Plastic Pirates - Go Europe!: Floating macro-, meso- and microlitter data collected by citizens in rivers in Europe between 2022 and 2024

Floating macro-, meso- and microlitter data collected by school children from the surface water of European rivers and streams in the period 2022-2024 for the Plastic Pirates – Go Europe! project. (Micro)litter particles have been analysed in the lab by experts to assess their characteristics. 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 files contain data on the amount of floating litter observed, the sampling effort and the characteristics (size, type, colour, material) of the (micro)litter particles. The data are collected in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovenia 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 C and D): https://www.plastic-pirates.eu/en/material/download.