Plastic Pirates - Go Europe!

Plastic Pirates - Go Europe! is a European citizen science action in which school classes and youth
groups collect plastic samples at streams and rivers and document their results. The collected data is then
analysed by scientists. In this way, young European citizens make an important contribution to research
on the state of European rivers and the degree and possible origins of plastic waste pollution.

The campaign was first developed as Plastic Pirates in Germany in 2016 by the Kiel Science Factory and partners with funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for the Science Year 2016*17 - Seas and Oceans and has been continued since 2018 as part of the research focus “Plastics in the Environment”. During the German EU Presidency in 2020, the campaign was extended to the countries of the Trio Presidency and implemented as a joint action of the Ministries of Education, Science and Research of Germany, Portugal and Slovenia in the period from 2020 to 2021. Since January 2022, the action has been extended to other EU Member States with the support of the EU Commission.

Drawing on six years of successful implementation in Germany, and since 2020 in Portugal and Slovenia, the action expanded the Plastic Pirates – Go Europe! initiative’s activities to other EU member states. The EU Commission is promoting the expansion with the international measure "Europeanisation of the Plastic Pirates citizen science initiative" as part of the framework for research and innovation, Horizon Europe, in the area of the Mission for Healthy Oceans, Seas, Coastal and Inland Waters. The measures started in June 2022 and will run for 30 months. The upscaling of the initiative will contribute substantially to providing an overview of plastic pollution in and along European rivers, thereby empowering children and young people to contribute to the Ocean Mission’s policy core objective to prevent and eliminate pollution in European seas and waters. The action will thus respond to the Council’s call “on the Commission and Member States to further develop and implement the ‘plastic pirates’ citizen science campaign as the ERA pilot action to foster internal ‘interaction’.
The overall objectives are to raise awareness among citizens and, in particular, young citizens, in larger parts of Europe on the impact and benefits that research and innovation can have on their daily lives, to increase the capacity to collect, organise and verify data on plastic waste pollution stemming from and in European rivers, coastlines and seas, and to test, replicate and refine best practice models for linking excellent science and citizen engagement in order to reach the Restore our Ocean and Waters Mission’s objective of restoring our ocean, seas and waters while supporting the monitoring of EU policy objectives.