In-No-Plastic Kick-off Meeting
The kick-off meeting of newly launched EU Horizon 2020 project “In-No-Plastic” (Innovative approaches towards prevention, removal and reuse of marine plastic litter) took place on 20th and 21st October online, due to COVID-19 travel limitations. The project, coordinated by the National Research Institute SINTEF based in Norway, aims at designing and implementing nano-, micro- and macro-plastic clean-up technologies based on a combined methodology of social and technical removal strategies. The project will focus on industrial hotspots through cooling water systems (CWS), harbours, lagoons, shores and shallow sea water.
As discussed in the In-No-Plastic meeting, the technical strategy consists of the comparison between existing methods and multiple developing technologies for the removal of plastics at different testing areas in Europe, and the Caribbean, with ideas to be mirrored in other areas.
The social strategy, on the other hand, focusses on the engagement of the local population by incentivising plastic recovery in return for monetary or another recompense. In order to achieve social part of project’s strategy, different clean-up events will be organized on several pilot locations where local community and stakeholders’ groups will be able to participate: Venice Lagoon in Italy, Krk island in Croatia, river Thames in the UK and the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten.
The approach entails a comprehensive monitoring system to gather data at frequencies of every 6 months for 2 years. This is done to understand the effectiveness of the new technologies and current clean-up approaches both in terms of cutting down plastic presence in the environment and its effects on the marine and local ecosystem.
In-No-Plastic gathers 17 partners from 10 countries and has a life span of 36 months. It will also investigate different recycling methods, aiming to connect plastic removal with circular economy processes and, therefore, close the loop. Besides Norwegian SINTEF, in project participate five partners from the Netherlands (BlueXprt, H20, DOW Benelux, FishFlow and Uniper), three from Croatia (Ponikve, Sensum and Probotica), EDF from France, Empower from Norway, ArcelorMittal Belgium from Belgium, Venice Lagoon Plastic Free from Italy, The Rivers Trust from the UK, NB from Germany, Polytechnic University of Bucharest from Romania and Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance from Bonaire.
For all news related to In-No-Plastic project please follow our official website and social media channels.