2023-08-08 18:50:29
The intention was to turn the Koornwaard near Den Bosch into a beautiful nature reserve, but plastic kept floating to the surface in the water. The lake was once created by sand extraction. In recent years, efforts have been made to make it shallower, so that nature has more space. But that sand brought in from elsewhere was full of plastic waste.
“Sand originating from riverbeds has been dumped and they appear to contain a lot of plastic,” says Joost Barendrecht, project leader of Clean Rivers, a collaboration between IVN Nature Education and the North Sea Foundation.
Measures have been taken to limit the waste in the Koornwaard, he says. “The sand first went through a sieve tank. But even if it seems to be clean, the waste still floats to the surface. A curtain of air bubbles was then used to collect the plastic and scoop it out of the water. That takes time and money, and you never catch everything.”
1100 volunteers search for waste
It is one of the many examples with which Clean Rivers shows how polluted the Dutch rivers are. The environmental organization was therefore not so surprised by Utrecht University’s discovery that a lot of plastic waste does not flow to the sea, but remains in the rivers. For the past five years, 1100 volunteers from Clean Rivers have been combing riverbeds twice a year, looking for plastic waste. And the finds are alarming.
In the spring they find an average of three hundred pieces of waste per hundred meters of riverbank. “It includes everything, such as cigarette filters, candy and snack packaging, cans and cotton swabs. Most waste consists of indefinable pieces of plastic and Styrofoam. This waste is left behind following a period of high water and settles together with the sediment and organic material in the banks and the river bed,” says Barendrecht.
About 8 percent of plastic waste comes from the sewer, he says. If there is a lot of rain and the purification system cannot cope with the amount of water, the sewage water is immediately channeled to the rivers. As a result, many sanitary products, such as cotton swabs, sanitary napkins or cleaning wipes, which people consciously or unconsciously flush down the toilet, end up in the river.
A meter thick layer of plastic and sludge
Along the Nederrijn near Angeren, near Arnhem, the last measurement found ninety cloths on a hundred meters of river banks and almost eighty plastic cotton swabs. Not much further on, at Millingen aan de Rijn, 43 wet wipes were found.
In some places there is a layer of plastic and sludge a meter thick. This is the case, for example, in a side arm of the Meuse, not far from the Koornwaard. Barendrecht: “At high tide, more water enters that basin and the prevailing westerly wind blows the plastic onto the eastern bank. It piles up.”
Furthermore, a lot of plastic comes from recreational users and industry, from construction sites, for example. It mainly comes from the Netherlands.
Construction is an important source of litter
Styrofoam, or EPS, is the most commonly found plastic. In response to the findings of Schone Rivieren, Stybenex, the trade association for EPS producers, has started a campaign aimed at construction, says director Rogier Goes.
“We point out to companies that construction is an important source of litter on the land and in the rivers. Store light materials such as EPS properly, for example in containers. Because they easily blow away and are unfortunately found in the water and public space,” says Goes. The material also crumbles quickly.
It is a pity that the law says nothing regarding the amount of plastic that river water may contain, says Barendrecht. “Include plastic in the water framework directive. That is what we are urging the European Union to do. As long as there is no legal framework, governments do not do enough regarding the problem. Also, an environmental organization cannot go to court, as in the nitrogen dossier.”
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