On Saturday, April 20, Ljubljanica 2024 festival in Ljubljana took place. The annual festival was dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of having a clean river in the city and taking care of nature and environment.
Among various activities in the event by various participants, Društvo Bodi svetloba undertook mapping activity along the Ljubljanica River in Ljubljana and presented the output of our RIDE project, Read the River booklet.
The main part of the event was cleaning-up the river by professional divers of the divers, members of the Vivera Underwater Activities Association . It was for the first time that divers managed to collect waste from the river also beneath the Plečnik’s Central Market, UNESCO World Heritage site. Altogether, a tonne of waste from the Ljubljanica River in Ljubljana was removed on Saturday.
On one hand it is good that the amount of waste in the Ljubljanica River in the city is getting smaller year by year, but on the other hand there is still too much waste in the river, including discarded bikes, electric scooters, laptops, traffic signs, waste bins, chairs and tables from bars, etc.
The collected rubbish was shown at the Cobbler’s Bridge for all to see and to remind us that the river should not be a dumping site for waste.
For the sustainability of the Erasmus RIDE project, the Ljubljanica River in Ljubljana as well as other rivers in the project, should be taken care of in the following years as well, by undertaking the future clean-ups and raising awareness campaigns among public to protect our rivers.
