Introduction of the PLASTIC Pirates
We declared war against the vast flood of plastic bottles, which flooded river Tisza every year.
Everyone knows that the PET bottle floats delightfully on the surface of the water. It is less know how magnificent boats can be built from them. We know, because we could build our own boats. Not one, but a whole fleet. We set sail and we adventured over 100 kilometers on river Tisza with them. We call ourselves PLASTIC Pirates, because we are at war. We declared war against the vast flood of PET bottles, which flooded river Tisza every year. During our trip we collected a lot of bottles together from the river, the floodplain and the settlements along the river. At the end of our journey we crushed our ships and the collected garbage and placed them in separate garbage containers, where they were recycled.
Although the first attacks of the PLASTIC Pirates were successful, Tisza has not escaped the pollution. The new flood wave is expected in late fall and early spring each year. We decided to repeat the feat. With the settlements along the river, we conjure a fun-educational event from picking up litter, the fight against pollution and declare war on the waste flood on Tisza once again.
Plastic bottles, tremble!
Here We Come !!!
The backstory
Memoir from the pen of Attila Dávid Molnár, the mastermind behind the PLASTIC Cup
It all started with a conversation. With Tibor Fekete, a friend of mine, we cited our summer experiences during a regular monthly meeting of the book club in Budaörs. Tibi told me that he recently took part in an unusual water tour. Believe it or not, he sailed on a raft made of plastic bottles down on river Tisza. The raft was built by István Palkó ... and my friend would have continued the story, of course, but I interrupted him: Well, this is it! The idea that I’m waiting for!!! - I cried. Tibi did not understand the reason for my excitement, so I told him briefly what is going on. About five years before this conversation, I filmed sand martins near Tokaj. That was the first time I saw the flood plastic bottle flood on Tisza when a ton of plastic-waste from beyond the borders floods the surface of the river. I had no idea what could be done against such a vast scale of contamination. I had no solution, but it seems that the problem is nestled itself into my brain, because when I first heard István Palkó’s, I knew this is it. We need to build boats from plastic bottles and we need to fight against pollution by filming everything!
We founded Természetfilm.hu with Zsolt Marcell Tóth filmmaker, so it was natural that we started this initiative together. We knew we would cut our axes into a big tree. We were already having serious and long discussions about how to get started. One boat, only us, filmmakers? Or more boats, competing with each other? Fortunately for us the first Tisza PLASTIC sailor, István Palkó has accepted our invitation. We applied for and won the budget for the series in the Media Council contest. This is the reason that eventually, in 2013 it the first PLASTIC Fleet started with 4 PLASTIC boats. Since then, as they say, a lot of water, and many plastic bottles went down the Tisza. Over the past four years, 41 PET boats were built that fished more than 10 tonnes of waste out of the river. And as the river has lesser and lesser waste in it, more people can hear about the pollution and join in the fight against it.
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