Sustainability

Fishing for plastic in the Amsterdam canals

20 July 2016

Starting today, you can contribute to a cleaner world – or, in this case, a cleaner Amsterdam – during your stay. You can now buy tickets for Plastic Whale at our Amsterdam hostels, which allows you to cruise the canals and fish for plastic.

Plastic Whale is the first professional plastic fishing company in the world. It is a social enterprise with a mission: make the world’s waters free of plastic by creating value from plastic waste. It all started with founder Marius Smit. In early 2011, he founded Plastic Whale because he had encountered plastic waste in the most beautiful spots on his travels.

On the principle of ‘it all starts with you,’ Marius himself started a fun action to fish for plastic in the Amsterdam canals. This action developed into a true success. After fishing out the first 10,000 bottles from the Amsterdam canals, the plastic was recycled and used to create a boat. This was also a great success, and today Plastic Whale has already built six design sloops from plastic fished out of Amsterdam’s canals.

Plastic Whale’s objective is to go out of business: in this case, overfishing is a good thing. Plastic Whale needs your help to achieve its objective, so make sure to join us on a Plastic Fishing trip on the Amsterdam canals!

When booking your stay in one of the Amsterdam hostels, you can arrange to join a boat trip.