“The Maritime Waste Disposal”
With maritime waste disposal, One Earth – One Ocean e.V. (oeoo) has developed a comprehensive and pragmatic concept for the collection and sustainable recycling of marine litter. oeoo thus demonstrates an already proven solution to one of the biggest global environmental problems. Plastic waste from the sea is a valuable recyclables.
The concept is to collect, sort and process plastic with special waste collection vessels in coastal and estuary areas. In addition to pure plastic bales, which can be fed back into the recycling, energy and fuel will also be extracted from plastic waste at a later date.
The maritime waste collection includes two waste collection vessels of different sizes, the SeeHamster for use in inland waters, as well as the SeeKuh in coastal regions on seas, which in a few years partly fully automatic and powered by modern wind and solar technologies independently collect plastic waste from the waters.
In addition to our eleven SeeHamster’s and three SeeKuh’s, we also use two Zodiacs and local fishing boats. Of this fleet, one SeeKuh and four SeeHamster already run exclusively on solar energy.
In a few years, they are even expected to collect plastic waste from the waters on their own. The plastic waste at sea is eventually taken to the waste recycling ship SeeElefant, where it is recycled or turned into sulfur-free fuel oil.
oeoo has prepared a professional feasibility study for the concept of maritime waste collection with all its components. The cleaning concept of oeoo focuses primarily on waste hotspots such as estuaries and coastal areas, where pollution concentrations are highest and plastic waste is still relatively undivided and can be found floating on the surface, often actually as a garbage rug. Here, accessibility, logistics and energy expenditure of the waste collection can be mastered.Examples include the estuaries of top polluter rivers such as the Yangtze, Ganges, Brantas, Mekong or Pasig, and the coasts off megacities such as Jakarta, Hong Kong or Rio.
The concept of oeoo’s maritime waste collection shows how relatively simple, inexpensive and proven means can be used to tackle and actively combat the collection of plastic waste in the seas – especially in the waste hotspots worldwide. Plastic waste could be removed from nature before it is crushed into microplastics or sinks into the depths and damages the environment for centuries to come.
People around the world are called upon to finally actively combat the pressing human problem of marine littering.
In 2013, oeoo was awarded the prestigious GreenTec Award, Europe’s largest environmental and economic award, for the concept of maritime waste collection.
In 2019, he was nominated for the Federal Ecodesign Award, the highest award for ecological design in Germany.
