Get Even More Visitors To Your Blog, Upgrade To A Business Listing >>

Plastic waste in the ocean: cleaning rivers means saving the seas

Mhonor than eleven million tons of Plastic end up in the oceans every year. This not only results in economic damage in the billions, but also far-reaching consequences for the maritime ecosystems and the health of humans, who as fish eaters are at the end of the food chain.

A lecture by the young Dutch inventor Boyan Slat on collecting Plastic Waste from the oceans in Amsterdam in 2018 was the initial spark for the retired school director Marja Ritterfeld from Uelzen to found the “EndPlasticSoup” initiative. As the president of a Rotary club, Ritterfeld recognized an urgent task in combating the plastic waste problem, for which her organization’s charitable commitment is worthwhile.

Boyan Slat has caused a sensation and headlines around the world with his company The Ocean Cleanup and the collection of plastic waste on the high seas. So far, Slat has collected more than three million kilograms with his special ships on the seven seas.

The focus of Ocean Cleanup’s activities has shifted towards cleaning rivers in recent years. In fact, it is much more efficient to stop plastic waste as it makes its way into the ocean. Every piece of plastic that is fished out of a River never ends up in the river oceanswhere it would have to be collected with much greater effort.

More about ocean and climate protection

Boyan Slat now operates an entire fleet of solar-powered “Interceptor” boats, which are used on particularly stressed rivers and estuaries around the world. A new major project is scheduled to start in Indonesia before the end of this year. The “Interceptor 020” is to collect plastic on the Cisadane River, which has so far washed almost 1,000 tons of plastic waste into the Java Sea every year.

Marja Ritterfeld met the entrepreneur Clemens Feigl, CEO of the Aachen company Everwave, in 2020. In Haren an der Ems, the company builds small boats for collecting rubbish on inland waterways and rivers. The Rotarians provided the money for an EndPlasticSoup pilot project.

A boat from Everwave was chartered and sent in 2021 to the Drina near Visegrad, a particularly plastic-polluted border river in the triangle of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia.

The Balkan river Drina regularly turns into a floating garbage dump

Source: Everwave GmbH

“Due to the restrictions imposed by Corona, it wasn’t an easy thing at the time,” remembers Ritterfeld, but we had support from a local Rotary Club.” threatened to clog the inlet to a hydroelectric power station. “It was almost an emergency,” says Ritterfeld.

There are now numerous companies around the world that offer garbage collection boats. Even if the technologies differ in detail, in most cases – as with Boyan Slat as well as Everwave – a conveyor belt is used, which is driven under the floating garbage and the garbage floating on the water surface in containers inside the boat transported.

20 tons of plastic a day

“Our twelve-meter-long boats have a capacity for around one ton of plastic waste, then they have to be unloaded on land,” says Feigl, “we can then manage a maximum of 20 tons in one working day.”

According to calculations by Ocean Cleanup, 1,000 rivers are responsible for 80 percent of the plastic entering the oceans worldwide. The goal must therefore be to clean up these problem flows if you want to get the garbage problem on the oceans under control in the long term.

The heads behind the Rotary initiative “EndPlasticSoup” see it that way and are committed to consolidating their efforts. In addition to Ritterfeld, it is Richard Goßen from Aachen and Ralf Thiel from Wiesbaden in particular who have taken the project to a new level.

In a few weeks, a new three-year Drina project is to start in Bosnia-Herzegovina. “We collected 200,000 euros in donations for this,” says Ralf Thiel, the secretary of “EndPlasticSoup”, “financing is in place.” This should enable the use of an Everwave boat for two times six weeks and also initiate a waste disposal concept including recycling . Environmental education programs are also planned in cooperation with the local authorities and the Rotary Club in Bijeljina.

“In cooperation with universities, we have developed three different environmental education kits that are certified for primary schools and for secondary levels I and II”, says Ritterfeld. In the long term, improved environmental awareness across the board is also important in order to counteract the pollution of rivers from the outset.

