Floodplain waste transformed into a plastic kayak

The tri-lateral coalition of the NGO Tisza Plastic Cup, the National Directorate General of Water Management and The Coca-Cola Foundation  - The Coca-Cola Company charitable arm – collected 80 tons of waste over two years. Thanks to the foundation’s $250,000 grant, the Zero Waste Tisza program gave much more than just short-term waste collection to the river and program participants: they started GPS-based tracking for waste mapping, built the first Kisköre River Saver Center and, using plastic as a useful secondary raw material, crafted prototypes of the unique Plastic Kayak. Based on these successes, the program has earned its next phase and another $150,000 grant.

In 2019, more driftwood and waste than ever before arrived at the Kisköre Barrage. The total area of the waste drifting upstream from the barrage was 17,000 sqm, and it was as much as 3 meters thick. The water management authority, an NGO and a business formed an alliance to manage and eliminate the problem. Ongoing defense activities, high-volume recycling of the waste collected from the river and regular, significant cleanup action, the coalition achieved its goal: removing 80 tons of waterborne waste from the river and its floodplains.

Thanks to the cooperation with the water management authority, Plastic Cup’s first River Saver Center was built near the Kisköre Barrage. This is a community space and work area where, using the waste management and selection infrastructure, waste is carefully divided by type, and prepared for recycling. Over half of all wastes removed from the area have been recycled. The team also built Plastic Kayaks exclusively out of the secondary raw material recycled from plastic bottles removed from the Tisza River, leveraging the expertise and experience of Hungarian and international specialists. Crafting a single kayak required collecting about 300 kg of waste from the river’s floodplains, which included 20 kg raw materials, HDPE plastic, selected by volunteers. Hard-working volunteers spent hundreds of hours collecting, selecting, washing, and grinding the waste.

Devoted Plastic Cup volunteers spent thousands of their spare time with the program cleaning the Tisza and Bodrog rivers and managing waste.

Coca-Cola Hungary also contributed to the program by engaging its employees as volunteers: the 170 staff participating in the corporate team-building exercises in Kisköre, Dinnyéshát, and Tiszaszalka removed over 7 tons of waste from the Tisza floodplains and the Tisza Lake.

Considering the magnitude of plastic pollution, we have very little data about how long a PET bottle travels, how long it stay in the floodplains, and whether the next flood dislodges it if it is stuck among the trees. During its history, Plastic Cup has caught many “messages in a PET bottle”, proving that they are able to travel very long distances over the river. This practice inspired the “PET Pirates” to deploy a more dependable technology to track the flood of plastic waste. The Zero Waste Tisza program made it possible to use GPS transmitters, already common for tracking migrant birds, and other novel technology solutions in their fact-finding missions.

Over the last two years, the professionals tried two different data transmission methods, so they made two prototypes. In the end they tested 7 units of the latter type, with the help of Waterscope Zrt., and continue deploying trackers. True to the sailors’ tradition, PET bottle can’t be floated without naming them and a proper ceremony, so Plastic Cup started a naming campaign in social media. The winner named the bottles after Santa’s seven reindeers. They tested the bottles on both the Bodrog and Tisza rivers and are developing them further based on their findings. Results are promising: they identified locations on the Bodrog that may become significant waste flood areas, and they also collected empirical data about the speed of uninterrupted drifting the plastic waste flood can travel.

The ecological protection of the river Tisza and its tributary, as well as keeping them clean is only possible through close cooperation with neighboring countries, mutually sharing and implementing international best practices. To achieve this goal, Plastic Cup strives to support and accelerate the buildout of waste management in the Subcarpathia region, in order to stop the problem at the source. Thanks to The Coca-Cola Foundation’s grant, Plastic Cup experts were able to share their personal experiences and results at the 2019 Budapest Water Summit and at ISWA (International Solid Waste Association) in Bilbao, allowing them to build further international connections. Attending one of the world’s water industry exhibitions, Aquatech in Amsterdam, they were able to meet engineers from the world’s best-known ocean and river-cleanup initiatives, Ocean Cleanup, Waste Free Ocean and Recycled Island. This led to part of the Tisza waste, 5.5 tons of plastic being transported to Waste Free Oceans for recycling.

As part of the Zero Waste Tisza project, The Coca-Cola Foundation – the Coca-Cola Company’s global foundation – awarded a grant of $250,000 to Természetfilm.hu Association, the operator of the Plastic Cup. For over 30 years, The Coca-Cola Company has committed to give back 1% of its operating income to various charitable causes, including sustainability projects, around the world. In Hungary, the Foundation has made it possible to carry out the first two-year program, and thanks to Zero Waste Tisza’s impact, has awarded an additional $150,000 grant to continue the river cleanup and education program for another full year. In this next phase, the Plastic Cup professionals will execute programs that they intend to reach significant behavior change at the source of the river Tisza, to get closer to the sources of the problem.