File:Floating island of garbage in the Drina River, Bosnia and Herzegovina.jpg

English: This image, acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on 23 February 2020, shows a floating island of trash blocked by a barrier just before the dam of the Višegrad Hydroelectric Power Plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Due to the severe weather that affected this region of Europe in the past months, the Drina River had swept up tens of thousands of cubic metres of waste from illegal landfill sites that skirt it and its tributaries in Serbia and Montenegro, including plastic bottles, rusty barrels, used tyres, old furniture and other rubbish. Despite the ongoing efforts of the authorities to curtail the environmental damage and the possible negative effect to the operation of the power plant, this floating island has already broken through two protective barriers constructed to detain it. According to Darko Frganja, Head of the Environmental Protection Department of the Višegrad Hydroelectric Power Plant, a new working unit has been formed to manage the clean-up operations. Local environmental activists warn that the entire local ecosystem is in danger due to the microplastics and toxins that end up in the food chain once they are released from the waste. The open data provided by the Copernicus Sentinel missions offer important information that can be used to determine the status of river ecosystems.