Enaleia is a social start up, that started in 2016, a few months after Greece’s capital controls, when the unemployment in the country had skyrocketed to 29%. This is why, we created the first school for professional fishing in the country, training more than 110 unemployed people to become fishermen over the last 3 years.

At the same time, we are training professional fishermen on how to earn more money, while catching less fish, assisting them to adopt new sustainable fishing techniques, such as fishing tourism.

Soon after we started our operations, we realized that the main challenged that our seas face, is marine plastic pollution. Specifically, when we were designing the curriculum of the fishing school, we went on fishing trips, in order to map the fishing procedure. Our first trip, was in the islands of Cyclades, where we were socked to see that fishrmen were collecting in their nets not only fish, but also plastic. which the fishermen were throwing back in the sea, by saying “this is not our problem”. We researched this phenomenon, and according to the MaCArthur Foundation, by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the sea. This is when we decided to do something about that. We started by training the fishermen from our local port, Keratsini, and we were astonished by the results. Then, we decided to spread this simple idea, fishing for plastic, to the rest of the country, by creating the project Mediterranean Cleanup. Now we work with hundreds of fishermen in Greece and Italy, and we are collecting thousands of kilos of plastic from the sea, every week! This plastic, is then integrated into the circular economy, through our recycling and upcycling partners. This plastic, is then integrated into the circular economy, through our recycling and upcycling partners. For our project Mediterranean Cleanup, we got the recognition of Young Champion of the Earth, representing Europe!