Maersk Supply Service, A.P. Moller – Maersk and The Ocean Cleanup have agreed to extend their collaboration aimed at ridding the world’s oceans of plastic.
The Ocean Cleanup, an international non-profit organisation, has been testing different technologies since 2018 and has now established a system that can consistently capture significant quantities of plastic from the ocean.
The next step for The Ocean Cleanup is to validate the system from an engineering and ecological perspective, allowing it to demonstrate to governments, institutions and other funders that there is a viable technology available to clean the oceans from plastics.
As part of the agreement, Maersk Supply Service and A.P. Moller – Maersk will support the program, including project management, the operation of two anchor handling vessels, logistics services for waste collection and transportation for recycling. At the same time, the A.P. Moller Foundation will provide a one-time grant to The Ocean Cleanup.
“Maersk Supply Service and A.P. Moller – Maersk have been instrumental on the journey from initial concept to a working system in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and I am tremendously grateful for their commitment to get us towards the point we are ready for scale-up, with the additional donation from the A.P. Moller Foundation being a welcome contribution to our 2024 mission,” said Boyan Slat, founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup.
The system validation is expected to be finalised by the end of 2024. It will include an environmental review of the impact of plastic pollution versus the greenhouse gas emissions of vessels involved. When the technology and system has been validated, The Ocean Cleanup said it believes it will be able to raise support from the public, governments, and other foundations to scale up the operation from 2025 onwards significantly.
