Rowing while dredging waste: Hungarian race in green mode

The 150 competitors meeting on the banks of Hungary's second largest river carried somewhat unusual equipment for a boat race -- protective gloves, rubber boots and large bags. Their challenge was to collect as much rubbish as possible from the Tisza, in the northeast of the country on the Ukrainian border, navigating it on boats built from waste themselves for nine days.

This year, more than eight tonnes of rubbish -- such as plastic bottles, tyres and cans -- were collected from the river and its surrounding floodplains during the Upper Tisza Plastic Cup from August 1 to 9. With just half as many participants because of the coronavirus pandemic, that was still almost as much as in 2019, when racers managed to clean up an 80-kilometre section of the water course.