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Abundance and characteristics of anthropogenic litter along the Tanzanian shores of the African Great Lakes: including volunteer involvement, outreach, and stakeholder engagement in a holistic approach
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Sixty-nine volunteer clean-up events along Tanzania's African Great Lakes shorelines collected over 431,000 pieces of litter (25,981 kg), with plastics comprising 75% of all items—dominated by beverage bottles and plastic bags. The study demonstrates that targeting these two item types could significantly reduce litter leakage and highlights the value of holistic citizen science and stakeholder engagement approaches.
Environmental pollution due to mismanaged anthropogenic litter is one of the most pressing issues facing the world today. To reduce existing environmental burdens of litter, clean-up events have increased in popularity. Here, we report on the results of the Clean Shores, Great Lakes project, in which we conducted 69 volunteer-based clean-ups along the Tanzanian shorelines of the African Great Lakes (Victoria, Tanganyika, and Nyasa (also known as Lake Malawi)). A total of 5483 volunteers engaged with the project across all clean-up sites, collecting 431,328 pieces (25,981 kg) of anthropogenic litter. Expressing the data as normalized to area (items m-2) or effort (items individual-1 h-1) revealed that the interpretation of a polluted site varies with units, highlighting the need for consistency in the field. Litter density varied from 0.06 to 13.89 items m-2 and 5.2-706 items individual-1 h-1. Plastics were the major litter type constituting 75% of all litter (mean = 74.2 ± 12.5% across all sites), while clothing (10.9 ± 9.5%) and fishing gear (3.7 ± 5.2%) were also prevalent. Two items constituted > 40% of all collected litter, namely plastic beverage bottles (average 23.7 ± 17.1%, range 0-72.9%) and plastic bags (average 19.7 ± 13.2%, range 1-50.3%). Prioritizing intervention measures on these two items could reduce litter leakage significantly. Furthermore, a holistic approach was undertaken through voluntary engagement, citizen science involvement, stakeholder dissemination, and school visits to increase public awareness. Clean-up data when disseminated to relevant policymakers and stakeholders can motivate activity for the environmental management of anthropogenic litter and plastic pollution.
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