Model action: Volunteers want to clear riverside of rubbish | Regional

Karlsruhe / Constance – Volunteer garbage collectors want to clean riverside in many places in Baden-Württemberg on Saturday.

Although the international campaign runs under the name “Rhine Clean Up”, it has long since been cleaned not only along the Rhine, such as in Karlsruhe or Bad Säckingen (district of Waldshut).

In Emmendingen an der Elz, in the municipality of Biberach in the Ortenau district on the Kinzig or on Lake Constance, for example, operations with garbage bags and collecting tongs are planned. Sometimes organized by a party, sometimes by the canoe club or other organizers.

Joachim Umbach, one of the initiators, had told the German Press Agency in advance that he expected over 40,000 participants in the action in Germany and several neighboring countries.

A year ago, around 35,000 volunteers freed the banks of the rivers Rhine, Moselle and Ruhr from a total of 320 tons of waste on a day of action. This time, in the fourth year of “Rhine Clean Up”, according to Umbach, the banks of the Main and the Kinzig are also being added for the first time.

The initiators declared: “Every year, huge amounts of rubbish end up in the world’s oceans. Millions of tons of plastic pollute nature. A large part of the garbage ends up in the oceans via the rivers. ”The aim of the cleansing is to“ create awareness that garbage is not carelessly thrown away or, better yet, avoided in the first place ”.

According to the information, the tidying up brings to light rare finds: For example, in 2019 in Düsseldorf a gold watch belonging to an elderly man that he got back. In 2020, a small living dog was found in a bag on the Wiese tributary of the Rhine in southern Baden, and a hand grenade from World War II was found in Mainz in 2019. In the Rhine near Cologne, several e-scooters thrown from bridges were discovered last year.

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