Initiatives

Initiatives

Increasingly more initiatives are taken worldwide to work on solutions for the plastic problem, a fantastic example is the Ocean Cleanup by Boyan Slat, a Dutch fellow who has been seriously occupied with the enormous problem of the plastic soup since the age of sixteen and is making his dreams come true, initially through crowdfunding.

Boyan and his team recently took the first active Clean-up System to the plastic soup in the Pacific, where it will be collecting plastic for a year. The system consists of floaters and a skirt of woven fabric and takes advantage of the natural oceanic forces, allowing it to capture plastics and other debris, which is then collected by ships and recycled on land. Boyan expects that half of the debris in this floating dump can be cleaned up within 5 years.

Updates and further information can be found via: https://www.theoceancleanup.com/

I truly hope that the system will be as successful as intended and that more of these systems will be available!

Another great Dutch initiative is The Great Bubble Barrier. By blowing air bubbles from a tube on the bottom of rivers and canals, debris is stopped before it enters the sea. The founders of The Great Bubble Barrier, Francis Zoet, Anne Marieke Eveleens and Saskia Studer were looking for an elegant manner to stop plastic in rivers and some of their most important requirements were free passage for the continuous shipping in the Netherlands and free passage for fish migration.

Their great initiative has already proven to be successful in practice!
Further information can be found via their site: thegreatbubblebarrier.com

Another marvellous initiative is the SEABIN project. The idea developed from the realisation: why are there bins on land but not in the ocean? Pete Ceglinski and a few surf mates developed the SeaBin, it is a kind of bin with a pump and filter that sucks in water with litter, purifies it and pumps the filtered water back into the ocean. At this moment, 686 SeaBins are active worldwide and up till now they have already collected over 55.500 kg of waste. The SeaBin has to be emptied on a daily basis. One SeaBin removes nearly 4 kg of waste from the ocean per day, so potentially, over 1400 kg per year! All information can be found on: https://seabinproject.com/

Another great initiative is by Dave Hakkens: https://preciousplastic.com/

Preciousplastic.com is a worldwide community by hundreds of people working on solutions for plastic pollution. All kinds of knowledge, tools, blueprints for building machines, etc. are shared online free of charge. Do take a look and become inspired, or even better, become a member and participate. Thanks to this community, I started looking for a shredder and had it built by Albert Morren (Morren Trading). This shredder is an upgrade of the shredder I found on PreciousPlastic and I am over the moon with (it is safer, stronger and functions better than the one on the blueprints and people with a mental handicap can operate it safely).