Clean Coast 2023 – results
On Saturday 16 September 2023, the fourteenth edition of the national clean-up campaign for the Slovenian coastline, Clean Coast, took place under the organisational auspices of the TRI-NITI Institute and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Spatial Planning. Clean Coast forms part of the world’s largest voluntary clean-up campaign for coastlines, rivers and lakes – the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC).
The event brought together 139 volunteers who had travelled from all corners of Slovenia (23 locations) and abroad (9 European countries: Lithuania, Italy, France, Croatia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Hungary, Ireland, Germany and Egypt). Among them this year were as many as 38 children under the age of 12. The volunteers cleaned up beaches and lakeshores at the following locations: Debeli rtič, Koper Žusterna, Izola, Strunjan, Fiesa and Seča.
This year, 109 kg of rubbish was collected, comprising 69.4 kg of mixed waste, 23.8 kg of packaging and plastic waste, 12.4 kg of glass and 3.4 kg of cigarette ends. In total, 15,329 items of litter were removed from the coast during the two-hour clean-up.
On average, we collected 158 items of litter per 100 metres of the Slovenian coastline, or exactly 1 kg of litter.
Cigarette ends still account for the largest proportion of the waste collected. This year, we collected 9,197 of them, which works out at 1 cigarette end for every metre of coastline cleaned.
This year’s ‘Clean Coast’ initiative was supported and carried out in partnership with Andreja Palatinus s.p., the Institute of the Republic of Slovenia, the municipal utility companies Okolje Piran (event sponsor), Marjetica Koper and Komunala Izola, the municipalities of Ankaran, Koper, Izola and Piran, the Slovenian Water Agency, Strunjan Landscape Park, the Debeli Rtič Landscape Park, the Strunjan Local Community, the Pina Association, the National Institute of Chemistry with the REMEDIES project, the Marine Biology Station, Ecologists Without Borders, the ‘Do Something for Nature’ Association, the Anbot Association, Park Istra and all the other volunteers. Coastal municipal services were responsible for the collection and management of waste.
You can read more about the results and the event in the report; click here: Clean Coast 2023 Event Report.
A heartfelt thank you to all our long-standing and new volunteers, who are always happy to get involved and contribute their hard work for the sake of nature and for all of us.
Photographs: © Emilija Blauzdyte