Communities
The strategy deployed for social engagement will use workshops with 3D printed and VR based demonstrations that will raise environmental awareness amongst businesses, local communities and tourists alike. Awareness is key in building up on profitable solutions to benefit local economies. Awareness is key to building on profitable solution to benefit local economies and bring together a community to fight for a common goal.
As key stakeholders, local communities can benefit from their activities in In-No-Plastic, since the removal of marine litter from our coastal areas results in enhanced livelihoods and cleaner ecosystems at the basis for a viable quality economy.
Clean-up
Our clean-up activities target local populations, In-No-Plastic communities, and tourists, enhancing their role in mitigating plastic pollution in coastal towns and cities.
In addition to targeting industrial hotspots with plastics removal technology, we should not overlook the role played by local communities. Their level of awareness and mobilization in natural, cultural and industrial sites is globally increasing along with the higher frequency and participation in clean-ups and marine litter monitoring activities conducted by citizens.
Within our demo sites, we involve iconic locations from the opposite banks of the Adriatic sea along with their island communities of Venice in Italy and the Croatian island of Krk. We extend such a bond to the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten in the Dutch Antilles along with the riparian community of the River Thames in the UK.
Although separated by distance, In-No-Plastic empowers groups of citizens by being introduced and familiarized with the use of smart technologies able to enhance clean-up operations along with the generation and sharing of data and statistics useful for decision-makers, waste management authorities, scientific communities and practitioners of marine litter prevention and remediation.
In particular, by applying common European protocols for marine litter monitoring and clean up, a smart and open source platform and related app, performed by Empower will allow the ingestion and elaboration of multiple data: social media, geospatial, visual, overall cleanup data and tips. The service will be scalable (scaling from small setups to larger ones), modular (allowing for new technologies/tools to be added), interoperable (replicable and able to interact with already existing/heterogeneous systems) and holistic (covering planning, operational decision making and post-action assessment). This tool would be able to fine tune and evolve during and after the project period, producing options and roadmaps that end users, policy makers, suppliers and other stakeholders can use.
Marine litter monitoring
In-No-Plastic monitoring activities aim to gather relevant data and measure the effectiveness of both clean-up approaches currently in use along with the new ones. The feature of this process is twofold – to track the impact of curbing plastic operations and their possible impact on marine and local ecosystems.
Well thought and executed monitoring campaigns on marine litter, based on common European standards will enable us to understand the source and fate of plastics from its terrestrial origin to the marine endpoint.
Information gathered through these actions will be analyzed to comprehend the state of macro litter pollution, typology and density of plastics. It will also allow appreciating the level of public participation and awareness derived by citizen science experience.