A clean-up campaign was held in the De Slufter nature reserve on Texel with sixty volunteers. Every spring and autumn a sweeping round is held in the open dune area where the sea water has free rein at high tide. The sea then takes a lot of rubbish onto the site and leaves it behind when the tide goes out again.
“We are very happy with all those volunteers who participated,” says ranger Charlotte Maas of Staatsbosbeheer on Texel proudly, “Last autumn, about twenty people participated. That was on a Wednesday afternoon. Now sixty people participated and that is really great.”
Those volunteers were lucky when it came to the weather. “We started with the sun, around 10 a.m. We entered the area from two sides. The group in the south mainly encountered a lot of small material such as caps, lollipop sticks, lids and string. On the north side near the Diepe Gat there was Another team got to work and found larger items such as jerry cans, buckets and a garden chair.”
Last autumn, much more rubbish was found in De Slufter. Then around 700 kilos were found. The fact that less has now been collected may be due to an extra clean-up campaign by the organization Texel Plastic Free who visits the beaches every month with volunteers. They passed through the Slufter on January 6.
“We have not yet weighed the container from last weekend, but we estimate that we have cleared between 200 and 300 kilos of rubbish,” says forest ranger Maas. “That cleans up nicely, but the work is never finished. Unfortunately, there is still plenty of small plastic. In fact, you would have to be on your knees searching every square meter for small scraps.” The next clean-up campaign by Staatsbosbeheer will again be during the autumn holidays.
Enthusiastic cleaners will soon be able to get to work on Wieringen. There it becomes a promotion on March 9 held along the Wadden coast.