M’HAMID EL GHIZLANE: Although it serves as the entryway to the vast Sahara desert, the trash that humans throw there is nevertheless a contemporary environmental problem. Volunteers in southern Morocco don’t have to go far to find trash buried in the sand. Plastic bags and bottles. One volunteer who has joined the effort to clean up the edge of a town that borders the Sahara said, “there are all kinds.
The event commemorates the 20th International Nomads Festival, which takes place annually in mid-April in M’Hamid El Ghizlane, in the southeastern Moroccan region of Zagora. According to the organisers, approximately fifty workers, wearing gloves and armed with trash bags, worked for five hours, gathering between 400 and 600 kilogrammes of debris.
“Beaches and forests are typically the focus of cleanup efforts,” festival creator Noureddine Bougrab, who resides in the roughly 6,600-person town, told AFP. However, pollution also affects the desert.
The campaign, which advocates for the protection of the world’s deserts, unites artists, activists, and international visitors, according to 46-year-old Bougrab. According to him, the cleanup began at the village’s northern gate, which was severely polluted, and continued to the opposite end of town and the start of the “Great Desert.
According to anthropologist Mustapha Naimi, the trash is “primarily linked to the massive production of plastic products, low recycling rates, and atmospheric pollutants carried by the wind.” According to the Ministry of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development, Morocco’s population of approximately 37 million generates around 8.2 million tonnes of household waste annually.
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