Marine pollution and climate change

The interview with Iñigo Doria, CEO of Blue Point (Getaria)

Point, was created with the aim of alleviating the existing environmental problem of the Basque Coast and, thus, generating new employment opportunities through the so-called blue economy. According to the data, 50,000 tonnes of rubbish litter the Basque Coast.

Blue Point is an initiative of Itsasplanet, a non-profit organisation set up in the port of Getaria 15 years ago by a group of seafarers and professionals from different areas of knowledge. The initiative has been supported by the Department of the Environment of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, the Naturklima Foundation, the European Maritime and Fisheries Funds, the Department of Economic Development, Sustainability and Environment of the Basque Government, the La Caixa Foundation and with the collaboration of the MIK Management Research Centre of Mondragon University, the Marine Station of the University of the Basque Country in Plentzia, the Itsasgela association of Pasaia, the environmental education company Kaixo Musto and the Algorithmics programming academy of Donostia.

In this sense, the Centre aspires to have a development in the following fields: supporting research with universities and technology centres, supporting new business ventures in marine plastic, supporting the involvement of civil society as a whole, and supporting the transfer of the new knowledge acquired in order to extrapolate it to other parts of the world.

Blue Point, with its headquarters in markets 30 and 31 of the Port of Getaria, is open to the public in order to carry out actions to raise public awareness of the problem of marine waste, as well as offering a local vision to a global problem and duly responding to the philosophy of the Agenda 2030: "Think global, act local".