Veneto beach clean-up: 3,100 kg of plastic collected

The inevitable cigarette butts, but also fragments of mussel nets, cotton buds and even part of the filtering systems of purifiers. These are the objects found - amidst bitter certainties and surprises - during the weekend of the sea, the initiative promoted by Plastic Free Onlus that last weekend involved 290 volunteers from the Veneto coastline.

A total of nine environmental clean-ups were carried out and the numbers give an idea of the work: over 3,100 kg of plastic were collected. From the Po Delta to the beaches of the upper Adriatic Sea, the clean-ups took place in Rosolina, Porto Viro and Porto Tolle, and then continued along the lagoon in Chioggia, Venezia Lido and Jesolo, to Caorle, Eraclea and Bibione.

"We found different waste depending on the type of place," explained the founder and president of Plastic Free Onlus, Luca De Gaetano. "For example, the Isola Verde beach in Chioggia is located between two rivers, the Adige and the Brenta: here the object we found most frequently was the cotton fioc. A 1980s model, those with hard plastic that half the Po Valley has flushed down the toilet after use: there are so many of them in the environment and they are really harmful. They are also almost irretrievable because of their small size'.

Then there is waste linked to fishing activity: 'On all beaches in Veneto you can find "socks", they are small nets in which small mussels are inserted and from there the ripe ones are collected,' he explained. 'But to collect them you have to cut the socks, which end up in the sea. Another surprising object are black plastic discs with a diameter of 3-4 cm: from investigations carried out they are parts of filtering systems of purifiers'. Of course there are the ever-present cigarette butts and bottle caps. But with differences from beach to beach, at least for cigarettes: "In Eraclea and Caorle we found few cigarette butts, and do you know why? Smoking is forbidden there, so the difference from the free beaches is clear. The same cannot be said in the Venice Lido'.

Many people joined the clean-up operation: citizens but also tourists. Alongside the environmental clean-up, the 2026 edition also introduced a 'citizen science' activity, involving volunteers in the cataloguing of collected waste. Through data sheets based on the European beach litter monitoring specification, data was collected on types and materials, which will now be analysed and transmitted to the European database to contribute to the study of the marine litter phenomenon.