DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15535434

Macrolitter data collected by school children on riverbanks in several European countries in the period 2022-2024 for the Plastic Pirates – Go Europe! project. The data have been validated by experts of the Plastic Pirates partner institutes according to a data verification protocol. After validation of the data by the partner institutes, further quality control was done by VLIZ and NIB. Data harmonisation, standardisation and publication was done by VLIZ.
Acknowledgement: These data have been collected by numerous school schildren and their teachers from primary and secondary schools. We would like to thank all of them for their valuable contributions. 
Over the years, countless people have contributed to the Plastic Pirates project. The concept for it is based on the citizen science projects Científicos de la Basura and Following the Pathways of Litter and has been continously developed by colleagues from Kiel Science Factory (Germany), the Científicos de la Basura at Universidad Católica del Norte (Chile), the Ecologic Institute (Germany) and the partner institutions of the Plastic Pirates - Go Europe! initiative. The design of the material was done by familie redlich AG, KOMPAKTMEDIEN, the Ecologic Institute and the DLR Project Management Agency (Germany).

The data file contains data on the amount and variety of macrolitter items collected in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain during the autumn 2022, spring 2023, autumn 2023, spring 2024 and autumn 2024 sampling campaigns of the project. The sampling methods used can be found in the Plastic Pirates project booklet (methods for group A, B and D): https://www.plastic-pirates.eu/en/material/download.
Part of the data can also be seen on the Plastic Pirates website: https://www.plastic-pirates.eu/en/results/map


Files:

READme_riverbank_v2.0.0: Explanation of the (meta)data fields in the data file Riverbank_data_v2.0.0.
Riverbank_data_v2.0.0: Metadata and results of groups A and B (riverbank macrolitter) and D (reporter group; sources of waste and weather).
Project_Booklet_EN: Plastic Pirates - Go Europe! Project Booklet

Remarks:

Data files - .csv: comma as separator and semicolon for lists within a cell.
"na" or "NA" means "not applicable" or "no data available".
Data for length and width of riverbank searched for group B could not always be verified by the experts.
Data for the weight of plastic waste and total waste could not be verified by the experts.


More information:

Methods data collection by citizens:
Plastic Pirates - Go Europe! Project Booklet (Group A, B and D) - https://www.plastic-pirates.eu/en/material/download
Deliverable D3.1 Plastic Pirates – Go Europe! common and harmonized standards to data sampling, processing, analysis and storage

Methods data verification by experts:
Deliverable D3.1 Plastic Pirates – Go Europe! common and harmonized standards to data sampling, processing, analysis and storage