Cleaning up Europe's plastic river, Albania

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Every year, 570,000 tons of plastic enter the Mediterranean Sea. That’s as much as 625 garbage trucks being dumped into the sea per day. Because of the Mediterranean’s unique geography, very little water flows out, so the plastic gets trapped. It smothers and entangles wildlife before disintegrating into microplastics. Even though the Mediterranean holds only 1% of the world’s water, it contains 7% of all microplastics.

In the Kukës region of Albania, two rivers—the Black Drin from North Macedonia and the White Drin from Kosovo—merge into a single, powerful flow. With no proper waste management in place, tons of plastic collect behind a local dam, eventually washing downstream into the Mediterranean. It has become a gathering point for multinational waste to pile up. But due to the dam, it’s also the ideal location to intercept all that trash, clean it up, and stop it from entering the Mediterranean.

By repurposing a weed harvester into a large waste-collecting boat, Everwave and Planet Wild are cleaning the river. But with no local waste processing infrastructure, the plastic needs somewhere to go. That’s why they are building a brand new waste management facility. By turning an old Soviet packaging factory into a fully functioning recycling plant, they’re stopping tons of plastic before it can reach the sea.

Albania