Ratz, Chad and the Elbe

Last summer Heinz Ratz re-imagined the triathlon. His triune discipline: swim, music and inform. The 42-year-old German musician is currently hard at work swimming 15 to 20 kilometres through German rivers before going ashore to give a concert and raise awareness for the protection of the water ways.

The rivers are plagued by dredging, canalisation or just pure rubbish. In cooperation with the BUND, a German association for environment and nature protection, in the summer of 2009, Ratz swam until his skin pruned and wrinkled—a total of 1,000 kilometres. The Water Portal from betterplace.org has posted a short film and further links on the topic.

One of these links follows one of Ratz’s colleagues. The U.S. American Chad Pregracke, so-called “Garbage Man” has been collecting garbage with his NGO Living Lands & Water for over ten years. The result: 83 toilets, 775 refrigerators and over 55,000 tires – altogether several hundred tons of garbage.

[caption id=”” align=”alignright” width=”285” caption=”The Elbe (flickr cc: Blumenbiene)”] [/caption]

Back in Germany, there’s also some good news to be had: not every river is going belly-up. The Elbe river is relatively close to its natural state; for 600 kilometres, the river is free from canalisation and dams. However, due to economic reasons, the Elbe’s ecosystem is not unquestionably safe. Deepening for the inland waterway vessels and graveling the banks and shores endangers the natural water habitats.

The BUND has campaigned successfully for the protection of the Elbe. The organisation hinders such destructive projects by applying public pressure. In the meanwhile, they have founded several citizen initiatives along the Elbe, with great success: with the dismantling of dikes, 420 hectares of flood plains were gained, including a 350-hectare large forest. Where? Learn more here on our water portal.