How many more or less anonymous heroes have jumped into the sea to collect abandoned plastic in the past few decades? Some are concerned about hygiene on their city’s beach; others are scientists concerned about the future of coral and other marine species. These days I’ve discovered another hero, someone who is equally interested in clearing the oceans of plastic, but also interested in empowering the people of the South.
It makes a lot of sense when we consider that 90% of plastic pollution is found in emerging markets. What if they had equal access to technology, knowledge and resources to fight the enemy?
That is the ultimate goal of Plastic Odyssey, an odyssey as the name suggests. It is a laboratory ship that set sail last September from the port of Marseille in the south-east of France to visit 30 ports in Africa and America during the three-year voyage to stop to teach young people in the techniques of reducing and recycling plastic and helping local entrepreneurs develop their ideas and turn them into businesses.
Map of the route that the Plastic Odyssey ship will take during its three year expedition. With kind approval
Micro-enterprises that use plastic as a resource and not as waste and that also create jobs. And every clever and inexpensive innovation is released as open source so it can be replicated elsewhere in the world. The goal is ambitious: to turn the vicious circle into a positive one through a global network of local initiatives. The expedition aims to create a “large community of recyclers” as they will accompany more than 200 people around the world on their projects.
At the forefront of this maritime adventure Simon Bernhard, a young French merchant marine officer who decided to invest his efforts in the oceans. The idea came to him during a stopover in Dakar, Senegal, in 2016, where he was surprised by the amount of plastic pollution and at the same time the ingenuity of people to recycle and recycle any type of waste. He said that if recycling technologies reserved for a few became publicly available, not only would pollution disappear, but many jobs would be created.
The organization has helped Cabo Verde provide solutions for recycling waste washed up on the uninhabited island of Santa Luzia, where the survival of loggerhead sea turtles is threatened
Bernard fights marine pollution and does so on the mainland. So far, there have been expeditions whose goal was to save as much plastic as possible from the sea, as is the case with Ocean Clean Up. For Bernard, these initiatives make little sense because the plastic ends up on the inaccessible bottom of the oceans or breaks down into microparticles. Scientists call it “the mystery of plastic”. It’s known to exist, but we don’t know exactly where it is. Swimming is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. So rather act on land before the plastic is thrown away and ends up in the water.
The Navy highlights among the experiences that of the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, where an entrepreneur employs 150 young people to collect plastic waste from the camp and turn it into conduits through which electric cables are run. He was also impressed when he learned about Egypt’s Coptic Christian community, which collects and recycles two-thirds of Cairo’s trash. They have managed to informally build one of the most efficient garbage sorting and recycling systems in the world.
Wherever the ship passes, the stories of success and improvement are already leaving their mark. Plastic Odyssey works with local partners to build small turnkey containerized plastic recycling plants. In 2022, two were installed in Togo and Guinea. On the west coast of Morocco Plastic Odyssey trained teams to recycle fish waste.
The Plastic Odyssey team teaches local people how to recycle and reduce plastic use. Image courtesy
In Guinea, the organization helped a businesswoman improve her recycling center, and in Cape Verde, it provided solutions to recycle waste washed up on the uninhabited island of Santa Luzia, which threatens the survival of loggerhead sea turtles in protected areas. She also helped install four machines in Burkina Faso to be used by a small, women-run recycling center that can now make new items, such as tables and chairs for schools, or furniture and roofs for houses.
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