Reducing plastic pollution of the seas is a fundamental objective to make marine ecosystems livable for animal species and for humans themselves. Awareness-raising advertising campaigns and days dedicated to the topic are now on the agenda. Man-made plastic waste is becoming a major problem for the marine ecosystem. In fact, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the KfW, which acts on behalf of the German federal government, have also recently committed to double the objective of the Clean Oceans Initiative, which aims to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the oceans.
About that, the initiative of the Finnish technology company Wärtsilä and the Italian shipowner Grimaldi Group should be highlighted, presenting a new system that uses waste gas cleaning water to counteract the number of microplastics in the world’s oceans. The two parties will bring to market the microplastic filtration system – which traps plastic particles before the wash water is returned to the ocean. The ability to filter microplastics will be an integrated feature of Wärtsilä’s future wash water treatment system.
Regarding the initiative undertaken by the Finns and the Neapolitan shipowner, member of Confitarma and of the Italy-IORA Committee, Emanuele Grimaldi, CEO of the Grimaldi Group, commented “We have already completed the pilot test of this system onboard one of our ships deployed between Civitavecchia and Barcelona. The results are promising, with 64,680 microplastic particles collected on a single voyage between these two ports. We are glad that Wärtsilä also recognizes the potential of this system, and we look forward to further collaboration to tackle microplastics in our oceans”.“
Tamara de Gruyter, President Marine Systems at Wärtsilä, also said “Microplastics are an urgent environmental challenge and we are proud to partner with Grimaldi to address the cleanup of the oceans. More importantly, the ability to capture microplastics shows how scrubbers are. a platform to solve a wide range of sustainability challenges, and now also those beyond the stack.“
These entrepreneurial initiatives are increasingly widespread, in fact, it is also good to remember those undertaken by BlueMed and Hackathon or the ones undertaken by Kenya and Italy.
(Source: Offshore Energy)