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Danes clean beaches, but dump waste into the ocean afterward

Denmark’s municipal government spends more than $150,000 a year clearing beaches of debris, which gets dumped back into the sea! Danish Radio published a video on their website showing a bulldozer out in the waters of Stillinge Beach in Slagelse, Denmark. Before it returns to shore, the bulldozer blade appears to dump the lot back into the water , including plastic, before lifting and dumping it again.

Using the rake and the blade, the bulldozer operator scoops up seaweed and plastic along the beach shore. The bulldozer follows the water once again when the blade becomes full of debris. This occurs twice weekly in Denmark during the summer months. Environmental experts have labeled this process as ‘completely idiotic.’

Professor Torkel Gissel Nielsen, of the National Institute of Aquatic Resources, called the proposed method ‘stupid’ because it involves scraping seaweed with a noisy tractor, then depositing it in the water, then driving the tractor back ashore. In other words, whatever you have just dumped into the water will wash up on the beach immediately afterward. Villam Christensen, Deputy Mayor of Copenhagen, defended the practice, stating that bulldozers pick up cigarette buds and debris and not plastic.

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The cigarettes and other debris will be there anyway, Christensen said. As the water comes, it collects things, and then those things drift away. Using bulldozers to clean beaches is at least the second time in the last year that environmental experts have condemned Danish authorities for questionable practices. Denmark dug up millions of dead mink this May despite a warning from its own environmental agency.

 

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