The PILOT 2023 Clean Waterways was announced by Norwegian Retailer's Environment fund in February 2023. The goal is to remove garbage alongside the rivers before it's transported out to the ocean. The river Etne was one of the selected waterways, and the Institute of marine research who administrate a fish trap here was assigned the Etne waterways. The prioritized area was cleaned once, and a total of 660 kg garbage was removed from the river. Illegal dumps and other large items we were unable to remove was registered in RentHav. 26 illegal dumps and 27 large items were registered.
The number of hours spent on removing garbage was less than anticipated. It took about 400 hours to finish cleaning the river, counting the hours spent cleaning and hours on administrative tasks. In Etne vegetation and sportfishing was the biggest challenges when cleaning the river. These two factors delayed the work somewhat and then the water levels gave us some challenges during the late fall.
All in all, the project was effective, and we were able to remove a lot of garbage that would at some point have found its way out into the ocean.