What a Dump! Sweden's West Coast Littered With Foreign Garbage

The coast of the Bohuslän province, a popular seaside resort in western Sweden, is famous for its beautiful nature, salt baths, spectacular cliffs and endless hours of sunshine, yet over the past few years has turned into Europe's very own dump, with the situation rapidly deteriorating.

"It is worrying," Per Nilsson, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg, told Swedish Television SVT. "Bohuslän is like a filter. There are tons of rubbish washed ashore on the beaches of Europe. Most of the litter is then washed back into the sea, but here the garbage seems to stay," Peter Nilsson noted.

Tjärnö, outside Strömstad, is one of Bohuslän's "reference beaches," where the amount of garbage is measured several times a year as a proxy for the environmental situation. The average figure lies between 1,000 to 1,200 items of garbage per 100 meters.

According to Per Nilsson, who studies marine debris, the amount of garbage washed ashore has risen dramatically over the past two years. Now, up to 20,000 foreign objects per 100 meters are found, which is 20 times above the "norm."

"This is the highest level we've ever measured. What it depends on is still something of a mystery. Also, we have not figured out yet whether it is a temporary effect or a long-term trend," says Per Nilsson.

Sea currents carry plastic, wood and metal hundreds of miles and form large swirls of debris outside the rocky coast of Bohuslän. Some of the litter is dragged ashore by the tidal waves, blown off landfills by the wind and thrown by numerous bathers. Remarkably, Swedes themselves are the least to blame, as the overwhelming majority of around 80 percent of the debris is reported to be of foreign origin.

"At present, Bohuslän is one of the most affected areas in Europe. It is here that we find the largest amount of litter in, basically, the whole Northeast Atlantic," Per Nilsson says.