Date of label : 29/10/2024
A group of people participating in a canal cleanup activity using paddleboards.
Summary
In The Hague (NL), litter often finds its way into the city’s many canals and it eventually reaches the sea. To prevent this, the city collaborates with social entrepreneurs who have made it their mission to help clean the beach: TrashUre Hunt and Grondstofjutters. In addition, the city has made ‘fishing for plastic’ available for schools to add to their curriculum, and organises a yearly event during which citizens are offered free paddleboarding in exchange for helping clean the waterways. These activities provide educational value and increase awareness of the harmfulness of plastic litter, and, most importantly, make the canals and beach cleaner!
The solutions offered by the Good Practice
The ‘Keeping local waters clean’ (Aanvalsplan Afval) policy outlines a participatory approach to tackling litter in The Hague’s waterways and beaches.
In 2016, the city partnered with TrashUre Hunt, offering visitors an annual summer challenge: collect a bag full of beach litter and earn a token. This token can be exchanged for different workshops, such as creating art from the trash collected. The number of participants grew from 600 in 2016 to 2 678 in 2023, with around 3 000 kg of trash and 100 000 cigarette filters collected that year.
In 2018, the city also started working with Grondstofjutters. In this similar scheme, participants pick up a bag from a beach bar and exchange bags full of litter for a free cup of coffee. In 2023, around 25 beach bars joined and 1 500 people participated.
The city expanded this approach to canals with the ‘SUP-actie’ and the ‘fishing for plastic’ projects in 2022. From May to September, participants go standup paddleboarding for free as long as they pick up litter along the way, with almost 1 300 people participating in 2023. ‘Fishing for plastic’ also enables students (age 12-18) to tour the city’s canals on a boat while fishing for litter, educating them about the consequences of litter in water from a new perspective.
The city aims to help these initiatives become self-sustaining, so its resources can be used to support new initiatives.
Building on the sustainable and integrated urban approach
This practice addresses environmental, economic and social dimensions at the same time.
Environmental: It raises awareness about the harmfulness of plastic and other litter in water, and the need to reduce waste. The practice actively cleans the beach and canals to prevent further pollution.
Economic: By working with social entrepreneurs, the practice helps the local economy. For instance, the Grondstofjutters project rewards participants with free coffee or free ice cream at participating beach bars, creating foot traffic for those businesses.
Social: All activities are free for everyone to join, offering opportunities to meet new people, be active, and learn something new. This inclusivity ensures that schools or families on limited budgets can do activities like ‘plastic fishing’.
Based on participatory approach
The city’s approach is participatory, with several projects starting “bottom-up”. TrashUre Hunt and Grondstofjutters are both social entrepreneurs with good ideas and a vision to help the city become more sustainable. With financial support from the city, they were able to expand, professionalise and further their ideas.
A boat tour operator reached out through social media asking whether they could collaborate with the municipality. They understood the difficult challenge of keeping the city’s canals clean, and also had some experience with educational projects. This led to a successful pilot project where schools take part in plastic fishing, which has gained in popularity every year.
The city launched ‘SUP-actie’ to address the litter/waste issue in a positive and participatory way.
Citizens play a big part in all of the activities, by actively helping to clean the beach and the canals.
The main stakeholders involved are:
- The city.
- Social entrepreneurs like TrashUre Hunt and Grondstofjutters.
- The Hague Boat (boat tour operator),
- Residents and visitors.
- Schools.
What difference has it made?
Keeping the city clean is a challenge for the municipality due to an increasing number of citizens and visitors. The city cleans the waterways and removes litter, but cannot prevent litter from ending up in canals as long as people throw it on the ground. When uncollected, plastics break down into microplastics that are damaging to animal and human health. People are often unaware of how harmful litter can be, such as cigarette filters that contain plastic and contaminate water.
Through the practice, the city has reached a large number of people and collected a lot of trash. In 2023:
Awareness-raising: People have been informed about the practice via social media posts (55 000 followers on Facebook), and 5 800 people have actively participated.
Litter collection: During the summer challenge 3 000 kg of trash and 100 000 cigarette filters were collected. The ‘SUP-actie’ resulted in 12 400 liters’ worth of trash being removed from the canals. The summer challenge, the oldest activity initiated by the practice, shows a stable level of participants since 2016.
Engagement: Around 50 000 people visited TrashUre Hunt’s museum of found ‘trashure’ during the summer challenge, and 280 students went plastic fishing. While the city remains responsible for keeping the waterways and beach clean, the efforts of participants help enormously in this task.
Why this Good Practice should be transferred to other cities
This practice is suitable for all EU cities facing similar challenges, such as increased urban litter and people who are not aware of the harm caused by plastic litter. It is easy to transfer and set up, and can be adopted to achieve different goals.
The practice contributes to:
- Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 3 (Good health and wellbeing), 4 (Quality education), 6 (Clean water and sanitation), 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), 12 (Responsible consumption and production), and 14 (Partnerships for the Goals).
- The Urban Agenda for the EU (Circular Economy).
- EU Territorial Agenda 2030.
The practice is not linked to national governance or legislative context, thereby this does not impact the potential of transfer to other cities.
The practice could be amended, depending on the characteristics of waterways and beaches, organisations already active within this field, and the funding available.
Key benefits:
Education: Free activities to educate children and adults about sustainability.
Health and wellbeing: Activites are outside, and promote physical exercise, like walking, paddleboarding, and litter picking.
Environmental impact: Plastics are removed from the waterways and beach before entering the sea, preventing animals from getting tangled up or accidentally eating plastics. Plastic is also prevented from becoming microplastics that effect water quality.
Inclusion and community building: The activities bring people together in social settings. They involve citizens, visitors and entrepreneurs, creating awareness about marine litter and the shared responsibility for a clean and sustainable city.
For a successful transfer of the practice it is important to have:
- A dedicated policy officer or project manager who can work together with other stakeholders and motivate them to start or expand projects.
- A communication officer to promote the activities so that more people participate.
- The support of city councilors or alderman.