Since its start in 2013, participants in the annual Plastic Cup competition — which offers a prize for those who collect the most trash each year — have gathered more than 330 tons of waste from the Tisza and other Hungarian waters.
TISZAROFF, Hungary — Thousands of muddy plastic bottles, chunks of Styrofoam and other waterlogged pieces of rubbish are piled onto a flatbed trailer on the banks of the Tisza River in Hungary — a metric ton of waste that was removed by hand from the waterway and its floodplain in a single day.
“The biggest source of global waste pollution is rivers. The waste comes down the rivers, through the seas and into the ocean, where currents form it into big islands,” Tamas said, referring to collections of debris and microplastics that ocean currents gather into giant fields called gyres. Research cited by a 2023 United Nations Environment Programme report 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.”
The volunteers, who camp in a new spot each night as they make their way downriver, collect an average of 70 tons of waste from the Tisza each year. The group estimates it has removed nearly 4 million plastic bottles from Hungarian waterways, and all recyclable materials — around 60% of what they collect — is sent to recycling facilities for processing, while the rest is transported to landfills.
That study found that microplastics in the river are present at 3-4,000 fragments per kilogram of sediment, a figure the study's authors said is higher than that of India’s Ganges River, often touted as one of the most polluted in the world. Over two-thirds of those plastics are short-lived or single-use products which soon become waste, and the U.N. estimates that 19 to 23 million tons of plastic leaks into aquatic ecosystems annually.
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