Ziemupe invites beachgoers to collect litter with buckets

Ziemupe residents are asking beachgoers to take a bucket on their walks and collect litter, LSM reported, in a new effort to keep the beach clean. The local association that manages the beach car park estimates that about 10,000 tourists visit each year.

Visitors can take a bucket, pick up rubbish, bring it back to be sorted and return the bucket. Daiga Kadeģe, a representative of the Ziemupīte association, said the idea came from the difficulty of collecting litter without somewhere to put it. The association chose buckets instead of distributing bags, which could be thrown away even when they contained only a few pieces of rubbish.

Several years ago, volunteers cleared more than 1,000 litres of waste washed onto the beach during floods in a few days. That cleanup prompted the idea of giving visitors a way to collect rubbish whenever they choose. Residents say the beach, which stretches for 13 kilometres, has become cleaner, and volunteers have also joined in maintaining it.

Cigarette butts have long been a particular problem. Jars are now available on the beach for collecting them before taking them to a container. Association representative Austris Mackus said there were claims that one cigarette butt pollutes about eight litres of water. The association plans to count the butts collected and estimate how much water has been saved.