For the 2020 Bathing Season, Portuguese authorities have identified 620 bathing sites, most of them being Coastal beaches.
For the first and online part of the Interregional Learning Event (ILE) #2, hosted by our Bulgarian partner of UBBSLA - Union of the Black Sea Local Authorities, two coastal Portuguese municipalities were invited, the municipality of Oeiras and the municipality of Torres Vedras.
Oeiras
Santo Amaro beach and the São João das Maias fort (Oeiras municipality).
The Oeiras Municipality is located in Lisbon Metropolitan Area and it is the 12th smallest municipality in Portugal. Even so, it has 10 kilometres of coast and over 180.000 inhabitants. Oeiras has 4 official bathing beaches, all awarded with Blue Flag.
Domingos Leitão, from the Environmental and Life Quality Department of Oeiras Municipality, presented the good practices that are implemented in Oeiras' beaches, namely the all-year beach cleaning strategies and equipment, the pollution prevention and control that allows an excellent water quality, and their environmental education and awareness activities. Domingos also shared their experience about the adaptation of the beaches to COVID-19.
Torres Vedras
Santa Cruz beach, Torres Vedras municipality.
The municipality of Torres Vedras is located in the Oeste region and has almost 80.000 inhabitants within 407 km² of area. It has 20 kilometres of a very diverse coast, with long sandy beaches and coastal cliffs. Among the 26 beaches of the municipality, 12 have Blue Flag.
Raquel Lopes, from the Environment and Sustainability Division of Torres Vedras Municipality, participated in the online ILE to present their good practices on beach waste management. She also presented the mechanical cleaning strategies, all year round, good practices from beach concessionaires and the competition for the Best Beach Concessionaire, and also the information and volunteer campaigns.
These are two good examples of good practices in beach waste management, not only in bathing season but all year, that allows the maintenance of the good quality of Portuguese beaches when facing the marine litter problem and its impact on tourism. We would like to thank Oeiras and Torres Vedras municipalities for sharing with us their experiences!