More about oceans

“Real gold rush atmosphere”

In the cleaning actions on the Drina should also Artificial intelligence come into use. “It’s not about the boats driving autonomously,” explains Feigl, “rather, the deployment routes are optimized in advance with the help of drone flights.”

The drone scans where the largest amounts of plastic are. The artificial intelligence can also recognize what types of waste and types of plastic are involved. In addition to plastic, every other imaginable waste is floating on the rivers – made of wood, associated metals and various other materials.

“With a hit rate of 84 percent, the artificial intelligence can distinguish between plastic and other waste,” says Feigl. “For later waste separation and processing in a recycling plant, it is very helpful if you know in advance which materials are going to be removed from the boat be included.”

The route of the boat can then be chosen in such a way that the composition of a payload is as homogeneous as possible. Feigl hopes that the automatic collection of data about the garbage by drone and AI can also provide information about specific originators and illegal disposal.

However, collecting the rubbish for the boat crew is not a pleasant job. “These are usually very unpleasant smells that get up the noses of the employees,” says Feigl. And when driving through the garbage carpet, eerie noises are sometimes made. “It can crack almost like pack ice,” says Feigl.

Towards the circular economy

The Rotary project also plans to support the construction of a waste separation facility and to secure the local landfill so that waste cannot be blown back into the environment and ultimately into the river. “In the medium term, we are aiming for a transition from landfill to circular economy,” says Thiel.

“The Drina project could provide us with the blueprint for comparable projects worldwide,” Ritterfeld is convinced. “It was one of the first international environmental projects to be approved by Rotary International.” So far, the “EndPlasticSoup” has primarily been supported by German and Dutch clubs. -Initiative. But this environmental issue of global importance has the potential to play an even bigger role at Rotary International in the future. In the past, there were more health issues such as combating the poliomyelitis in the foreground.

“We carry out the Rotary project practically at cost price,” says Feigl, “we don’t earn anything from it.” Nevertheless, he has in mind that new contacts can be made on site that will later be useful for commercial use of Everwave boats could.

His company’s business model is simple. “Anyone who wants to do something for the environment and reduce the amount of plastic waste on rivers can do so directly and transparently with us,” says Feigl, “we charge a flat rate of one euro per kilogram of garbage collected.” That is very easy to do communicate and have established themselves as a sustainable business model over the years.

The cost of transporting the 6.5-ton boats by truck depends on the distance to the site. And there, depending on the country, wages for recruited workers can vary.

But who are Everwave’s customers? “The spectrum ranges from the dental practice next door to large international corporations,” says Feigl. In any case, these are companies that cause a certain amount of plastic waste. If these companies want to make an active contribution to reducing the amount of plastic entering the oceans, they can use the garbage collection service on rivers.

“Such activities are elementary in the future, especially in view of the new requirements in terms of corporate social responsibility and reporting of companies,” says Feigl, who foresees a growing market at this point.

Unesco recently launched a new program entitled “Healthy Rivers, Healthy Oceans” to explore how to tackle the problem of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans at its root, which is the rivers. This does not primarily mean the collection of rubbish, but measures that prevent the introduction of plastic waste from the outset.

Pedagogical assistance, as provided within the framework of the Rotary project, can certainly be helpful. Ultimately, however, these lofty goals should not be achievable without an internationally binding, legal framework. And so a UN resolution in 2022 had the understandable title: “End plastic pollution: Towards an international legally binding instrument”.

You can listen to our WELT podcasts here

In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is required, since the providers of the embedded content as third-party providers require this consent [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (which can be revoked at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can withdraw your consent at any time via the switch and via privacy at the bottom of the page.

“Aha! Ten minutes of everyday knowledge” is WELT’s knowledge podcast. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we answer everyday questions from the field of science. Subscribe to the podcast at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, deezer, Amazon Music or directly via RSS feed.

See more here



This post first appeared on Eco Planet News, please read the originial post: here

Share the post

Plastic waste in the ocean: cleaning rivers means saving the seas

×

Subscribe to Eco Planet News

Get updates delivered right to your inbox!

Thank you for your subscription

×