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06/01/2022
Cruising | Sustainability
The Ocean Cleanup!
At the end of every year the Pantaenius group elects a charity to donate to. In 2021, ‘The Ocean Cleanup’ was chosen, an incredible organization who have set out to combat the masses of plastic in our oceans. We have been actively following their progress for some time now and realized we never shared this incredible organization with you!
Plastic pollution is without a doubt one of the most pressing issues our oceans face today, with 1 million tons of plastic being released into the ocean annually. The majority of this plastic only stays afloat for a short period of time and therefore attacking the issue is much harder than just scooping the waste from the surface. The Ocean Cleanup are tackling this issue, and quite successfully might we add.
Plastic accrues in five areas in the world’s oceans, they are known as subtropical ocean gyres and the largest of these is commonly known as the ’Great Pacific Garbage Patch.’ The GPGP covers 0.5% of the world’s ocean and contains close to 50% of ocean plastics. It is bigger than Germany, France and Spain combined and the header image shows you a depiction of its mass when compared to Australia. The Ocean Cleanup’s work involves the removal of plastics from our ocean but due to the pollution being highly diluted, spanning millions of square kilometers the mission is incredibly difficult and time consuming. Cleaning the plastic involves the creation of ‘artificial coastlines’ which guide the plastic into the retention zone.
How it works:
Along with cleaning the subtropical ocean gyres, The Ocean Cleanup is also targeting rivers to stop the run off of river plastic into our oceans. Rivers are the main source of ocean plastic, with 80% of this plastic stemming from 1000 rivers worldwide. As such, these are the rivers that The Ocean Cleanup has begun to target, they are essentially ‘turning off the tap.’ Their goal is to tackle these 1000 rivers over the next 5 years. Their cleaning solution, ‘The Interceptor’ is a solar powered vehicle which has currently been deployed in three locations- Cengkareng Drain in Indonesia, Klang River in Malaysia and Rio Ozama in the Dominican Repubic.
Overall Pantaenius is thrilled to be supporting such an important global project making a notable difference to our oceans. It’s also incredibly inspiring to see what creative, enthusiastic minds can come up with when there is an issue at hand which requires tackling. We all know that plastic pollution has detrimental effects on our environment and of course is also an eyesore in our waterways, or anywhere really. To find out more about the amazing work The Ocean Cleanup is undertaking please visit their site https://theoceancleanup.com/
