How can a truck save a river?
At a screening at the Buda Eco-Film Club at the end of October, the audience was treated to an inspiring film about a truck driver who tirelessly collects garbage in Transcarpathia, reducing the environmental pollution that reaches Hungary. The film was followed by a roundtable discussion on the consequences of environmental pollution and its possible solutions. The event was also attended by the marketing manager of Eurofins, a leader in surface water analysis and microplastics testing.
The Buda Eco-Film Club event at the Habitat Creative Center
Can collecting garbage be a community experience? Innovation from waste? The hero of the PET Cup Association' s movie titled "The River Rescue Truck", Béla Francz, is performing his gigantic garbage collection work in Transcarpathia, and has developed his individual idea into a serious business, cleaning the banks of the Tisza from garbage. This is his contribution to the huge work that PET Cup has been doing since 2013. Their volunteers - the PET pirates - have so far removed more than 400 tonnes of pollutants, mostly macroplastics, from the Tisza and its tributaries and prevented a further 1200 tonnes of waste from entering the river in Transcarpathia, along the Tisza's headwaters, with 60% of the waste being returned to the economy.
After the movie, a roundtable discussion was organized, where the PET pirates (Kata Vészity, the association's staff member responsible for awareness raising and education, and Viki Doró, Green Pen Award-winning journalist and editor-in-chief of Recity Magazine) presented their stories, and Dr. István Szabó, Vice Rector of MATE, approached the problem from a number of interesting angles, including ecotoxicological. Gábor Szunyogh, Marketing Manager of Eurofins, reported on the synergetic communication campaigns that the laboratory has successfully carried out in the last decade in cooperation with PET Cup and MATE, regarding the analyses of our surface waters and microplastics testing.
Dr. István Szabó, Vice Rector of MATE, Viktória Doró and Kata Vészity, PET pirates, Gábor Szunyogh, Marketing Manager of Eurofins
Most recently, for example, the Environmental Testing Laboratory of Eurofins took samples from the Bodrog River during the PET Cup: never before have such high concentrations of microplastics been found in Hungarian surface waters, and we also found one of the notorious everlasting substances, the endocrine disruptor and carcinogen Bisphenol A. The results of the PET Cup announcement were also published in major national media.
Microplastics in the Bodrog
"The river rescue truck is about much more than environmental protection: it is also about the fact that if you recognize the real task (more theatrically: the TASK), sooner or later you will find helpers. For example, Béla Francz, the hero of the movie, who initially collected garbage from the banks of the Transcarpathian streams alone in his UAZ pick-up truck, was soon helped by Gergely Hankó and the PET Cup team. Jus as Eurofins, together with MATE and PET Cup, has been conducting its umpteenth environmental research and communication campaign. It was a pleasure and an honor to participate in the roundtable discussion, to spend at least one evening imagining a way to rid the world of microplastics and other self-inflicted hazards," said Gábor Szunyogh after the event.
The River Rescue Truck
The screening of the PET Cup movie titled The River Rescue Truck was organized by the Hegyvidéki Green Circle, the Kétker Community Foundation and the KörTér volunteer organization at the Habitat Creative Center.