresented in Rome on Thursday. The Medcot project aims to turnwaste into resource with the help of innovative Italiantechnology while respecting the environment. It was presentedby Italian Environment Minister Gian Luca Galletti, by theChairman of the Senate Environment Commission GiuseppeMarinello and by the mayor of Castelvetrano Selinunte. Italianscientists teamed up with researchers in the Tunisian city ofHammam-Lif whose coast, along with the beaches of Marinella diSelinunte, was selected to study the aquatic plant. Posidoniais one of the most widespread seagrasses in the Mediterraneanand often creates problems by covering beaches, making themless attractive for tourism. The project aims to identify astandard way to recover the beached plants, where currentmethods weigh heavily on the budgets of many coastal towns.Medcot has scheduled the creation of a pilot plant on theItalian coast, a unique installation that will collect, shredand prepare the vegetal matter for composting, creating a highquality compost that can be used in agriculture or sold tofinance part of the cost of removing the plants. Using the sameequipment, the collected Posidonia can also be transformed intofuel. The Tunisian side of the project follows a differentapproach, which aims to keep the seagrass from the beachesusing special breakwaters that change the waterflow. "Thisinitiative is an example of how an environmental approach canpromote growth and development, in this case tourism," saidMinister Galletti. He underlined that "the project's main goalis to protect the environment, but there is also a synergybetween the environment, agriculture, energy, revival oftourism and technological innovation, which could become a newItalian line of production.". .
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