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Tourists can now go fishing for plastic in the canals of Amsterdam

2 min read

Sustainable Planet
Source: Facebook/PlacticWhale

Theres a new thing to do when you visit Amsterdam: fishing for plastic! You can book Plastic Fishing excursion through Airbnb and see the canals like never before.

Value from plastic waste

Plastic Whale, in the Netherlands, is the first professional plastic fishing company in the world. A social enterprise with a mission: make the world’s waters plastic-free and create value from plastic waste. You can now get up close and personal with the canals through an Airbnb excursion.

Tourists go plastic fishing in Amsterdam Volunteers go “plastic fishing” with nets and collect the trash from the canals before it can break down into microplastics or make it out to the open ocean. They don’t just throw the plastic away, either. The boats they use are made of recycled river trash. So far they’ve made 9 boats, and they plan to make more. Source: Facebook/BrightVibes

It started five years ago with a single challenge to build a boat made of plastic waste

Plastic mission

Plastic Whale is the first professional plastic fishing company in the world. A social enterprise with a mission: make the world’s waters plastic-free and create value from plastic waste. It started five years ago with a single challenge to build a boat made of plastic waste. Today, they have a fleet of boats made from Amsterdam Canal Plastic. They say it is their goal to go ‘out of business’: overfishing is a positive phenomenon in their case.

Boats made from plastic ‘waste’

Plastic waste is a growing, worldwide problem. Part of the problem is that people perceive plastic as a valueless disposable product. Use it once and then chuck it away! Plastic Whale wants to tackle this problem by showing people that plastic is not waste, but valuable raw material. That’s why they build beautiful design boats from plastic that they fish out the water.

Be part of the solution

"At Plastic Whale we don’t like talking about the problem too much. We rather work on the solution! By creating cool products from plastic waste, involving as many people as possible. The more people join, the more positive impact we create. We started in Amsterdam, but we wanna go global. There are many ways in which you can contribute to the solution: come plastic fishing with us, spread the word, create your own cool product, buy a WasteBoard, support our school programme, start your own plastic fishing company. Just hop on board!"

Talking of "hop on board", check out their "WasteBoards" below…

Each WasteBoard is made by hand. And each design is completely unique, because no single colour pattern is the same as any other.
WasteBoards: high quality skateboards made from plastic bottle caps Each WasteBoard is made by hand. And each design is completely unique, because no single colour pattern is the same as any other. Source: Facebook/PlasticWhale

WasteBoards: high quality skateboards made from plastic bottle caps

Plastic waste is a major issue at music festivals. So they came up with a cool idea to involve festival visitors and show them the value of plastic. The idea is called WasteBoards: high quality skateboards made from plastic bottle caps. They collect these bottle caps together with the visitors of music events, school kids, companies, you name it. Each WasteBoard is made by hand, and each design is unique, because no single colour pattern is the same as any other.

Although the plastic waste problem is enormous, it is Plastic Whale’s philosophy to just get started. To create, produce and adapt along the way. ‘As long as we move forward, towards a positive outcome. We start in Amsterdam but we want to create WasteBoards wherever it is possible and needed.’

For more information visit the Wasteboards site.

Source: PlasticWhale

So they came up with a cool idea to involve festival visitors and show them the value of plastic. WasteBoards was born
Plastic waste is a major issue at music festivals So they came up with a cool idea to involve festival visitors and show them the value of plastic. WasteBoards was born Source: Facebook/PlasticWhale
Make an Impact

Go plastic fishing with friends! Book a Plastic Whale Fishing trip now with Airbnb!

Help make Amsterdam’s canals plastic-free! On this two-hour outing, you will be shown the highlights of the beautiful canals, and you’ll make the city a cleaner place along the way. If you don’t want to clean canals, that’s okay. Everyone is invited to relax and enjoy the journey. As an incentive, there will be a prize awarded for the most original object pulled from the canals.