Volunteers in Hungary are trying to head off a plastic waste crisis by removing tons of rubbish from a river. The Plastic Cup competition has gathered about 330 tons of waste annually from the Tisza River since 2013.
Calls for addressing the global plastics crisis have become more urgent in recent years as studies conclude that exposure to such pollution can carry grave ecological and human health risks.
Volunteers set on the Tisza River on their canoes and boats as they participate in Plastic Cup event near Tiszaroff, where they scour Hungary’s second-largest river for trash on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. says microplastics, tiny fragments less than five millimeters in length, have been found “in the deepest recesses of the ocean, in pristine mountain glaciers, in breast milk and human bodies.”
Once their canoes are overloaded with collection bags, they offload them on waiting “mother ships” — makeshift rafts floating on pontoons of baled plastic bottles — where team members collect the bags and begin sorting through the trash. While the quantity of solid waste pollution has been significantly improved on the Tisza in the decade since the Plastic Cup began, the concentration of microplastics remains high, according to a 2021 study by the University of Szeged, a southern Hungarian city straddling the Tisza.
Tracing the problem to the source, the Plastic Cup last year provided financial support for waste management efforts in Ukraine, which succeeded in collecting 700 tons of waste from Ukraine’s Upper Tisza in 2022. Volunteers selectively sort the collected rubbish after they arrived to the campsite for that day on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023.
Eszter Hosszu, 23, came to volunteer in the Plastic Cup for the first time this year, and said she felt driven to take action by what she sees as a darkening future amid climate change and ecological damage.
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