Volunteers pick up nearly 11,000 kg of trash on Dutch beaches

A total of 2,568 volunteers picked up 10,991 kilograms of waste on Dutch beaches during the North Sea foundation's great cleanup, the foundation announced at the end of the two-week long cleanup campaign on Thursday. Last year, 11,163 kilograms of trash was removed from Dutch beaches, Het Parool reports.

This year more waste was collected in Zeeland and on the Wadden Islands than last year. This may have to do with the MSC Zoe, a cargo ship that lost some 280 containers in the North Sea in January.

Straws and disposable cutlery were collected separately, to draw attention to the problems caused by this type of plastic waste. A total of 4,936 straws and plastic knives, forks and spoons were picked up. On Saturday volunteers also picked up 2,542 cigarette butts on the beach between Hoek van Holland and Monster.

Ewout van Galen, one of the initiators of the beach cleanup campaign, is pleased that almost 11 thousand kilograms of trash is no longer polluting Dutch beaches and ending up in the ocean. He praised the volunteers for their hard work. "At the same time, these results show that the waste problem is still very large. It remains necessary to tackle the waste problem at the source."