‘Dirty carpets of plastic bottles’: Hungary urges Ukraine & Romania to stop polluting rivers

Hungarian President Janos Ader called on Ukraine and Romania on Tuesday to stop polluting two major rivers that flow through Hungary, after floods in recent weeks brought in “dirty carpets” of plastic bottles from the neighbors.

The letters to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis were published on Ader’s official website. Hungarian authorities could not clean up all the waste in the Tisza and Szamos rivers, according to Ader.

“It is disappointing that pollution of the Tisza river with waste has not been reduced… and poses a lasting threat to the fragile ecosystem of the river,” Ader said in the letter to Zelensky. He asked the Ukrainian president to help resolve the problem urgently, Reuters reported.

“Our machines are no longer able to handle the piles of garbage that come in unstoppable quantities,” Ader said. The president added that, since mid-June, Hungarian authorities had removed 938 cubic meters of waste from the Tisza river and 846 cubic meters of waste from the Szamos river.