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The River Plastic Monitoring Project

Providing reliable data on sources, sinks and transport pathways of plastic pollution river systems.

Dr. Tim van Emmerik | Assistant Professor Hydrologic Sensing | Wageningen University | The Netherlands

What We Do


Development of river plastic measurement techniques.

Data collection in urban and natural rivers across the globe.

Providing information on plastic sources, sinks and pathways.

The Plastic Monitoring Team in Numbers


17

scientific publications

5

focus rivers

8

focus cities

10

team members

Some examples

We continuously develop and improve our measurement techniques to quantify plastic pollution in rivers. For more information click on the links below.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5.

Rhine, the Netherlands

Plastic emission: 2 tonnes/year

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Saigon, Vietnam

Plastic emission: 1,100 tonnes/year

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Jakarta, Indonesia

Plastic emission: 2,100 tonnes/year

Current projects


Plastic Plants

Summary Water hyacinths are invasive free-floating aquatic plants abundant in most tropical rivers. They grow rapidly in biomass, and expand in patches of tens of meters in diameter. Hyacinths have been found to entangle macroplastics. This project further investigates the role of hyacinths on riverine plastic transport. Further reading Schreyers et al. (2021), Plastic plants:…

Breaking the Urban Plastic-Flood Nexus

Summary The main goal of this project is to observe, understand and reduce the impact of plastic waste on urban flooding. To achieve this, three steps are defined. First, advanced technologies will be used to provide reliable and frequent observations of urban rainfall and plastic waste. Second, new data will be used to develop an…