Maersk will help with logistics to clean plastic in the seas

If we continue as we are today, by the year 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish, which is just around the corner ”.

Antonio Domínguez, general director of the Caribbean area for Maersk.

The blue planet, so named because most of its surface is covered by water, is potentially being contaminated with the daily activities of humans. Since according to the studies of the ISWA (International Solid Waste Association, for its acronym in English) 12.5 million tons of plastics coexist in the ocean with marine fauna and unique habitats on Earth.

Also the Australian National Scientific Agency (CSIRO) estimated that there are 14 million metric tons of microplastics floating in the oceans. The number found is 35 times greater than what they imagined. So Ocean CleanUp, an initiative of the young Boyan Slat, began with the task of cleaning the seas in 2013.

Cleaning the seas of the plastics that have done so much damage to the species that live there became no longer a desire or whim, but a survival objective for all those who inhabit the planet, aware of this the AP Moller-Maersk group started an alliance with Ocean CleanUp by lending large tug vessels that travel different routes around the world to collect the plastic.

In an interview with El Economista, Antonio Domínguez, general director of the Caribbean area for Maersk, commented that this alliance began by supporting Boyan Slat in bringing the prototypes of technology that it was making to capture plastic from the ocean. “We focused first on the island of plastic bottles that is in the Pacific Ocean between Los Angeles and Hawaii, how we could clean it because from space you can see, that’s how big it is,” explained Domínguez.

“We began to carry this system of networks, first the 001 system and then 001B and the 002B system has just been launched and that it was more than anything to take advantage of the maritime currents so that the plastic entered the network and we could raise the network when it was full” .

Ocean CleanUp’s mission is to develop advanced technologies to remove plastic from the world’s oceans. To do this, it aims to stop the influx through rivers and clean up what has already accumulated in the ocean. The organization’s ultimate goal is to achieve a 90% reduction in floating plastic in the ocean by 2040. The project has a two-ship system. According to a survey conducted by the association, it will be possible to clean the garbage area by 2040, if 10 systems are activated for this purpose.

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