The Ocean Cleanup, A.P. Moller-Maersk, and Maersk Supply Service announced that they will extend their collaboration to validate a system that reliably removes significant amounts of ocean plastic.
As informed, the Ocean Cleanup has now successfully established a system which can consistently capture significant quantities of plastics from the ocean. The next step for The Ocean Cleanup is to validate the system from an engineering and ecological perspective, allowing it to demonstrate to governments, institutions and other funders that there is a viable technology available to clean the oceans from plastics.’
Plastic pollution in the world’s oceans is one of the biggest environmental issues of our time, impacting nearly 700 marine species and contaminating the marine food chain with toxic pollutants.
Maersk Supply Service and A.P. Moller – Maersk will provide support to the program, which includes project management, the operation of two Maersk Supply Service vessels towing the system as well as logistics services for waste collection and transportation for recycling. At the same time, the A.P. Moller Foundation will provide a one-time grant to The Ocean Cleanup.
The system validation is expected to be finalised by end of 2024 and will include an environmental review of the impact of plastic pollution versus the greenhouse gas emissions of vessels involved.
When the technology and system has been validated, The Ocean Cleanup believes it will be able to raise support from the public, governments, and other foundations to significantly scale up the operation from 2025 onwards.
Maersk Supply Service and A.P. Moller – Maersk have been instrumental on the journey from initial concept to a working system in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and I am tremendously grateful for their commitment to get us towards the point we are ready for scale-up, with the additional donation from the A.P. Moller Foundation being a welcome contribution to our 2024 mission.
