Over 220 tonnes of waste have now been pulled out of the sea and off the coast by Żibel volunteers, and on an island the size of Malta, that figure carries real weight. It's plastic, rope, tyres and general junk that would otherwise still be sitting on our reefs and in our bays today, rather than sorted and recorded on land.
The method hasn't changed since 2017: one clean-up every month. That monthly clean-up has become the operational backbone of everything Żibel does. It's the fixed point where our community reliably comes together, and it's where the large majority of the actual work gets done.
Everything that comes out of the water is then sorted, weighed and logged. It sounds tedious, but it's what gives us a clear running picture of what's accumulating, where it's concentrated and how quickly it's building back up. That lets us plan each operation on real data, instead of turning up at a site and hoping for the best.
The plan was never to clean indefinitely. We're working towards a zero point across Malta's bays: the stage where a site is finally clean enough to maintain rather than clear. On our current trajectory, we expect to reach it around 2030.
The weight itself, though, was never really the point. A clean-up is measured in kilograms, but what people take away from it is the morning they spent alongside everyone else who turned up. That's why volunteers keep coming back month after month, and it's why the whole thing keeps working. It starts with you.
