Documented Environmental Crime in the Tanos Riverbed (eastern Peloponnese), raises urgent concerns about illegal dumping and severe ecosystem degradation
At a time when hundreds of millions of euros are being poured into “marine conservation” from national and EU funds, and bold nature-protection initiatives are being proclaimed, the reality in Greece, regrettably, still resembles that of past decades.
In our ongoing efforts to address the countless pollution hotspots threatening marine life, the Archipelagos Institute of Marine Conservation has documented yet another shocking and coordinated environmental crime – this time along the riverbed and banks of the Tanos River, in the Astros Kynourias region of the eastern Peloponnese.
Sadly, this is not an isolated incident in Greece. With the tolerance – if not the coordination – of the competent authorities (the Peloponnese Region and the Municipality of Astros Kynourias), tonnes of waste are being dumped directly into the riverbed, barely 1.5 km from its outflow into the sea.
Along the riverbanks, thousands of tonnes of plastic waste of every kind have been dumped – material that should have been baled and transported to licensed landfills or recycling facilities. Instead, it lies exposed, blown away by the wind or gradually carried into the riverbed. The intention is as obvious as it is shocking: for this waste to be carried into the sea during rainfall or flood events.
With the rainy season already underway, it is only a matter of hours, days, or at most a few weeks before these massive volumes of waste are swept into the sea, triggering an uncontrollable pollution disaster with irreversible consequences for marine ecosystems and public health.
It is critical to finally acknowledge that plastic is a hazardous material: once released into the environment, it rapidly breaks down into fragments, microplastics, and even nanoplastics, inevitably entering the food chain, on land as well as at sea. Indicatively, research conducted last June by Archipelagos’ field laboratories aboard the research vessel Triton, in the Argolic and Saronic Gulf regions, revealed that concentrations of plastic fibers and fragments have skyrocketed in recent years, now nearing, or even surpassing, those of planktonic organisms. To grasp the scale: in every cubic meter of seawater, there may be up to 100,000 planktonic organisms, including fish larvae as well as more than 1,000 different species of zooplankton.
Greece continues to feed the sea with waste, while waste-management legislation remains largely a matter of rhetoric rather than implementation. It is urgent that we finally confront the escalating levels of both visible and invisible plastic pollution. Everything discarded on land inevitably ends up in the sea. Day by day, we are fueling a major crisis with devastating consequences for future generations and the survival of marine life.
Beyond the inertia of both the central and local government to pursue serious measures, we are left watching polluting multinational corporations rush to perform token CSR campaigns, competing to be the first to clean a few kilos of trash from the beaches before the tourist season starts. These – otherwise superficial and absurd – campaigns are carried out in collaboration with, and under the sponsorship of the Ministries of Environment and Tourism. They cultivate complacency among both citizens and the State, fostering the illusion of action while the real polluters remain unchallenged. In this way, public attention is diverted from systemic accountability to symbolic communication gestures, silencing the urgency of the plastic pollution crisis and its consequences for public health and the environment.
Regarding the severe pollution incident in the Tanos River area, the Archipelagos Institute has already filed a criminal complaint and a formal report with the judicial authorities and the Environmental Inspectorate, from whom we expect decisive action. The situation is urgent, given the extreme weather conditions to which the area is prone, and the effects of heavy rainfall that carry the waste directly into the sea (that is the very reason it was deposited there in the first place). Immediate intervention is therefore essential to prevent further pollution and to protect both the environment and public health before conditions spiral out of control.
