29/05/2026
For one day, the Danube became a conference room.
Not through presentations or microphones — but through the conversations it inspired.
The Plastic project Closing Conference in Budapest yesterday brought together scientists, policymakers, NGOs, environmental innovators, river defenders, and dreamers from across the Danube Region to ask one essential question:
How do we stop plastic before it becomes part of the river’s story?
Over the past years, the AQPLA consortium worked across borders, sectors, and disciplines to move from isolated cleanups to something bigger:
shared data, shared responsibility, and shared action.
And yesterday proved that collaboration may be our most powerful environmental technology.
We would like to thank all consortium partners, contributors, and participants for building this journey together — and special thanks to our outstanding speakers:
Gusztáv Csomor, Dr. Ádám Kovács, Dr. Viktor Oroszi, Dr. Attila Dávid Molnár, Dr. Gudrun Obersteiner, Dr. Gábor Bordós, Dr. Tine Bizjak, Dejan Ubavin, Gergely Hankó, Marian Paiu, Imre Király, and Orsolya Keményffy.
Three ideas stayed with us long after the final session ended:
🌊 Rivers do not recognise borders - and neither should solutions.
♻️ The future of river protection lies not only in collecting waste, but in redesigning the systems that create it.
👥 Science alone is not enough. Lasting impact happens when communities, institutions, businesses, and citizens move together.
From microplastic monitoring and citizen science to policy recommendations, prevention methodologies, and the Riversaver Declaration, AQPLA became much more than a project timeline or work package.
It became a regional alliance for healthier rivers.
The project is concluding soon in June, but the work continues.
