Omrop Fryslân Jutters towards a container that spilled onto Schiermonnikoog
In collaboration with
Omrop Fryslan
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 3.57pm
The vast majority of items found on beaches after the MSC Zoe disaster ended up as residual waste in the incinerator. These are large quantities of brand new mattresses, but also computer circuit boards and all kinds of plastic toys.
“Sometimes I call it the green lie,” recovery company André Borsch from Harlingen says in the documentary Wadden mess, the first part of which can be seen tomorrow on Omrop Fryslân. “There’s a lot going on.”
During a storm on the night of January 1-2, 2019, the merchant ship MSC Zoe lost 342 containers north of the Wadden Islands. Some of those containers opened and the contents ended up on the beaches of the Wadden Islands, but also in northern Friesland and Groningen. In North Holland, container rubbish has also washed ashore.
A major cleanup campaign was launched almost immediately. At the beginning it was mainly beachcombers. Subsequently there were more organized, but also much less organized actions, in which various organizations and countless volunteers sometimes began to clean up the mess themselves. Many things went wrong during the disposal of all that waste, as is evident from director Thom Verheul’s documentary.
Beautiful wooden chairs
“Chairs, stools, compressors, you can’t imagine anything that was on the beach,” says Chris Talsma, entrepreneur and beachcomber, on Schiermonnikoog. “At a certain point, some beautiful wooden chairs arrived. So we removed the compressor and made room for the chairs. There were so many things that we had to make choices.”
On Schiermonnikoog alone, 266,000 kilos of stuff were found. Berger André Borsch collected another 900,000 kilos of washed material “from Den Helder to Delfzijl”.
Borsch says he did his best to separate the “trash” found as much as possible. “We investigated every last grain of sand,” the rescue worker says in the documentary. Borsch was thus able to offer many items to recycling companies. But they soon lost interest and agreed to only purchase items in exchange for a financial contribution.
“They all talk to each other, so at some point you had to pay,” he says. According to Borsch, the consequence was that a whole series of found circuit boards (full of copper and precious metals) ended up in the incinerator.
Fleece blankets
Other collectors have also encountered major problems with the separation of “their” waste. Ellen Kuipers of the Wadden Association organized a series of major clean-up actions with volunteers under the motto CleanUpXL. Many different, sometimes still excellent products were collected, including intact fleece jackets and blankets. But no buyers were interested, she says in the documentary.
In the end the Wadden Association could do nothing but donate a found anchor and a complete crane to an “old iron farmer”. But that crane didn’t even come from the MSC Zoe, which remained on the seabed for 28 years.
Paul Schoute from the Association of Wadden Coast Municipalities confirms the waste situation. Mayor Ineke van Gent of Schiermonnikoog also fears that most of the 266,000 kilos of rubbish on her island have been burned in the incinerator. Although she hopes that the selection took place at the gate and that the waste was separated anyway so that some of it can be reused.
A small portion of the items were successful, says director Verheul. According to him, different bedspreads are now used in holiday homes in Schiermonnikoog. And Tempex from two of the containers that fell into the sea is now being used as insulation material. Verheul himself sleeps on an “excellent mattress topper” from the MSC Zoe.
2024-01-20 14:57:01
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