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“Earth sciences system have gone wasted. We knew everything and we did nothing”. The climatologist Luca Mercalli opens with a provocation his interview. He is the first to intervene in the Sunday afternoon chat of Radio Station, entitled "Amare aperto" and conducted by Maurizio Guagnetti. During the live streaming on Facebook, the guests’ faces are listed on the video conference platform, embedded in turn in the bare room of the former central Milan electrical substation. Much more than a broadcaster, Radio Station was born as a community space that with programs, courses, events and tourism promotion services gravitates around the themes of territory, culture and sustainability. This week water and the oceans are the chosen subjects.

Out of ignorance or willfulness our increasingly detailed science has been shut in a drawer by politics and economics, continues Mercalli. Can the virus impose a new attitude? “The tiger mosquito hosts four types of diseases. If the climate changes, mosquitoes move, and diseases reach areas where they didn't exist before. Soon I expect a great floating island of face masks in the ocean". Pollution acidifies the infinite masses of water, warms them up by inducing tropical species to populate temperate seas such as our Mediterranean, increases the volume of water and melts the glaciers, condemning, by the end of the century, the coastal cities of the globe to submersions.

Mercalli agrees with Daniela Ducato, honored with the Order of Merit for Labor and owner of Edizero, a Sardinian company that has long been involved in the design and construction of sustainable materials: there are many tools made available by institutions, at all levels, for the development in the use of green materials. But more than a symphony they seem many disjointed violins, a cacophonic contradiction. "Labeling is needed to describe the product and the virtuous practices that has generated it. If there are valid alternatives, we must simply get rid of the harmful products. Plastic is neither good nor bad, it depends on how you use it, how you dispose of it", says the climatologist.

Among the many sustainable materials created by Edizero, Ducato tells the online listeners about the "oil-eating barriers", born from the collaboration with the University of Cagliari. The barriers are oil-absorbers used in boats or in ports, during normal navigation or in case of disastrous spills. "It is contradictory - says Ducato - that the oil absorbers usually used are made of polyester, the very same material which then turns into microplastic". Edizero's oil-absorbers, composed of animal and vegetable fibers, create a natural habitat that petrochemical bacteria then colonize. Here, thanks to the ideal conditions of humidity and hydration, they can reproduce even for a year while the hydrocarbons break down. In the meantime the material is consumed and consumption biodegrades the oil. Technology has favored the collaboration between Edizero and the MEDSEA foundation. Absorbent banners have been laid out along the docks of the Marceddì marina, one of the most important and representative places of the Maristanis project, born for the protection and sustainable development of the wetlands of the Oristano.

“Coastal wetlands are the most important ecosystems we have if we want to try to reduce the effects of climate change. One hectare of wetlands is caable to accumulate hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide" explains Alessio Satta, environmental engineer and president of MEDSEA. “The Mediterranean is in pretty bad conditions. We are choking it, it is the most polluted sea on the globe. As predicted long time ago soon it will contain more plastic than fish".

"Not all is lost, someone has collected the lessons left by Earth Sciences", comments Daniela Faggion, co-host of the streaming. Enrico Tettamanzi and his family intervene from the waters facing the Bahamas coasts. The pandemic prevents them from disembarking, and in the sailboat with which they cross the oceans in an endless voyage, they had to create a strict routine, especially for the children: “For them the extraordinary life of continuous travel becomes normal, that's how we teach them love and knowledge of the sea. Sometimes we feel responsible, especially during ocean crossings, which creates some tensions among us. But they are already one thing only with the tides, the winds and the marine animals".

Sergio Caramel, one of the ten candidates to become the best Italian sailor of 2020, intervenes from Padua, where he studies engineering. With a team born at the university he is building a bio-boat. “If conditions will allow it, we would like to participate in the competition organized on Lake Garda by Foiling Week for boats built with recyclable materials. It will be a mot capable of flying over water”. Slow down, respect, reduce and routine are according to Caramel the five rules to be applied to a sustainable life at sea. In an afternoon dedicated to the sea good stories must be present. Alberto Coretti and Floriana Cavallo created and became editors of "Sirene Journal", a splendid magazine that recounts any type of "osmosis" between man and water. Needless to say, Sirene Journal is printed on algae paper. "Weed algae, certainly not the posidonia so important for our seas", says Coretti.