Pollution

Shell turned to court to demand that all Greenpeace protests be banned on and around the four Brent oil platforms in the British part of the North Sea. In mid-October Greenpeace protested on two of the no-longer-in-use platforms, demanding that Shell dismantle and remove the platforms. A court in Scotland will rule on this case on Thursday, NOS reports.

People in the Netherlands use 26 billion pieces of plastic food packaging per year - 1,500 pieces of plastic per Dutch person per year, or four per day, according to a study by ING Economic Bureau. And plastic consumption continues to grow along with the population, increasing by around 100 million pieces of packaging every year, NOS reports.

The latest images from Dutch space instrument Tropomi, which maps air pollution around the globe, shows that India is the new top polluter in the world. Also, research shows that the Netherlands has one of the highest concentrations of nitrogen dioxide in Europe, Pieternel Levelt, head of satellite observation at Dutch meteorological institute KNMI and professor at TU Delft, said to newspaper AD. 

Volunteers from foundation Duik de Noordzee Schoon dove 2,500 kilograms of waste out of the North Sea. The team spent nine days searching the seabed for items that are harmful to the ecosystem, focussing on ship wrecks between Ameland and Schiermonnikoog, the foundation said in a statement.

According to the foundations, ship wrecks are a source of marine life, but also hold on to a lot of waste. Fish get entangled in old fishing nets that got caught up on the wrecks, and plastic ends up in the food chain.

Between 10 thousand and 15 thousand Dutch people die each year from the effects of air- and noise pollution. The health risks are particularly high around Schiphol and Amsterdam. Randstad residents are three times more likely to get cardiovascular diseases or serious lung diseases from pollution than people living in Drenthe, Groningen or the islands, for example, RTL Niews reports based on its analysis of RIVM estimates and figures.

Volunteers for the North Sea Foundation's large beach clean-up campaign picked up 2,542 cigarette butts on the beach between Hoek van Holland and Monster on Saturday. The 85 volunteers collected a total of 191 kilograms of waste on this stage of the weeks-long clean-up, NU.nl reports.

People who live near Schiphol airport are regularly exposed to increased concentrations of ultra-fine particles in the air, which can have an effect on their health. On days that the wind blows from Schiphol, children with respiratory diseases show more symptoms and more often have to use their medication, according to the interim results of a study by public health institute RIVM, Utrecht University, and the Amsterdam academic medical center AMC. 

The number of municipalities in the Netherlands that banned the release of balloons more than tripled over the past year, according to a study by De Noordzee foundation. The foundation is committed to getting such a ban implemented across the Netherlands, because the plastic in balloons is harmful to animals and the environment, NOS reports.

The Zeist city council decided to ban the release of balloons in the municipality. According to the council, it only causes litter in the environment. "These balloon remains are eaten by fish, birds and other animals and that causes animal suffering", the council said. RTL Nieuws reports.

The motion was accepted by a large majority on Tuesday evening. Zeist will add the ban on releasing balloons to the city's General Local Regulations.

Schools, businesses and associations will be informed of the ban, and the harmful consequences of releasing balloons, as soon as possible. 

Dutch public works department Rijkswaterstaat and shipping company MSC have located around 220 of an estimated 281 containers that fell off ship MSC Zoe in the North Sea last week. Most of the containers, located with the help of sonar boats, are at the bottom of the North Sea, near the Wadden Islands, a spokesperson for Rijkswaterstaat said to NU.nl.

Dutch man Boyan Slat's Ocean Cleanup project is not working quite as it should. The system is moving too slowly to hold on to the plastic it collects in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But Slat is confident that this problem can be solved, he said on Twitter.

"Most aspects of concept have been confirmed (wind vaning, intercepting plastic, wave following) - it's just not moving fast enough yet. This is fixable", he said.