The 150-odd competitors meeting on the banks of Hungary’s second largest river carried somewhat unusual equipment for a boat race — protective gloves, rubber boots and large bags. Their challenge was to collect as much rubbish as possible from the Tisza, in the northeast of the country on the Ukrainian border, navigating it on rafts, built themselves from trash, for nine days. “Every year since 2013, we start again where we left off the previous season,” said competition organiser Attila Molnar.
This year, more than eight tonnes of rubbish — such as plastic bottles, tyres and cans — were collected from the river and its surrounding floodplains during the Upper Tisza Plastic Cup from August 1 to 9. With just half as many participants because of the coronavirus pandemic, that was still almost as much as in 2019, when racers managed to clean up an 80-kilometre (50-mile) section of the water course, according to organisers.
While Hungary’s president has become one of the competition’s sponsors, the water authority has taken on the challenge of keeping the cleaned sections rubbish-free, such as by closing the waterway with locks. The distance covered over the nine race days is “enormous”, according to Laszlo Helmeczi, the mayor of Zahony, one of the small riverside towns, who enthusiastically praises competitors’ “superhuman effort”. Rafters prefer to use plastic bottles scooped out of the water in huge nets to make their vessels because they increase buoyancy. Other rubbish, including parasols, fridge doors and pipes, can then be used to constitute the hull and the cockpit.
Source: Digital Journal
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